{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/m61bk18m25/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Interview with Octavio Solis"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/173/original/Logo_CL_ColorReversed.png?1773939905","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Preferred Citation"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eInterview with Octavio Solis. TU Treasures Oral History Collection. UAOH003-020. Coates Library Special Collections and Archives. Trinity University, San Antonio (Tex.).\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["archives@trinity.edu"]}},{"label":{"en":["Publisher"]},"value":{"en":["Special Collections and Archives, Trinity University"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThe materials in this collection may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S.Code). The materials are available for personal, educational, and scholarly use. It is the responsibility of the researcher to locate and obtain permission from the copyright owner or his or her heirs for any other use, such as reproduction and publication.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["TU Treasures Oral History Collection, HIST3467"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2024-02-23"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}},{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e Octavio Solis grew up in El Paso, Texas, where life on the border shaped his storytelling. He studied at Trinity University, graduating in 1980, and later continued his graduate studies at the Trinity University’s program in Dallas Theater Center, Texas. Over the years, he built a career as a playwright, bringing Mexican-American experiences to the stage. His works explore identity, family, and life along the border, earning him recognition as a leading Latino and American playwright.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["WAV/MP3"]}},{"label":{"en":["Identifier"]},"value":{"en":["UAOH003-020"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["El Paso, Texas; Trinity University (San Antonio, Tex.) Faculty Trinity Repertory Company Chicano Writers and Artists Association Playwrights; Playwriting; Chicano writers; Chicano theater; teatros"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Betty Griffin; Paul Baker; Mary Anne Colias; Bob Bovard; Eugene McKinney; James Simmons, María Irene Fornés; Juán Cantú; Cherrie Moraga;, Edit Villareal; José Cruz González; Migdalia Cruz; Cora Cardona; El Teatro Campesino; Teatro de la Candelaria; Teatro de la Guadalupe; Dallas Theater Center; Hispanic Playwrights Project; Trinity Repertory Company; South Coast Repertory; A Texas Trilogy; Shadow of a Man; My Visits with MGM; My Visits with My Grandmother Martha; Man of the Flesh; American Mariachi; Journey of the Fifth Horse; Quixote Nuevo"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;Octavio Solis grew up in El Paso, Texas, where life on the border shaped his storytelling. He studied at Trinity University, graduating in 1980, and later continued his graduate studies at the Trinity University\u0026rsquo;s program in Dallas Theater Center, Texas. Over the years, he built a career as a playwright, bringing Mexican-American experiences to the stage. His works explore identity, family, and life along the border, earning him recognition as a leading Latino and American playwright.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThe materials in this collection may be protected by copyright law (Title 17, U.S.Code). The materials are available for personal, educational, and scholarly use. It is the responsibility of the researcher to locate and obtain permission from the copyright owner or his or her heirs for any other use, such as reproduction and publication.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Trinity University Special Collections and Archives"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Trinity University Special Collections and Archives"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/173/original/Logo_CL_ColorReversed.png?1773939905","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collections/default_thumbs/000/002/313/small/Confluence_graphic_%282%29.jpg?1704393526","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - Solis-Octavio-20240223-PII_EDIT_MIX.mp3"]},"duration":8811.84533,"width":640,"height":40,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collections/default_thumbs/000/002/313/small/Confluence_graphic_%282%29.jpg?1704393526","type":"Image","format":"image/png"}],"items":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-trinityuniversity.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/298/051/original/Solis-Octavio-20240223-PII_EDIT_MIX.mp3?1764700426","type":"Audio","format":"audio/mpeg","duration":8811.84533,"width":640,"height":40},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Interview with Octavio Solis [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"DENNEY:","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=0.0,0.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Today is Friday, February 23rd, 2024. I am Lee Denney, a student at Trinity University. Today I am interviewing Octavio Solis. Solis is an [alumnus] of Trinity University and [was here] as an undergraduate from 1977 to 1980 and later as a graduate student at the Dallas Theater Center. I'm also joined by Esmeralda Pedroza who will be monitoring the recording equipment. The interview today will mainly focus on Latino experiences as well as theater at Trinity. This interview is being recorded for Conmemorando a la Comunidad: Latinx Experiences at Trinity University and archived with the University Archives, part of Trinity University Special Collections and Archives in Coates Library. \n\n[Personal identifiable information stated to begin interview has been redacted from the publicly\n\naccessible recording and transcript]\n\nDENNEY: So, what was it like for you growing up? Walk me through some of your earliest childhood memories and what ultimately led you to Trinity?