Interview with Michael John Garcés, conducted by Mila Aponte-González, during the 7th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, held in August of 2009 in Bogotá, Colombia under the title Staging Citizenship: Cultural Rights in the Americas. In this interview, Garcés talks about his take on how his particular performance-related work makes a political intervention in the public sphere. This interview complements Garcés's teach in Community Theater: A Conversation about Methodologies, presented in this 10-day event, which brought together activism, scholarship, and art around the themes of legacies, memories, struggles, and frontiers of citizenship.

Biography

Michael John Garcés is the Artistic Director of Cornerstone Theater Company in Los Angeles. His credits as a director and playwright include The Humana Festival, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Yale Repertory Theater, The Cultural Center of the Philippines, New York Theatre Workshop, The Guthrie Theater, The Walker Arts Center, A Contemporary Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater, Woolly Mammoth, Repertorio Español, Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre and many others. He is the recipient of the Princess Grace Statue and the Alan Schneider Director Award.