Tanya Saracho
Tanya Selene Saracho is a playwright and television writer.
She was born in Los Mochis, Sinaloa, Mexico and is a current Chicago-based playwright and actress. After her parents divorce, her childhood was split between Reynosa, Mexico, where her father lived and McAllen, Texas, a region between Mexico and Texas by the border where she and her mother chose to reside. She went back and forth between the countries often, but went to middle and high school in McAllen, until Saracho enrolled in Boston University, where she studied theater and earned her BFA.
Her career started when she moved to Chicago in 1998 with her college roommate. She first tried working mostly as an actress, but found her opportunities as a Latina were limited. In 2000, after having met Coya Paz at an audition, the two founded Teatro Luna, a self-proclaimed all Latina theater group. After working as a co-artistic director for 10 years, having taken part in the creation of numerous works, including Machos, The Maria Chronicles and S-E-X-Oh!, Saracho parted with Teatro Luna in January 2010.
The transition into more independent work was easy for Saracho, having already done some, such as her adaptation of The House on Mango Street at the Steppenwolf Theater and her pieces Kita y Fernanda at the 16th Street Theater and Our Lady of the Underpass at Teatro Vista, which both received nominations for the Joseph Jefferson Award Citation for New Work of a Play, all in 2009. She even had the chance to do some outside acting during her time at Teatro Luna, in Electricidad by Luis Alfaro at the Goodman Theater in 2004. One of the first things done after leaving Teatro Luna was El Nogalar for the Goodman Theater, co-produced with Teatro Vista, as a reconstruction of Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard set in Mexico. Despite moving from storefront theaters to larger scaled stages such as the Goodman and Steppenwolf, Saracho still kept true to her storefront start, referring to herself in an interview in 2010 as "Storefront Saracho".
...
Wikipedia