Monica Palacios (Playwright)

Monica Palacios
Born San Jose, CA
Occupation Playwright, director, lecturer, stand-up comic
Language English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German
Nationality Chicana
Citizenship United States
Alma mater

San Francisco State University, BA

Chico State University
Years active 1982-Present

Monica Palacios[1] is a Chicana playwright, director, and self-proclaimed "international hip chick."[2] She attended Chico State University and transferred to San Francisco State University, at which she earned a BA in Cinema with a concentration in screen writing. Since then, she has been producing theatre works for over three decades. In her specifically Chicana, queer, feminist, and lesbian performances, Palacios emphasizes activism as well as community organizing. She combines aspects of race, culture and sexuality in her groundbreaking performances, as she was one of the first openly lesbian/queer stand up comics when she came out in 1982 in San Francisco. She is a prolific writer and performer, and has created several one-woman shows, plays, and screenplays. Her poems, plays, and anthologies are taught in universities and examined in scholastic settings, usually within the fields of LGBTQ/Queer Studies, Chicano Studies, and Feminist Studies. Palacios also works with students of a wide range of ages (from elementary school students to college students), and has served as a writer, director, and dramaturg for more than 400 student theatre works.[1]

Themes/Influences

The majority of Palacios' writing is about her interpretations of her own experiences throughout her life as a queer, Chicana woman. She draws inspiration from her family and others who are close to her. As one of the first comedians in this genre, she often discusses the intersection of queer and Latina identities that develop a liminal identity for people who are marginalized for more than one aspect of their existence.[3]

Her work is known for being unapologetically queer, despite the homophobia that has permeated Latinx communities since long before she began performing.[4] Palacios acknowledges that she often takes uncomfortable topics and makes them more palatable to herself and her audiences with physical comedy, but not without challenges and some pushback.[5] Gender and sexuality were often considered controversial or taboo topics when she first began performing in the 1980's, and they still are today (CITE). However, she continues to produce works like The OH! Show, where discussion of sex is intentionally ubiquitous. This is evident in the forward of the play, in which she declares, "...we are sexual beings until we die, or until your partner removes the vibrator from your hands—whichever comes first."[6]

In her performances, Palacios restructures classically white and heteronormative narratives by using several modes of storytelling. One way by which she does this is adapting popular, and classically heterosexual, songs to include queer people in the narratives and uproot their heteronormativity. For example, she ends her show Queer Chicano Soul: Thirty Years of Fierce Performance, My Quinceañera Times Two, with a series of song snippets titled the "Vagina Medley." All lyrics were changed to accommodate the addition of the word, such as "I left my vagina in San Francisco," in which "vagina" replaces "heart" in Tony Bennett's I Left My Heart in San Francisco[4]. Additionally, this performance is made up of a variety of segments of autobiographical narratives, vignettes, segments of standup and mime. This format is reminiscent of traditional carpas that traveled to working class Latinx people to engage them in theatre and political discourse (like Luis Valdez's El Teatro Campesino).[4] Thus, the backdrop of Los Angeles, a city of "Chicanos and Mexicanos" that Palacios has called "complex and brilliant inspiration" for her art, provides a place where she can teach and perform for diverse audiences.[5] Like Queer Chicano Soul, the majority of her shows are grounded in her identity as a Chicana woman, as they switch between English and Spanish and have cultural references throughout.

Palacios also draws inspiration from Latinx writers Jorge Huerta, Irene Fornes, Migdalia Cruz, Marga Gomez, and several others.[2] Attending the Irene Fornes playwriting workshop at the University of Notre Dame in 2016, at which she worked collaboratively with other artists and with Migdalia Cruz as the master playwright, was a profound experience for her.[2]

Activism

From 1992-2000, Palacios was the director of VIVA Records, Lesbian and Gay Latino Artists of Los Angeles. As director, she organized cultural events throughout Los Angeles county which combined art and activism. The goal of these events was to inspire and promote queer, Latino artists in her community, and the majority of her works were developed to empower them, which is something she still works toward today.[7]

Palacios has won several awards for her contributions to the queer and Latinx communities. She is a co-founding member of the Chicano comedy troupe Culture Clash, whose satirical sketches, plays, and screenplays all feature race-based, political, and social commentary.[8]

In 2016, Palacios performed her short play Say Their Names in the international theatre effort "After Orlando" in response to the Orlando shooting at Pulse Nightclub. That same year, she did a presentation about her career titled "Queer Chicana Lesbian Activism Through Theatre & Comedy" at the University of New Mexico. In 2014, she was a panelist at a World AIDs day panel called “Queer Latinidad: Histories of AIDS Consciousness from Los Angeles” at Pitzer College. Palacios also does much of her activist work in universities. For example, she performed at Gay and Lesbian awareness month at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, and MIT in 1994.

Palacios helped develop (and has her own blog) on epochalips.com,[9] which is an online platform where lesbians and allies can discuss similar experiences and find community in these shared moments.

Written Works

In over three decades, Palacios has written numerous plays, standup sets, poems, and articles. She began her solo work in 1982, and has dozens of performances.

One Woman Shows (Select)

Plays (Select)

Teaching and lecturing career

Palacios has been a lecturer at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. She has taught several classes in the Chicano/a department at other universities as well, such as UC Riverside, Loyola Marymount University, The Claremont Colleges and The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.[10] Her classes and guest lectures focus on the intersections of race, queerness, performance, and comedy.

Honors & Awards (Select)

Resources

  1. 1 2 3 Palacios, Monica. "Monica Palacios Biography". Monica Palacios Official Website. Retrieved 29 March 2017.
  2. 1 2 3 trevorboffone (2016-10-12). "Monica Palacios". 50 Playwrights Project. Retrieved 2017-04-10.
  3. ↑ Simerka, Barbara (1997-03-01). "The Construction of the Liminal Subject: Monica Palacios's Latin Lezbo Comic as Dramatic Autobiography". MELUS. 22 (1): 89–104. ISSN 0163-755X. doi:10.2307/468081.
  4. 1 2 3 Huerta, Jorge (2013). "Conversational Review of Queer Chicana Soul: Thirty Years of Fierce Performance, My Quinceañera Times 2". Gestos. 28.56: 158–164.
  5. 1 2 "LatinoLA | A&E :: Monica Palacios Celebrates 30 Years Of Queer Performance". LatinoLA. Retrieved 2017-04-15.
  6. ↑ Palacios, M. (Writer). (2007). The OH! Show: Old and Horny.
  7. ↑ "Latina of Influence | Monica Palacios". Hispanic Lifestyle. 2013-03-28. Retrieved 2017-04-07.
  8. ↑ "30 Years of Culture Clash". ArtsEmerson Blog. Retrieved 2017-04-23.
  9. ↑ Parallelus. "Epochalips | Smart Lesbian Commentary". Epochalips | Smart Lesbian Commentary. Retrieved 2017-04-07.
  10. ↑ "Monica's Bio". www.monicapalacios.com. Retrieved 2017-04-06.
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