Teatro Azteca Premieres New Student-Written Musical, Despierta!

April 16, 2019

The newest club on the block is Teatro Azteca, a person-of-color performing arts group aiming to bring diverse and empowering art to SDSU and the San Diego community. The students’ drive, enthusiasm, stamina, and passion in putting on their work is a good reminder what theatre can be and hopefully bring in new audiences with original storytelling from new voices. I can tell you from experience, the heart and soul of our department is fully on display in these shows.

Other than having a faculty advisor as a sponsor, are shows are driven by its membership. The student fundraise, file applications for grants, coordinate with faculty to book scene shop time, promote the show and then open it. This is in addition to their regular coursework! Oh, to be young and full of energy again…

Despierta! has a book and lyric by Mario Vega, music by Eliza Vedar (with Cynthia Phan), and is directed by Paloma Carrillo. I spoke with the creative team about their new musical.

How did you get into theatre?

MARIO VEGA: My first play was a Nativity play. I was innkeeper number 1. It wasn’t until high school when I decided to stop playing soccer and had a lot of extra free time that my friend recommended I try out for a play. I got a part in “Harvey” and really enjoyed it. That spring I was in my first musical, Anything Goes, and that’s when I really fell in love with theatre because it was a play that was funny and didn’t take itself too seriously, plus the music was so interesting.

PALOMA CARRILLO: I got into theatre in middle school. I was a mischievous teenager, but I was able to help the main characters with stunts and props and I realized acting is fun but behind the scene work was just as exciting.

ELIZA VEDAR: It was something I’ve thought about since I started studying music, considering I grew up watching Disney animated musicals and live productions. Mario and I were part of our high school’s drama club so when we ended up attending at SDSU and he asked if I would write with him, I figured it was the perfect time to try. Also, I can’t think of a better way for me to start learning to compose than with one of my closest friends.

Describe Despierta!

MARIO VEGA: Despierta! is a story about time. How we deal with the past, present and the future through the Mexican-American lens. We can’t go back to the past and the future isn’t here yet, so we have to live in the present. Still, that doesn’t mean the mistakes we’ve made or the the things we need to do don’t affect us in the present moment. How does love change over time? How do our connections with each other change over time? How do we approach what’s coming without repeating the mistakes we’ve made before? I wanted to make a musical about people just going through life and sometimes life is hard but other times you have these perfect moments that you don’t want to end.

PALOMA CARRILLO: Despierta! is the story if identity, who we want to be, who we think we are, and who we really are. This story is important to me because emotional growth within the Latinx community does not get delved into that much, and I believe Mario wrote a painfully honest story depicting Latin family dynamics.

ELIZA VERA: Despierta! is a story about living in America with roots from somewhere else and trying to find a way live a life for yourself while wanting to “honor” sacrifices of those who came before you by making sure what you do is “enough”. It’s also about familial love, learning had to let go of the past, live in the moment, and look towards the future.

Describe your collaboration with Eliza Vedar, the composer of Despierta!

MARIO VEGA: Eliza Vedar and I have been friends since our freshman year of high school. She is the most talented person I know. I come to Eliza with lyrics, she tries to put music on them, I rewrite lyrics as we try to the song. Rinse and repeat about 50 times. Some songs we wrote quickly, like “Golazo,” which is the song where characters are having a friendly soccer match. It took 10 minutes to write and has barley changed since its initial inception. Other songs like “Someday, Past Today,” which is our “I Want Song,” has had about 5 different versions and we actually had to rewrite the song during the rehearsal process!

Describe your collaboration with Mario Vega as the lyricist.

Eliza Vedar: Mario and I resonate on very similar wavelengths. We talk about the kind of mood we want to set with a song and we watch a lot of the same movies and shows so when we pull in outside references we know exactly what the other is talking about. When we’re just improvising/getting ideas out I can usually follow his lead and tell where he’s going with something and vice versa.

What do you want audiences to walk away after they see Despierta!

MARIO VEGA: Everybody will walk away with something different, but I hope a lot of people see that love is very powerful and to create the best possible future we need to understand each other.

PALOMA CARRILLO: I want the audience to walk away and hug their families, their friends, and have a new dialogue in their tool boxes to communicate with their family, especially for young Latin people. I also would like everyone to walk with the reality of an immigrant identity and the privileged identity, and that when they walk out of the theatre these stories persist and we have to remain aware.

After you graduate what path do you want to continue on?

PALOMA CARRILLO: I want to go out into the world as a woman of the color in the film and theatre industry, and I want to create more stories for people of color, by people of color and with people of color because I can’t afford not to. I want to graduate and change the slow moving pace of the industry to include stories and storytellers with people of color.

ELIZA VEDAR: Ideally, I’d like to continue with my musical studies and look further into sound designing, writing music, and music directing for theatre.

MARIO VEGA: God willing, I would like to go to grad school for playwriting and really hone my craft. Eventually I’d like to make a musical animated show with Eliza! As long as I am healthy and can continue writing, that’s all that matters.