When she moved with her family from Mexico City to Boston as a 10-year-old, Karen Zacarías often felt lonely. Her peers taunted her because of her accent, her braids, and her embroidered Mexican shirt. Struggling with how to react, she went home and wrote down how she thought she should respond — creating imaginary dialogues and inventing backstories for the kids who were mocking her.
Today, Zacarías is — year after year — one of the most widely produced playwrights in the United States.
“Theater is not about offering solutions, but about setting a stage, it’s about listening and it’s about really, at its core, about not feeling alone,” said Zacarías, whose mother is Danish and father is Mexican. “When theater works, it’s about community, and when it really works, it’s about communion.”
With plays produced by dozens of leading theaters across the country, Zacarías has won many awards for her work, including the National Latino Playwriting Award, the Francesca Primus Award, the New Voices Award, and the Steinberg citation for Best New Play, among others.
An inaugural resident playwright at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., Zacarías has taught playwriting at Georgetown University. She founded Young Playwrights’ Theater (YPT), an award-winning company that produces plays written by young people, inspiring them “to realize the power of their own voices.” YPT also conducts arts education and professional development programs, and developed AROW (Abolishing Racism and Oppression in the Workplace), an initiative that helps other organizations build “antiracist and anti-oppressive structures and practices.” Zacarías also cofounded Latinx Theatre Commons, which promotes Latino equity in the theater.
“I like not being put in a box,” she said. “I think all of my plays are about breaking some kind of expectation or stereotype.”
http://www.karenzacarias.com/
