The emergence of these initiatives reflects a broader shift in how the field understands artistic development and access. As playwright and co-founder Darrel Alejandro Holnes explains about the Candela Fellowship, “We are not a development lab producing finished musicals. We are an educational space designed to shift who has access to the craft, history, and authorship of musical theatre.” For Holnes, the question is not whether Latine and Caribbean artists can fit within existing theatrical structures, but rather, “How does the form transform when artists claim authorship on their own terms?” Such interventions signal a movement beyond representation alone toward the creation of new artistic and pedagogical infrastructures.
At the same time, the institutional infrastructures that support musical theatre in the United States have historically privileged white, Euro-American narratives, rendering Latine and Caribbean musical production intermittently visible and structurally precarious. Artists have long navigated cycles of development without production, recognition without sustained investment, and representation constrained by market logics that favor cultural legibility over complexity. AfroLatine and Caribbean Black traditions, Indigenous lineages, queer and trans storytelling, multilingual performance, and musical vocabularies shaped by diaspora are redefining “Musical Theatre.” Artists are experimenting with hybridity and form, disrupting Eurocentric musical theatre conventions, and creating stories that resist simplification. Rather than conforming to dominant expectations of what a Latine or Caribbean musical should sound or look like, creators are redefining the field on their own terms.
Yet this momentum exists alongside persistent challenges. Funding inequities, limited production opportunities, tokenization, colorism, and the absence of sustained critical discourse continue to shape the landscape. Many artists remain caught in cycles of development without production, visibility without sustainability. The infrastructure needed to support this work, from archives and scholarship to long-term commissioning and touring models, remains fragile or unevenly distributed.
This opening essay, and the series that follows, maps the contemporary landscape of Latine and Caribbean musical theatre at a moment of significant aesthetic and infrastructural transformation. It examines the innovations reshaping the field, the communities and institutions sustaining its growth, and the persistent structural inequities that continue to shape its development. Rather than treating this moment as a passing trend, the series situates contemporary work within a longer history of artistic resistance, cultural production, and transnational exchange.
I was inspired to create this series after spending the last five years tracking down Latine and Caribbean musicals created after the wake of the success of In the Heights. Later in this article, I will share a resource list of over four hundred musicals that have been written by Latine and Caribbean creatives, and I urge readers to not just share the list but also contribute to it by adding more musicals.
Latine and Caribbean musical theatre is not an emerging phenomenon but a historically rooted field that is increasingly defining itself on its own terms.
This series argues that Latine and Caribbean musical theatre is not an emerging phenomenon but a historically rooted field that is increasingly defining itself on its own terms. Long central to the evolution of American musical theatre through Afrodiasporic and Indigenous musical traditions, multilingual dramaturgies, and community-centered performance practices, this body of work has often remained institutionally marginalized and unevenly documented. The recent proliferation of festivals, fellowships, archives, and collaborative networks signals a critical shift from isolated artistic successes toward collective ecosystem-building. At the same time, funding disparities, inadequate archival practices, uneven critical engagement, colorism, anti-Blackness, and institutional gatekeeping continue to constrain the field’s development. Understanding the current landscape therefore requires holding both realities in view: the vibrancy of artistic innovation and the persistence of structural barriers.
The contemporary field is also marked by an increasing embrace of intersectionality. Indigenous, AfroLatine and Caribbean Black performance traditions, queer and trans narratives, and multilingual theatrical practices have become central sites of artistic experimentation and cultural expression. As a result, Latine and Caribbean musical theatre is expanding not only in visibility but also in formal, political, and aesthetic complexity, challenging reductive definitions of what constitutes a “Latine musical” and underscoring the heterogeneity of the communities from which this work emerges.
The series installments that follow explore the voices, lineages, and infrastructures shaping this future. They highlight the artists, scholars, and cultural leaders whose work is redefining the field; examine the musical traditions and community practices that sustain it; and consider the institutional and grassroots models creating pathways for future generations. Collectively, these contributions document a field that is expansive, dynamic, and deeply rooted in the histories, cultures, and futures of Latine and Caribbean communities.
Ultimately, this series contends that the future of American musical theatre depends upon recognizing Latine and Caribbean musical theatre not as peripheral to the form but as constitutive of it. The task before scholars, practitioners, and institutions is not simply to increase visibility, but to build the critical, financial, and archival infrastructures necessary for this work to flourish across generations and geographies. To map the field, then, is not merely to document what exists; it is to affirm what has long been present and to advocate for the conditions under which it can fully thrive.
