As part of a Q&A series with our faculty, the USC School of Dramatic Arts asked Associate Professor of Dramatic Writing and Director of the MFA in Dramatic Writing Luis Alfaro about his career as an Artist/Citizen, speaking as part of this year’s World Theatre Day and the difference between being liked and being understood.

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What are you teaching this year?

Luis Alfaro: Thanks for asking! I am excited to dip into undergrad again and teach Latinx Theatre. I love our undergrads and miss teaching playwriting with them. Latinx is a great class for me because I try to match the work to the students and their generation. I am also teaching the MFA actors in Solo Performance, which is how I started my career, and what I won the MacArthur Fellowship for.

Tell us a little about your professional career.

Well, it’s been a non-traditional career to say the least. I am what I call an Artist/Citizen, I build my work in community and around community issues. I don’t write my plays alone. I usually write them for actors or in community experiences. I spent ten years living in different troubled cities in America for a year at a time, where I would do community service and then write a play about the experience. That’s kind of my favorite way of working.

I started in the L.A. Poetry community for a decade, touring California, mostly San Francisco and San Diego. Then Boston, New York, Chicago. Lots of bookstore readings and some big gigs like the PBS film, The United States of Poetry. Then I found myself in the Performance Art world working in galleries, museums and alternative theatre spaces for another ten years, touring the U.S. and into Europe, Latin America and Canada. I did a couple of important festivals, one in London, and another in Mexico City.

As much as I loved making performance, it was a chance encounter with the playwright María Irene Fornés who became my mentor, that I realized the alchemy of writing for myself. I also spent considerable time with Paula Vogel, Mac Wellman and Len Jenkin, among others. I produced hundreds of plays in productions, readings and workshops during my eleven years at the Mark Taper Forum at the Music Center as a producer and recently as associate artistic director. I was the first, and, so far, only playwright-in-residence at the 89-year-old Oregon Shakespeare Festival for six seasons. I bounced over to Victory Gardens Theater in Chicago as a resident writer for seven seasons. I just ended a long journey of twenty years as part of the artistic staff of the Ojai Playwrights Conference. I am most known lately for my adaptations of Greek classics, two of which have been produced off-Broadway at The Public Theater, and around the U.S., and now the world, along with a book—The Greek Trilogy of Luis Alfaro—which won the London/Greece Hellenic Prize.

I know, it sounds so fancy, doesn’t it? I’m not.

But I have been around. I’ve run hard and never stopped working, so I have had an intense life in the American Theatre. I think I have done a production, reading or workshop at every major regional theatre in America. No kidding. I have been in residence at The Goodman in Chicago, Hartford Stage and South Coast Repertory the most. I spent many years at a local company, Playwrights’ Arena, which produced all my early work.

You were a featured U.S. speaker at Theatre Communication Group’s World Theatre Day this year. What did you speak about and what did it mean to be selected?

That was a beautiful honor because it was an exchange with a writer in Europe, so even though I was speaking to folks in the U.S., I was also presenting worldwide, and I spoke about growing up blocks from USC in Pico/Union, and how that shaped the way I see the world and make my art. So, even though we might not look alike, we are always telling each other’s stories. I am in the business of feelings, and that is something we share as humans.

The LATC/Magic Theatre co-production of The Travelers recently won three Stage Raw Awards, including the award for playwriting. What is one thing you want people to know about this play and what inspired you to write it?

Well, the Magic Theatre in San Francisco was home to the playwright Sam Shepard, and I like writing in that spirit when I am there. So The Travelers, which was just published in American Theatre Magazine, is an imagistic play about loneliness, which I started during the pandemic, dealing with my own sense of isolation, and features a naked man in a bathtub who has lived there all of his life. It doesn’t make sense in real life, but on stage, it makes total sense in metaphor and poetry. Theatre gives us permission to dream.

It’s been quite a year for you! You’ve also been named one of 18 recipients of the 2024 American Academy of Arts and Letters Awards in Literature. What does it mean to have your work recognized in this way?

Well, the sweet answer is every award is an honor. It really is. I can never really believe it when it happens. I grew up in abject poverty, in a neighborhood filled with violence, so it’s a miracle, to me at least, that I can make a living as a writer and community builder (teacher). But to be subversive, I often think of what Jean Genet once said, something along the lines of, “In my youth you tried to silence me by putting me in prison, and in my old age, you do it by giving me awards…” It’s important for the kind of writing that I do not to need to be liked, but rather, understood.

As the Director of the MFA in Dramatic Writing program, can you tell us what makes the program such a special place to learn the craft?

Well, this will be our first semester 100% tuition-free, which opens the door for many candidates who could not afford to come here, even on a scholarship. We have an amazing program that welcomes young writers, and non-traditional writers. I am thrilled, for instance, that the program currently has a cohort composed of 80% women, and that we just finished the year with two Native writers. We welcome traditional theatre artists and experimental writers as well. Our collaboration with the USC School of Cinematic Arts allows our playwrights to take screenplay and teleplay courses. Our core MFADW faculty are all working playwrights in the field, and I think that is important. It’s also a program that keeps changing, hopefully to meet the demands of the field, while we help you to grow in your craft.

What is your favorite advice to give to students?

I slept and dreamt that life was joy.
l awoke and saw that life was service.
l acted and behold, service was joy.
-Rabindranath Tagore

Is there a piece of theatre, or a film or television show that has recently resonated with you?

Always. I am a total pop junkie. I haven’t had a television since 2016, so I read a lot, especially plays. I see a lot of theatre. I love music (current buys include Omar Apollo, Brittany Howard, Tanya Tucker, and dare I say, I love the new Willow Smith recording!). Love Jinkx Monsoon. I saw A Strange Loop right when it opened off-Broadway, and it was so great to see it again on tour now years later. An original work, to say the least.

Any fun facts we should know about Luis Alfaro? 

I recorded a spoken word CD with a punk rock label that won Best Spoken Word in Australia; I won an Emmy for a short film I did for PBS called Chicanismo in which I play a young man, old man, young woman and old woman; and I got my Equity card as the set up act for a game show called The Gong Show, where I would be the first act up, which was supposed to be awful, and always got gonged by celebrities.