{"id":1564,"date":"2020-11-05T19:51:33","date_gmt":"2020-11-05T19:51:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/?p=1564"},"modified":"2020-11-05T21:07:47","modified_gmt":"2020-11-05T21:07:47","slug":"cara-mia-theatre-celebrates-25-community-inspiring-years-in-dallas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/cara-mia-theatre-celebrates-25-community-inspiring-years-in-dallas\/","title":{"rendered":"Cara M\u00eda Theatre celebrates 25 community-inspiring years in Dallas"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Cara M\u00eda Theatre celebrates 25 community-inspiring years in Dallas<\/h1>\n

This month, amid a global pandemic that has shut down in-person shows since March,\u00a0<\/span>Cara M\u00eda Theatre<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>is celebrating the start of their 25th anniversary season. But instead of focusing on what won\u2019t be possible during this milestone year, the Cara M\u00eda team sees the same opportunity they have over the past seven months: a chance to focus on their mission to engage and inspire people to uplift their communities.<\/p>\n

Founded in 1996, Cara M\u00eda Theatre presents plays, offers multicultural youth arts experiences and takes part in community action that represent and give voice to North Texas\u2019 Latinx community. Cara M\u00eda, which is a\u00a0<\/span>Dallas City of Learning<\/a>\/Big Thought\u00a0<\/span>Learning Partner<\/a>, has always challenged what the role of a theatre company is and can be, so their ability to innovate and pivot to address the needs of their community is no surprise.<\/p>\n

In March, when in-person programming was no longer possible, team members prepared to work from home and took a few days to get settled. \u201cWe started asking ourselves, \u2018What is it that a live theatre company can do right now? Why would a live theatre company even be open?\u2019\u201d said David Lozano, Cara M\u00eda\u2019s\u00a0executive artistic director. \u201cSo those became our driving questions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The answer was to develop two new programs primarily focused on health and well-being<\/h4>\n

The answer, to start, was to develop two new programs primarily focused on health and well-being: \u201cStories That Heal\u201d and \u201cBecoming a Light Unto Yourself and Others.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first, \u201cStories That Heal,\u201d provided a space for participants to share a story \u2014 through a poem, song, dance or written piece \u2014 about something that has allowed them to heal. \u201cPeople have been able to find commonalities and common themes that allow others to heal along with you,\u201d said Cheyenne Raquel Farley, Cara M\u00eda\u2019s education and community action coordinator, who facilitated the series alongside artist and storyteller Stefanie Tovar.<\/p>\n

In \u201cBecoming a Light Unto Yourself and Others,\u201d facilitator and human rights activist Ernest McMillan and featured guests that helped participants understand practices from different cultures that allow for healing and reflection.<\/p>\n

Cara Mia also set up the Artists Relief Fund<\/h4>\n

In addition to online arts and health programming, the company also set up the Artists Relief Fund to help fulfill contracts for programming that would no longer happen, and to provide additional funding to create artist jobs. \u201cWe are a community and we believe in serving the community as a nonprofit, but it goes beyond just presenting programming,\u201d managing director Ariana Cook said. \u201cIt goes to also supporting the network of people that we rely on in order to make that programming successful, and in order to serve the community in a wider way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Cara<\/a>In the months since, the list of what the Cara M\u00eda team has been able to accomplish has grown extensively. There have been virtual readings, online acting classes, bilingual story times, visual arts workshops and two summer camps. In July, Virginia Grise was named the theatre\u2019s playwright-in-residence, and protests spread throughout the city and nation, Cara M\u00eda joined three other Dallas theatre companies to start the BIPOC Arts Coalition, a way to advocate for antiracism, equitable funding and structural support for culturally specific artists and performance groups in Dallas.<\/span><\/p>\n

Whatever the community has needed, Cara M\u00eda has tried to provide.<\/h4>\n

And although the circumstances have been challenging, they\u2019ve also allowed for a few breakthroughs.<\/p>\n

In a typical year, Cara M\u00eda\u2019s fine-arts educational programming reaches 20,000 youth across 56 schools and community centers. As a Learning Partner, they\u2019re able to help address teachers\u2019 and students\u2019 TEKS objectives in theatre arts, language arts and social studies through field-trip performances, educational touring shows and in-school residencies.<\/p>\n

\"Kid<\/a>This year, Cara M\u00eda\u2019s annual summer camps, The School of YES! and the School of YES en Espa\u00f1ol!, went virtual. This change allowed the programs, which offer classes in everything from theatre to leadership, to reach youth in locations beyond Dallas, including Mexico and Puerto Rico.<\/p>\n

The virtual format not only made it possible for parents and guardians to be more involved, but it also helped some youth feel more comfortable. \u201cWe had students that we\u2019ve had at the School of YES! for years, that when it comes to doing their theater class, they are shy. They don\u2019t want to get up and go full out and really use their voice,\u201d Farley said. \u201cBut then when put in this virtual platform, they were completely out of their shell.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s more virtual programming on the horizon<\/h4>\n

\"Cara<\/p>\n

Looking ahead, there\u2019s more virtual programming on the horizon, for youth and adults alike. Both \u201cStories That Heal\u201d and \u201cBecoming a Light Unto Yourself and Others\u201d will return this fall, and an audio play will open on Oct. 12. The theatre is also filming its bilingual touring plays and workshops for youth and families to enjoy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s this kind of prescribed way theatre should run, and we\u2019ve always tried to program a little bit against that,\u201d Cook said. \u201cBut this pandemic kind of disrupted all of the systems and allowed us to really think deeply about how our art impacts people, how we impact people and how important it is to have the theatre.\u201d<\/p>\n

And until Cara M\u00eda can perform in person again, they\u2019ll continue meeting community needs in any way they can. \u201cTheatre\u2019s taking new forms, and certainly part of it is going virtual, but what we\u2019re focusing on now is \u2018What does it mean to put people first when creating our work?\u2019\u201d Lozano said.<\/p>\n

The answer will undoubtedly reverberate throughout Cara M\u00eda\u2019s 25th season, no matter what shape it takes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

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Amid a global pandemic that has shut down in-person shows since March, Cara M\u00eda Theatre is celebrating the start of their 25th anniversary season by focusing on their mission to engage and inspire people to uplift their communities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1565,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"1080","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1564","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-partner-highlight"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1564"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1564\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1565"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1564"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1564"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dallascityoflearning.org\/info\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1564"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}