We recently connected with Anita Gonzalez and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Anita, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about a project that you’ve worked on that’s meant a lot to you.

One of the most meaningful projects I have worked on was taking students from Detroit Michigan to Liverpool in the United Kingdom to study Black communities of the city and create new performance work based upon what they learned about Black presence in the UK. The team included professional artists, community workers, students and Liverpool arts leaders. In teams, the ensemble volunteered with organizations like the Somali Women’s Project, the Green House Community Center, the Africa Oye Festival and the Brouhaha carnival organization. Then they created a new musical performance work about what they learned and what it felt like to be Black working class youth from Detroit collaborating with Black Liverpudlians who were proud of their working class heritage.

Liverpool is, or course, the home of the Beatles, but the Beatles learned about Black music because their parents working on passenger liners that sailed between NYC and Liverpool. As they brought musical recordings home from their stays in New York, they shared them at parties and night clubs. These sounds infused both Black and white communities in the port town. Liverpool is also the home of the Slavery Museum and benefitted substantially from the slave trade.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a storyteller and I express my storytelling in several formats. I teach to students, I write musical and opera librettos and I write books about Black experiences in Latin America and the United States a. I came to this journey through early performances (I was 9 years old when I performed in my first musical) and through my work as a founding member of the Urban Bush Women. Through dance, I came to understand that most cultures tell their stories using multiple elements – text, sound, movement and symbolic visuals. For me, opera is the largest representation of this multi-disciplinary storytelling, but we also see it in spoken word, festivals performances and music concerts. I was born in New Jersey from parents that came from the Caribbean (Bahamas and Cuba) and the American South (South Carolina). I am proud of many things – my books Afro-Mexico, Black Performance Theory and Shipping Out; my musicals Ybor City and Zora on My Mind, and my operas Faces in the Flames and Finding the Light.
You can also check out my teaching interests through my open access online courses – Storytelling for Social Change and Black Performance as Social Protest. My brand is Anita Gonzalez (www.anitagonzalez.com) and the business is AnitaG and Partners.

What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?

The mission that drives my work is a profound belief that the arts, especially the performing arts, are a way of bringing cultures and communities together for a common purpose. If you ask someone why they come to theater or performing arts, they always mention the community and the opportunity the arts create for people to come together and create around a common story (or idea) that all have agreed to work on. This is my passion.
Stories capture histories of the under-represented and they manifest in all types of media.
I am also driven by the belief that a story can and should be told in multiple ways – dance , film, stage, etc.- to reach teh broadest audience.

For you, what’s the most rewarding aspect of being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of being an artist is the ability to continuously create new worlds and experience new perspectives about the world and about the people I work with.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.anitagonzalez.com
• Instagram: anitagonzalez7555

Image Credits

Headshot and Living Lakes photos (1 and 5) by John R. Diehl.
Faces in the Flames – London (Photo 2) by Marc Gascoigne.
Zora on My Mind photos (3 and 7) by Teresa Castracane