\n\nSOLIS: Um, my earliest childhood memories are of El Paso, where I was born and raised. My parents came from Mexico, I’m the child of immigrants. My mother was barely sixteen and she was pregnant with me, and she’d married my Dad, but my grandmother, who was already living in El Paso, told them they have to move, or all three of them need to move to El Paso. She wanted her children to be Americans. So, they moved to a small tenement, one room tenement where the three of them lived, until I was born. And, then it was four of us there. The earliest childhood memory I have is as an infant, lying in the crib, and looking through the bars of my cradle, and seeing a TV on, black and white TV on, with what I now know was a Boris Karloff film of Frankenstein. With this large monster, dressed in black who walked haltingly and spoke haltingly, mainly grunted. But I wasn’t afraid of him. He seemed almost like a guardian. And in later years, I use him—I’ve used him as kind of a model because, like him, I was also, as an immigrant, struggling with English. So, the Frankenstein monster became a powerful metaphor for what I went through. And, I have since grown very attached to that whole idea of Frankenstein, even going back to Mary Shelley’s original novel. But that was my earliest  memory growing up. We lived in a tenement there until all my siblings were born. I had one brother that was born after me, Ernesto, who died in infancy.\n\nDENNEY: Oh wow.\n\nSOLIS: From malnutrition and pneumonia, you know and—we were poor. We were just really poor. He wasn’t getting enough milk. My mother went to Father Rohm at a Catholic church that was there in the second ward and begged him for some help or prayers, you know to—for her to get some money, for milk. And the Father actually gave her money. \n\nDENNEY: Oh wow.\n\nSOLIS: And, she would come every week, and he’d give her money so we could get, you know, basic needs. And she kept that as a secret from my father, because my father was very, very proud and that would have been really an affront because he hates charity. But, they had to survive. And so, my mother told me that story when we did a walking tour later in life about that. We grew up in the second ward until we were—my Father was old enough. He had advanced enough through his life as a dishwasher at a restaurant to be a short order cook. And he could get a car and they moved us all somewhere else. So, we bought— we didn’t buy, we rented a small house in—further in the lower valley of El Paso and they moved to another house that is the present home that we live in, that my parents live in now, where I was really raised from the age of about 12 until high school. So those are my memories of growing up there with my brothers in this little tenement area. I remember, they tell me this story, I don’t remember it, but they tell me this story that I was—we lived in the second floor of this tenement—and that I—they heard me calling out cae, cae, like fall, fall and that they saw me hanging by my fingers at the (Denney gasps) at the top of this tenement like this. And that they saved me, they got me, because I could’ve fallen and died. Or broken my legs or something. And another instance they tell me that, and I do remember this. I was so sick. I drank a—my dad was painting the walls of the house and then he took a nap. After one time, I drank the turpentine.\n\nDENNEY: Oh my god.\n\nSOLIS: And so, I turned blue, and he had to carry me all the way—he ran all the way to the hospital. Running through traffic to get me to the hospital, where they pumped my stomach and brought me back. But it was—the second near death experience.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=0.0,300.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I don’t think I’ve had any other near-death experiences in my life at all that come close to anything like that. But I don’t remember the first, I do remember the second. Please tell me some—what was the rest of the question? \n\nDENNEY: What ultimately led you to Trinity?\n\nSOLIS: Oh! How did I get here? Well—\n\nSCHNUR: Highschool, schooling.\n\nSOLIS: Yes, yeah. Yeah, we were we moved into a home when I was twelve in the lower valley, and it was El Paso still and it was—we were just barely half a mile away from the Rio Grande. And we used to—we used to go up to the levee to, you know, ride our bikes up there and—and we'd be like yelled at by the border patrols saying, “Get down, get out of here, you're not supposed to be here!” or they'd ask us for like proof of citizenship, you know? Or they'd ask us like “Have you seen anybody cross this river that came through here?” and we'd say—and if we did see some undocumented people go through there, instead of pointing to where they were, we'd say “Yeah we saw go that way” (laughter) and so we always misled them. But this was part of a cat and mouse game that we were—we lived with constantly, constantly and at one point, and I wrote this in my book Retablos, I remember that I was asleep, and I heard this crying this like loud distant—not loud—but distant keening and I didn't know what it was. I thought it was a teapot or something. And it was late at night and I got up and I walked into down the hall through the kitchen and there were two people there that—with my mom and dad and one of—it was a girl who was crying who was keening that way like that and it was—she was so cold and wet and my mother was covering blankets and heating up in a big olla with water some other blankets to put on her feet because she was almost frostbitten because they crossed the river. And, this couple—and they didn't they had an address that they had to go to but they didn't know where they were going. They knocked on my parents door for some help and we were all really scared of them we didn't know what these strangers were, what was going on, but we kind of put it together and my dad then, once they got them dried and fed, he drove him in his truck to that address that they were going and it was snowing, it was snowing outside. I remember that very clearly. So, that was part of our lives, that's what we grew up with. I went to elementary school and there at fifth