CAMILA ROZO

When I was four my aunt Gladys took me to see Cuenteros in Bogota; mostly broke college students telling stories outside to anyone who would listen. It was my first exposure to theater, if you don’t count Sunday dinners with my father. It was where I saw houseless men share a patch of grass with business men, it was the smell of empanada chin-grease and vulgar jokes that flew over my head. I don’t come from a quiet family- we all speak over one another; there is not one story someone else doesn’t finish for you. But this time, beside the downtown soundscape of traffic and taxi radios, this man made a stage out of bird-pooped cement and talked without a single unwanted interruption. I don’t know if it was right then in that moment where I decided I wanted to be an actor. If I'm being honest, I probably decided that when all my friends outgrew playing pretend before I did (I’m sure the blocking notes I had for them afterwards also discouraged them). But, I do know that it was what made accessibility an important part of creating theater for me. It made politics inseparable from my work and set goals bigger than booking. Goals like making theater and acting a more accessible career for marginalized communities in order to have a more accurate representation of us in the media.