bio

Graciela Fernandez (she/her) is a multi-hyphenate artist and Oberlin ’24 grad with a passion for experimental theater that uplifts her queer and BIPOC peers. She is a director, playwright, choreographer, and occasionally performer if you can coax her to the stage. She is a Cuba-rican creyente de Santería from St. Augustine, Florida, relocated to the DMV. Graciela’s focus as an artist holding historically authoritative positions is to give every creative a seat at the table. She enjoys writing about religion, assimilation, queerness, and BIPOC resilience. She enjoys directing plays addressing similar topics and always includes music and dance in the story. Currently, Graciela is working on a new play and revising several old works for publication. She hopes to realize her work on the stage again soon.

Photo by
Serafina Yan

Artist Statement

The theater I made first was with my mom. As a baby, bouncing along to the Law & Order theme song, as a toddler, epic Barbie Greek tragedies, and as a child, trying to copy Gilles Marini’s tango from DWTS 2008 is where it all started. It’s so easy to make theater as a kid. It’s just play. But growing up makes that magic so devastatingly inaccessible.

We discuss what theater should do for an audience and a community; theater should inspire them to action, start difficult conversations, and provide respite to harsh realities. But when we discuss what theater should do for an artist, that conversation turns commercial; theater should expand their range as actors, make techies hirable, seamstresses sew straighter, and produce high-quality theater efficiently. These are all important things, but when the product is more important than the process, I think theater becomes sort of pointless.

The theater that I make prioritizes play. It takes risks and emboldens my creatives to push their artistic bounds to create something uniquely imperfect. It is joyful in its conception, and it seeks to build a coalition of artists who trust each other enough to fail spectacularly and try again. This is called horizontal hierarchy. A methodology that creates an environment where every voice is heard and valued, communication is multifaceted, and my team’s collective vision for a show can be fully realized.

This commitment to collaboration is ultimately what inspires me to keep making theater. As a Lesbian Latin creative, I have so often been in creative spaces that talk the EDI talk but do not walk the EDI walk. My work seeks to explore how my creatives’ identities fundamentally change the message of the art we’re making. The first and only time I was asked how my heritage would influence my character was as a junior in college. No Queer/BIPOC artist should have to wait so long. This is why I seek to work exclusively with artists who hold marginalized identities, so I can provide the experience of adding color to historically white-washed theater.

The theater I want to participate in maximizes accessibility. It does not comprise integrity for general palatability and instead seeks to encourage audiences to be active participants rather than passive observers. This theater seeks to pop the theater bubble by cross-pollinating artistic disciplines that can more wholly tell the story by utilizing a variety of mediums. This also calls for the merging of arts, STEM, and other non-traditional practices to not only showcase the versatility of theater but also reinforce its validity and essential role in developing and fortifying young minds.

As a teaching artist, I am particularly sensitive to how we are empowering younger generations to fight against White capitalist efforts that seek to commodify queer and BIPOC art while systematically denying public access to affordable community arts opportunities. I want to partner with theaters that feel impassioned about hosting free and reduced-cost events, offering generous need-based scholarships, taking financial care of their employees, and committing to a season full of stories that challenge the status quo. It is a tall order, but I know there are other willing bleeding hearts.

The theater I want to inspire is inherently and shamelessly political and uplifts new artists and their work. It listens carefully to what the climate calls for, and it takes action. Right now, this looks like Blacked-out leadership, subtitled and ASL-assisted performances, telling the stories of Indigenous women and Latin immigrants, investing in local grassroots organizations, equitable pay and benefits for part-time employees, and the implementation of a social justice framework as the default. As my career unfolds, I want to be proud of the theater I make.