Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Daniela Gonzalez y Perez. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Daniela, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to hear about when you first realized that you wanted to pursue a creative path professionally.
It all started when I was about 3. I would set up a little cardboard box and grab a handful of Halloween character candlesticks (witches, ghosts, vampires) and have them act out a story with different voices and personalities for my dad’s birthday. Ever since then I began to perform in front of family which led to performing in school productions. Performing in front of others made me feel seen and accepted in a way that I hadn’t yet felt about myself. It gave me an outlet to express my emotions that I felt were, at the time, restricted or looked down upon. My curiosity and passion grew when my mother, who loves the arts, started taking me to Kids Night On Broadway at the age of 7, coupled with a dinner, and because she was and is always working to not only support her family, but to create the world she wants to see, it’s a special time I cherish to this day.
When I first believed it was all possible was when I was in middle school and a teacher announced that a kid in my class was going to be on T.V. that night. I turned on the T.V. and there he was at 7pm. He came into school the next day and sat near me, and I remember looking at him and being like-he’s right here. Next to me. And he was just in that tiny box of mine at home. The same tiny box where all the other actors I’ve watched were, a place that I thought was impossible for myself and anyone else I knew to be. And I knew right then and there that if he could do it-somehow so can I.
I have to re-find and rediscover the “knowing” every day I choose to continue to create and continue the pursuit of a career in the arts. When I got accepted into Edward R. Murrow’s screened theater program, the dream continued. When I got into Brooklyn College during a late acceptance, then auditioned for their acting program 6 months later and got accepted, the dream continued. The universe kept opening doors. Every challenge I faced, propelled me farther into challenging my own emotional life, my own preconceived notions about things, the connectional depth and understanding that we have to offer ourselves and others, to be a person who makes a decision, and to be somebody that takes action.
As for writing, I’ve always written. I was the kid sitting alone in the cafeteria writing stories based off of The Magic Tree House books and creating imaginary add-on images to the world as I walked around to make it more exciting.. Every day I get inspired or a thought pops into my head and I quickly reach for my notes app and jot down quotes and ideas-the creating’s never stopped. Meeting the Latinx Playwrights Circle in 2020 and the continuous uplift, support, and community that I was welcomed into made it possible to continue my writing in the form of plays and my writing’s taken off from there as I was selected as parts of different writing cohorts that gave me public readings of my work to share with the different theatre communities around me.
Directing followed the writing, and being a very visual person, I’m now writing projects for the screen with the intent to direct after realizing the way to really get your work out there, is to do it yourself. I’m also excited to possibly direct other people’s work on the big screen one day too.
Daniela, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
I’m a queer Puerto Rican actor, writer (poetry, playwright, & screenplay), director, and teaching artist born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. My intro to the theatre industry was right out of college, when MFA Directing students that I had worked with/seen my work had started casting me in small productions outside of college. Within the year, it led me to INTAR Theatre where I auditioned for their Unit 52 program which became an artistic home and creative hub that connected me, for the first time, to Latine theatre creators. I’ve acted and done shows on multiple New York City stages (INTAR Theatre, Rattlestick Theatre, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Gallery Players, etc.) and private and public readings in theatres and spaces around the tri-state area. As for my writing, it explores the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and religion through the mixed genre worlds of fantasy, “magical realism”, sci-fi, and that “Brooklyn shit” to confront and reject societal norms, barriers, and the displacement of peoples. I’m currently writing a play, a sci-fi, thriller, that’s set to have a public reading at the end of the year, a short inspired by my abuelo that I’m a writer/director on and plan on filming in Puerto Rico this year, collaborating as a writer/producer on a new horror short, and getting my mixed genre T.V. samples/pitches together.
Going to Brooklyn College’s BFA Acting Program is where I learned how deep and intentional the craft of acting is. I was in a Chekhov class and was taught Practical Aesthetics for the first time by Anya Saffir. The “As If” method has really helped me confront and access deep parts of myself that I didn’t know were possible. I learned that feeling intensely, choosing a side, and showing emotions weren’t weaknesses, they were strengths. That class forever changed my acting and being.
Is there mission driving your creative journey?
I want to create big worlds where people of color and creatives are leading and in the forefront. Where “best actor” will happen because I’ve created and contributed to an incredible world and script for it to. I’m creating the things I never saw growing up with the people I’ve always wanted to see. I want people to see themselves in my characters, and for little kids to see the representation that I didn’t really have growing up and which is still not shown enough, especially for the Latine communities.
I want to explore revolution in its different forms, the sensual, sexual, queer, and political to inspire transformation and healing. My 90-year-old abuelo lives in the mountains of Puerto Rico and has been an independentist all his life. My mom is a sociologist and was the Chairperson of The Puerto Rican and Latino Studies Department at Brooklyn College for 15 years, and the celebration of our culture and where we came from has been a part of me since I was young but didn’t come to understand until I got older. I want to encapsulate my abuelo’s revolutionary spirit in my work as well as my mother’s tenacity to continue to share history that other’s want to be forgotten and erased.
I write to further connect us all, for people to be seen and heard, and to challenge thoughts and ideas to form a more loving world. From a young age, my mother taught me that I can change the world and that I was going to, and the arts (theater, film, and T.V.) can be used as a great offering to make that change.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding aspects of being an artist and creative are bringing different communities and people from different walks of life together and memorializing people so their spirit can visit this earthly plane again. It’s allowing for them to see their families onstage or onscreen, so they know that anything is possible and to see what we’ve created as a team from the conscious collective. While writing, it’s leaving a blueprint for actors to follow, while acting it’s being open and receptive-a constant give and take with my partners to achieve a collective truth, and while directing it’s to be a guide and create an environment in which actors can create freely while working together to craft and bring out all the nuances of the human experience to tell the desired story. It fuels me when people can find understanding, empowerment, love, healing, and joy in my work.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @Danielagonzalezyperez
- Twitter: @Danielagyp
- Other: New Play Exchange: https://newplayexchange.org/users/65395/daniela-gonzalez-y-perez
Image Credits
Justin Clynes