Creating opportunity for Hispanic actors

Wherever she goes, Rose Cano sees art. Be it the theater or the hospital operating table, she will find a way to turn any situation creative.Actor, director, writer, interpreter, activist, mother, friend — these are only a few of the personas that describe her. You might also hear her name in the same sentence as terms like “powerhouse” or “dynamo.”Born in Peru and raised on Capitol Hill, Cano is co-founder of eSe Teatro, a bilingual Latino theater group in Seattle. The company was established four years ago to promote diversity and cross-cultural understanding. Latino actors and community members put on bilingual performances, arrange cultural-exchange programs, and reach out to homeless shelters, using theater as a medium for dialogue.For many people, co-founding a theater company would be enough. But not for Cano. On weekdays, she works full time at Harborview Medical Center as a Spanish-English interpreter. But as soon as she gets off, she runs to rehearsal, or to plan eSe Teatro’s next production.

“For Rose, the sky is the limit,” said Jennifer Tee, the troupe’s volunteer coordinator. “She is a force to be reckoned with.”

When Cano graduated from Cornish College of the Arts in 1983, there weren’t many Latino role models in the theater world, and a theater company for Latinos didn’t exist in Seattle. There was a community of Latino actors involved in the Group Theatre, but the organization — formerly located in the Seattle Center House — folded in 1998. The arts, explained Cano, should reflect each part of the community.

Disappointed by the lack of diversity in Seattle’s theater scene and interested in exploring her cultural identity, Cano left for Peru on New Year’s Day in 1986. At 23, she returned to the place she was born for the first time.

“I thought I would stay there for a year and I stayed for nine,” Cano said. “There was a very deep and immediate connection with art and society that I didn’t feel here.”

Cano traveled around Peru, meeting with other artists and actors, and performing her one-person show, “Self Portrait.”

“Those nine years have forever changed me,” she said. “I wouldn’t have started eSe Teatro if I hadn’t had that experience.”

She returned to Seattle in 1995 to spend time with her aging father and give birth to her son. When she arrived back in the states —six-months pregnant — Cano and her husband Fernando Ugaz founded North-South Connexion, a program to bring Peruvian scissor dancing — a style of dance from the Andes that involves challenging steps, such as dancing with one foot — to Native-American reservations in Washington.

She also started The African Connexion, a similar performing-arts program that brought together African-American artists in Seattle and performers from Afro-Latino countries.

Her mission with eSe Teatro was to create something that would last — a professional environment where bilingual actors would be noticed and become part of the broader theater scene.

“There are so many different people who you can include under the umbrella of the Latino community,” Tee said.

Cano wanted to make sure that community was being represented. “I wanted to prove to Seattle that there is an audience for Latino theater and we can have the same quality as any other theater.”

In 2010, Cano founded eSe Teatro — which now partners with ACT Theatre— alongside long-time friend and eSe’s Community Outreach Coordinator Meg Savlov.

Now, four years later, the troupe is working on its second mainstage production at ACT. In April, it hosted the first Northwest Latino Regional Theatre Auditions. Casters from Seattle Rep, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and ACT came to see nearly 40 actors perform two-minute monologues. While callbacks are still in progress, one actor has already been cast by ACT and two others were offered acting internships at the Intiman Theatre.

Ese Teatro’s latest work is called “Don Quixote & Sancho Panza: Homeless in Seattle” and is a synthesis of Cano’s work in the theater and in public service.

In an effort to understand the every-day battles faced by homeless men and women in Seattle, Cano developed a program called “Dialogues on Dignity,” which would help make the play as realistic as possible and give a voice to the homeless.

She traveled to different homeless shelters around the city, performing readings of “Don Quixote,” and then facilitated discussions where people spoke about their experiences with homelessness.

In the classic novel, written by Miguel de Cervantes in 1605, Quixote is a chivalrous self-proclaimed hidalgo — a Spanish nobleman. He enlists Sancho Panza, a simple farmer, to be his squire.

The play, which will open September 12 at ACT, adds a modern twist by juxtaposing the two characters and showing how it can be difficult to maintain dignity without a home. It tracks what it’s like to be homeless in Seattle while trying to navigate the health-care system with English as a second language. Cano originally came up with the idea when she was interpreting at Harborview.

“I’m always amazed at Rose’s seemingly-endless creativity and problem solving, her passion for creating and seeing so much out there that can be transformed into art,” said Savlov, who also works at Harborview.

Every day, Cano said, she is inspired by patients’ stories.

“I meet Don Quixotes everywhere. I used to make an effort to bring these two worlds together; now I cannot keep them apart.”

For more information on the group, visit http://www.eseteatro.org.

Originally published on La Raza del Noroeste