Speaking in Draft is an interview series in which Intermission staff writer Nathaniel Hanula-James speaks with some of the artistic voices shaping Canadian theatre today. In a mixture of lighthearted banter and deep dives into artistic practice, this column invites artists to share nascent manifestoes, ask difficult questions, and throw down the gauntlet at the feet of a glorious, frustrating art form.
At the 2025 Dora Awards, the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts (TAPA) honoured Beatriz Pizano with the Silver Ticket Award. It’s an honour reserved for those who have been the architects of our community: artists who have excelled in their own careers while nurturing the work of others.
Pizano more than fits this description. She’s a multidisciplinary artist who by dint of skill and determination carved out a space for herself in the overwhelmingly white and Eurocentric Canadian theatre scene of the ‘90s and early 2000s. As artistic director of the TransAmerican theatre company Aluna, which she and scenographer Trevor Schwellnus co-founded in 2001, she has created room for a new generation of Latinx artists to train, create, and dream.
When I spoke with Pizano on Zoom two weeks ago, I had no idea she’d soon be accepting the Silver Ticket. I wanted to chat with the actor who’d blown me away as the titular character of The House of Bernarda Alba, directed by Soheil Parsa and co-produced by Aluna and Modern Times Stage Company in 2022; and as a civil servant with hidden depths in Aluna’s On the Other Side of the Sea, directed by Parsa in 2024.
Before I started recording, Pizano and I chatted about the amount of live performance happening in the city (the Luminato Festival was in full swing at the time). Pizano then springboarded us into a deeper conversation about the purpose of theatre in this political moment, and her own evolving relationship to the art form. Her generosity, warmth, and passion made it abundantly clear to me why she is so beloved by this community.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
At this point in your career, what do you consider the power of theatre to be?
It takes care of the soul and reminds us of the beauty of life. In some of the productions that I’ve seen lately, I see the audience really in community, breathing with the show. There’s a feeling that we can grieve and celebrate together. I’m attracted to stories that are very personal, or in a documentary style. Our stories are the most powerful thing right now. We are the archives of this moment in time.
What’s your current relationship to your artistic practice?
The pandemic was really hard. At Aluna, as an independent company, we spent a lot of time in administration; the time to create became less and less. Four months ago I said to myself, ‘I’m going to start watching as much theatre as I can.’ That started to get me out of the depression I was in — or not depression, but this feeling of impotence.
I went to FTA [Festival TransAmériques] and watched I don’t know how many things! Now, with Luminato, I’m trying to do as much as I can, and I’m going to do the same with Fringe and SummerWorks. Yes, I’m attracted to a certain kind of production, but I’ve also learned that everything shows you something that you don’t know. So I’m in love with theatre again.
Can you say more about that period of feeling impotent?
I’ve been creating for a long time. I spoke about all the things I knew how to speak about. I started to think, what does the world need right now? What do I have to offer?
I try to go to Colombia, [where I grew up], once a year. I have this little house by the beach in the jungle, where I’m not surrounded by tourists or anything. Really awesome artists live in the area, including a painter friend of mine who’s been there 40 years. When I visited in 2024, I told her, ‘I felt like I [have been] in an artistic desert, trying to cross the Sahara with no camels in sight.’
My friend said, ‘This is actually a term in Spanish: desierto artístico. We all talk about that.’ So it’s a phrase I’ve started to use. You’re not lost in this desert, but you can’t see the horizon yet. You also understand that it’s very important to be there. You stay until the sand begins to reveal where you need to go.
I loved what you said earlier about all of us being archives of this time. Do you think of yourself as an artistic archive in some way?
No, but I am in a time of reflection. Trevor and I are celebrating 25 years of Aluna’s existence next year. We’re thinking of looking at all the pieces we’ve done to see where the throughline is, and where that might lead us in future creation. We’ve also never really documented our process, and we want to pass on that knowledge.
I was never sold on any one school of theatre or performance. I went to many masters and trained with many people, and I chose what resonated with me. Similarly, if we pass on something, it’s so that the next generation can transform it into a new thing.
When we started the company in 2001, we were responding to something very specific: There was no work for me. I thought, how difficult can it be to create a company? I was so determined! Then, 10 years later, all these newcomers were arriving from the Americas and knocking at Aluna’s door. Many didn’t speak English, and so we started creating in more than one language. We discovered new ways of working with surtitles to make them part of the creation process.
Then there was a new generation coming out of schools that knew very little about the artistic traditions of the Americas. I went, how difficult can it be to create an international festival? So we created RUTAS in 2012. Then, in 2015 — how difficult could it be to create a festival of works-in-progress? Because we saw the new generation of artists here growing, but with no places to present. So we started CAMINOS.
