Theater

When Daniela Cervantes first heard about the play, Who Shot la Miguelito?, presented by the Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies, she knew she had to be a part of it.

“As a person of color, I wanted to be involved in a production that uplifts the voices that belong to people who look like me, who are stereotyped the way that I’m stereotyped,” says Cervantes, a third-year student majoring in ethnic studies, with a minor in theater and performance studies. “I wanted to bring those voices to a platform where they could be heard.”

Who Shot la...

Set in Nueva, New York in the late 23rd century, Dustin Chinn’s Radio Play, featuring CAL students under the direction of Mina Morita, imagines a world where Caucasians, nearing extinction, survive under federal protection. They live on preservation farms and perform their “caucasity” for a curious public.

In this near white-less future world, Chinn wittily shows two arrogant Caucasians who disrupt the prevailing ethnic diversity. Even in a world where Caucasians are critically endangered, their white voices carry weight.

UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies (TDPS) presents Beckett / Fornés / Pinter: Student-Directed One-Act Plays. The showcase of unconventional, modernist plays will include Footfalls by Irish playwright Samuel Beckett, Silence by British playwright Harold Pinter, and Springtime by Cuban American playwright María Irene Fornés. The show opens Thursday, March 14 and continues through Sunday, March 17 in Durham Studio Theater at UC Berkeley.

Mina Morita has been the artistic director of San Francisco’s Crowded Fire Theater for five years. Earlier this year, she began working with UC Berkeley’s Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies (TDPS) to bring Dustin Chinn’s play “Snowflakes, or Rare White People” to the stage.

As was the case for many working in and around Berkeley, everything changed March 9, when the chancellor’s office announced the suspension of in-person classes at UC Berkeley due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, Morita said, she had a sore throat and was directing rehearsals from home,...