This panel explores the community need that led to the creation of the Actor Training Laboratorio in Community, a Latinx Theatre Commons initiative focused on rethinking actor training for Latinx artists. Co-champions Cynthia Santos DeCure and Micha Espinosa, joined by scholars and artists Gina Sandi-Diaz, Joann Yarrow, and Anna Novak. We will examine the gaps in traditional actor training that many Latinx artists continue to experience and share findings from the 2025 collaborative initiative. The event, brought Latinx artists from across the United States to Madison, WI for a weekend of intensive training weaves a multiplicity of intersecting communities together geographically. Panelists will share their research on challenges such as linguistic bias, lack of cultural representation, limited access to mentorship, and training models that often overlook community-based ways of learning. Drawing from their teaching, research, and lived experience, the speakers will describe how the Laboratorio was founded through a practice of care which directly responds to these needs. The conversation will focus on actor training as a collective practice—one rooted in relationship, cultural knowledge, and care—rather than a one-size-fits-all system. This panel offers insight into how the initiative is shaped by listening to the community and adapting to what artists need now. This panel invites Acting focus, Latinx, Indigenous, and the Americas focus, and VASTA focus groups to join the conversation, share perspectives, and help shape the future of actor training in community and beyond academic spaces.
