Tearto Mascara Magica is the brainchild of two of San Diego’s best-known Latino directors –William Alejandro Virchis and Dr. Jorge Huerta. Both men are college drama professors, Dr. Huerta at UCSD and Virchis at Southwestern College in Chula Vista. A board of directors was formed in mid—1989 consisting of Jose de la Garza, Manuel Camacho, Catalina Maynard, Al Irvine, Max Branscomb and Suzanne Ditmars. The goal of TMM was nothing than the redefinition of San Diego Theater to include cultures and voices not traditionally represented in mainstream theater. The Teatro got off to a strong start with its first production, the poetic “I Am Celso”, in the spring of 1990. The show drew appreciative audience and was nominated for a San Diego Drama Critics Award. Other early productions included “An Evening With Carlos Bracho” and “Chronicle of Kidnapping”. TMM broke new ground whit it traveling show “The Balled of Torqueto”, written as an educational vehicle to teach migrant workers about American banks and protecting the money they’ve earned. The troupe would load into a pair of old vans and journey off-road to the dusty migrant camps of Sand Diego’s North’s Country to reach its itinerant audiences.

In 1991, the company presented the critically acclaimed “Hands Full of Dust,” a provocative trans-border tribute to Mexican Nobel Prize laureate Octavio Paz. The year’s crowning event, however, arrived in the form of San Diego’s first professionally produced pastorela—a rollicking musical Christmas story imported from Mexico. Presented jointly with the Old Globe Theatre, “La Pastorela: A Shepard’s Story” drew enthusiastic crowds and put multi-cultural theatre at the Christmas banquet for the first time. The company expanded again in 1992 from its Latino roots to become a “common ground theatre” that welcomes artists from all races and cultures. Teatro Mascara Magica now has active components and artistic representation form the African-American, Asian American, Anglo-American and Native-American communities. In the same year, Teatro Mascara Magica presented the San Diego premier of award-winning “Simply Maria” and the comedy “How Am I Supposed To Know I’m Still Alive,” performed by guest artists from El Teatro Campesino. Both pieces were written by Latina playwrights. TMM also produced a pair of well-received Chinese shows in 1992. The comedies “Monkey King and the Spider Women” and “The Chinese Story Teller Theatre” both earned strong reviews and helped pave the way for the evolution of a new theatrical voice in San Diego. TMM’s first African-American production, “Combination Skin,” debuted in 1993 and joined “Monkey King and the Mountains of Fire” in the American Arts Festival held in San Diego that year. Continually striving to serve the needs of a rich and diverse American region, TMM has extended its boundaries to encompass the works of influential artists such as South Africa’s Athol Fugard while managing to examine classics from a new perspective as in “Oedipus at Colonnus” to be produced later this year. Click here to go back to the Homepage.