From 2010 to the pandemic, our energy was totally devoted to creating a community of Latinx artists. Now they’ve grown up, and a lot of them are being produced by other companies. Creating that space has been a huge responsibility and I never take it lightly.
You mentioned Aluna’s inventive approach to surtitling. How did that begin?
We started the experimentation in 2010. I couldn’t find the right actor in Canada for [my play] La Comunión. I knew of a Cuban actress, Micheline Calvert, who was living in Miami and had lived in Toronto, who was right for the part. She said she would do it, but not in English. Trevor suggested surtitling the whole piece in Spanish and English, and doing it as part of the mise-en-scene. That’s when we started experimenting with dynamic titling, as we call it.
At times, the surtitles can be another character onstage. In Mónica Garrido Huerta’s The Cunning Linguist [which I directed], we used surtitles to punch the comedy in the show. In 2012 we did Red Snow by Diana Tso 曹楓, which is the first time we worked with written Chinese. The visual of that beautiful language, right? Sometimes the surtitles fell down like snow. It was gorgeous. Dynamic surtitling breaks this mental barrier with languages, and it becomes another artistic possibility.
Nowadays it’s impossible not to be using multimedia onstage. We started using live video cameras in our work in 2008. You experiment and you learn. We try not to be afraid to fail. I really don’t believe that failure exists in theatre. I celebrate absolutely everybody. You put up a show? Hooray! As far as I’m concerned, you already have a Dora.
Oh my god, I think old age is doing things for me. I’m becoming so zen! Don’t think this happens every day, Nathaniel!
No, I couldn’t agree more! Sometimes it’s enough to know that your show has touched one single person in some way.
We’ve had houses of two people in my career. My rule is, you go on. It’s not their fault nobody else came. And sometimes those performances are a spiritual journey.
You’re a role model to so many artists in this community. Who are your role models?
I was on a panel the other day with artists from all performing disciplines, and someone asked, ‘How do you define yourself?’ I said, ‘I’m here, and I’m older today than I was yesterday.’ That’s my definition of old age — a rebel until the end! My greatest mentors are women in their 80s.
One particular artist, from Colombia, has been very influential: Patricia Ariza. She introduced us to a Colombian style of collective creation, which is a very disciplined way of creating. Patricia travels around the world, she’s a fierce activist for peace, and she runs two festivals on top of that. She was involved with one of the first leftist parties that became official in Colombia. At one point, she had to have three bodyguards with her all the time. One day she said, ‘Why don’t we do Waiting for Godot? Because we’re all waiting for me to be killed.’ When [current president] Gustavo Petro’s government came to power in 2022, she served as the minister of culture until February 2023.
I remember the first time Trevor and I took artists from Aluna to work with Patricia. She had just arrived in Colombia from Japan that day, but she still said, ‘We start rehearsals at seven in the morning here.’ I said to Trevor, ‘How can this woman do it?’ And Trevor said, ‘Because she only does what she believes in.’ I look at women artists like Patricia and I get inspired, because I remember there’s no timeline.
When I’ve seen you onstage, in Bernarda Alba and On the Other Side of the Sea, I’ve admired how physically engaged you are as an actor. How do you think about the role of the body in your work?
In the last five years, I’ve been struggling [with my health]. Right now, I’m learning to walk again. That was a shock to my system because I’m a very physical actor. In Bernarda Alba, I just sat all the time, so it was great! I can laugh about it, but it’s been a very challenging process that also taught me a lot.
Also, you don’t have to move. I was always very attracted to stillness. You take a movement and you bring [the dial down on it], but that movement is still happening inside the body. I asked myself, ‘What happens when Bernarda’s sitting and she can’t move? What builds up inside of her?’
I’ve been very lucky to work with artists with disabilities in the past five years. A learning for me, because of my own experiences, has been finding the jewel in what you or others perceive as your challenge. Maybe someone can’t move in the same way as somebody else, but they’ve already figured out in their life how to move in a beautiful way, right?
I kept the chair from Bernarda Alba. We had rented it from somebody. I said, ‘I need that chair.’ They said, ‘We can’t sell it, but we’ll give it to you with the condition that if we need to use it, we can borrow it.’ So I have my chair. I said, ‘Oh, my cat will love this.’
WRITTEN BY
Nathaniel Hanula-James
Nathaniel Hanula-James is a multidisciplinary theatre artist who has worked across Canada as a dramaturg, playwright, performer, and administrator.
LEARN MORE
