Today we’d like to introduce you to Gustavo Martinez.
Hi Gustavo, it’s an honor to have you on the platform. Thanks for taking the time to share your story with us – to start maybe you can share some of your backstory with our readers?
My journey as a creative likely began with my love of reading. Stories were a way to dive into new worlds, as my own world growing up was a little lonely. My parents were working, my grandmother was very strict – so I jumped into storytelling as a way to connect with other people. Though my lived experience felt solitary I could connect with other lives through the stories they’d told, or invented, between the pages of a book.
My flair for the dramatic and whimsical was certainly informed more than a little by the theatrical flair of my Uncle, Pedro Garcia, who led the local theater project Teatro Nuestra Cultura in the valley of South Texas.
These tendencies served me throughout my life in every profession or project I lucked into – whether by engendering a sense of adventure and exploration or injecting a turn of mischievousness into my connections with others that brightened their days or challenged their understanding of the world. Any task you put your mind, hands, or heart to benefits from a sense of wonder – from manual labor turned into a community rhythm by a song, difficult situations lightened by a sense of humor, or complex problems simplified by creative solutions.
Generating ideas that broach new frontiers of the probable is the birthright of humankind; it is my delight to nurture this seed of certainty in the hearts of future generations, so I find myself returning again and again to artistic work alongside youth.
Today it is my pleasure to create experiences that inspire and connect to young and old alike, encouraging folk to embrace their power and take their place in this grand network of interconnected thoughts and dreams we call life.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The work of openness to connection and vulnerability is by its nature painful in a world where trauma and difficulty are the norm, not the exception.
Authenticity in a commodified and capitalistic society dead-set on strip-mining each and every human being for every fragment of perceived value is tantamount to a death sentence – the fictions that elevate some above others also brutally punish those who attempt to equalize, stabilize, or opt-out of the nightmarish cycles we have decided to normalize.
The greatest obstacles to human progress and freedom are the structures constructed to extract worth from all for the benefit of the few; to attempt to exist outside of these structures is to be devalued, deconstructed, and often divorced from the sources of wealth necessary for merest survival.
When we confront these systems we take our lives into our hands. Poverty and state violence, social censure, these are the weapons systemized to harm and oppose any who would see the simplest changes to predatory and maladaptive patterns in society. Nonetheless, it is my strong belief that human nature is not weighted only towards rapacious hunger and cruelty, but towards cooperation, kindness, and mercy. I believe it is our duty to lift our heads in the face of these illusions and see beyond them to the nature of humanity with a heart full of forgiveness and a firm hand pressing the wheel back towards a state of balance and love.
As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
I am a storyteller. When I act, teach, sing, write, puppeteer, or speak – ultimately I am creating a new possibility from all the fragments that I have witnessed, blessed by the unique bit of chaos and creation that each of us has at their core – the bit of Me that is Me.
The story may be that of a young girl swept away by powers greater than she, determined to right the injustices done to her – as when I played the clever, frightening, majestic, and above all *humble* Chupacabron in the play Yamel Cucuy by Glass Half Full Theater, written by Gricelda Silva, Indigo Rael, and Caroline Reck.
The story may be a walk through Latinx revolutionary history, as both hero and despot – as when I played Simon Bolivar, Uncle Sam, and Raphael Trujillo in Cabarex 2: RevoLuziones, whose script and songs were collaboratively devised by the cast during production.
It may be a beloved script I wrote for the Jewelbox Dancer’s Faux Tales dance extravaganza, where poetic narrative anchored surreal and evocative dance pieces set in a fairy-tale journey through the woods to rescue our magical woodland fox, who had gotten in over its head.
I lean on my voice acting training a lot in these passion projects, though I also use it in my personal endeavors – my longest running “hobby/side hustle” is storytelling games, which I’ve run for almost a quarter century now. The ability to really sell an evil voice will take you far when you’ve got a roomful of 3rd graders (or full grown adults) watching you deliver your villain’s final chilling monologue.
I come back to delivering chilling monologues for 3rd graders because, naturally, my work with kids makes me the most proud. Though I can confidently say my best work has been my storytelling games, my poetic verses, my performances for Yamel Cucuy or for Cabarex – the most change I think I’ve made has been with providing children the example that they can be free.
Demonstrating to children through example that they can create joy, explore their identities, determine their destinies, speak truth to power, share kindness and love with their community. I learned this with Creative Action, a wonderful nonprofit that devotes itself to bettering the lives of the children in its care through artistic education.
I’ve refined it in my own pursuits, taking those lessons with me to Austin Bat Cave where I work now as the Mobile Literacy Specialist. Bringing creativity to youth, knowing they will surpass me on the road to freedom is my greatest accomplishment, and I humbly stumble down that road to bring what I can every day.
Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
I am tremendously lucky, in a manner of speaking. I live in the imperial core – by accident of chance I am blessed with the peace and material security that come built on the back of colonialism and exploitation.
In a sense it is a terrible burden, too; the obligation to turn the wheel of this great and exploitative machine away from threshing those unlucky enough to be on the business end of the extraction; not merely because anyone with a brain can see that those mechanisms are indiscriminate, and will soon come home to roost, but because it is the responsibility of the just to temper the oppression and exploitation of our fellow human beings.
Luck has taken and given to me as randomly as it has to anyone else; the privilege of my birth has equipped me with the material resources to surmount many of the obstacles in my way.
So more to the point I am privileged. I grew up with conditions that some would consider horrendous, and some would dream for themselves. It is a matter of where you are standing. To call it luck feels diminishing. Many people in the world would trade places with me and my modest comforts in an instant.
Less cynically, I think luck is a mindset. If you can have gratitude for the blessings that are in your life, you will always feel lucky. I am incredibly grateful to have met and loved the people in my life who support and care for me, I am incredibly grateful to have made the choices I have made that have taught me and humbled me, I am incredibly grateful to have turned towards difficulty and challenge and time and again made the effort to choose love.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://austinbatcave.org
- Instagram: Sionnachuighiim