grade at Ascarate High School—Ascarate Elementary School—where I learned a lot of about the literature that I loved. I'd already know—I had already learned to speak English by then very well, because I had, I learned through my first teacher, which was television. I learned English from “Bewitched” and from “Car 54,” “Where Are You?”, from “The Rat Patrol,” from all the combat, all these TV shows— “The Untouchables.” I learned English really well from that, and we all did because we all watched the same TV shows. We all did. And then we'd go to school, and we get formal English taught to us but on the schoolyard we all spoke Spanish. All of us. We're all—I'd say 99% of us were Mexican kids, first generation or just barely second generation in some cases, but mostly first generation. Born there and our parents were from Mexico, or, you know, had recently come over. And that's the kind of, you know, we spoke Spanish there and English in the classroom and then through that we kind of started learning a kind of Spanglish. My mother worked at a Gunning \u0026 Costeel drugstore just across the street from the school so after school I'd go and help her shut down. But I also would just hang out by the book racks and magazine racks and I would read everything, everything. I'd read comic books. I would read Esquire magazines. They were—there were books on True Detective you know that told wonderful lurid stories of murder and kidnapping and assault and all that. And then I'd read books, because they had books there. A lot of books and I read everything that was there and then I helped my mother close down the fountain and I got an allowance of a dollar. A dollar a day to help her do that, and I saved my money and then she amped it up to five dollars, so I’d start getting five. And with that money","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=300.0,600.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I bought my first stereo myself, I paid for it myself. A stereo for me to have in my room. But we already had one in the house, and we had my mother's and grandmother's records there—they were a wonderful collection of records that I played all the time. Some of them I didn't care for, the Perry Como and Andy Williams, I didn't care for. But Frank Sinatra was interesting to me, I liked him, and I would play his records all the time. But the most interesting things that she had, my mother was also kind of a teenager when she you know she—when she had us. So, she was in her twenties when you know, we were children, little kids so she had records by the Supremes and the Beatles, and you know the music that she liked that. The—what was it— (pauses) “Crystal Blue Persuasion?” Tommy Chum—Tommy James and the Shondell’s! Stuff like that. But they also had this amazing record collection that had the music of Javier Solís, Boleros by albums, by Agustín Lara that included these amazing Boleros and Armando Manzanero, Trio Los Panchos. I love that kind of more courtly Spanish, Mexican music. I didn't care for the wild Rancheras with a lot of accordions. I didn't—I didn't get it, but the other stuff was more romantic and felt like it you know was part of the nightclub life of Mexico City or Acapulco or something, so I love those and they really deeply influenced me. Also, what influenced me were my mother's collection of Herb Alpert albums. Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. She had like eight of them and I just played them all the time. I thought Herb Alpert was the best looking Mexican I'd ever seen in my life, and it wasn't until later that I realized he's an Albanian Jew. He's not even a Mexican! But he sure portrayed it and supported that kind of music, and we all liked it. Everybody liked it! Who didn't like Herb Alpert? So that was also a tremendous influence on me. And then, and then, when I got my stereo, I started buying my music. So, my first record that I ever spent money on was George Harrison's All Things Must Pass. So, I went in big. I bought a three-record set, three record album of George Harrison and then I started going backwards and buying other Beatle records. Abbey Road, you know “Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.” All those great— [the Beatles] the White Album —and then we started buying records by Creedence Clearwater Revival. My brothers got into it too. We started here—getting into Grand Funk Railroad. And I really liked the grassroots, and you know this is all like when we were—when I was in middle school you know. And I was thirteen, fourteen, you know between the ages of ten and thirteen, fourteen. But at some point, I found Carlos Santana and that was life changing because I went, Oh holy cow! And he played at Woodstock [Music and Art Fair] so that was a big deal for me. And then I discovered that there's this whole field of music that reflected my culture that was also rock and roll. Like, like Malo and— who had a song called “Suavecito” that got Constantere playing El Paso. And that was my music. I drifted from the music of my parents to my old— my rock and roll music. \n\nI eventually had to wear glasses and I didn't, I didn't like wearing glasses. I wanted to play the trumpet and I joined the band to play trumpet because I admired Herb Alpert, of course! But I couldn't see the music because the trumpet was like this and then the music's over here and I couldn't read the music. So, I had to play like—I was playing like this [Solis is turned to the side] so I could read the music. And blowing into this into the guy’s next to me ear. And he was going like, What's going on? And finally, the teacher said, “Why—what's going on why are you playing like that?” “I don't know I just I,” And then she finally said, “You need glasses. You need to get some glasses.” And I'd rather quit playing the trumpet than admit that I needed glasses, so I just quit. (Denney gasps) And even in class what I would do is—I'd be even I try to get seated at the front of the class so I could see what the teacher was writing if I squint it like this, I could see it. But if I was in the back, I couldn't see anything she wrote so I would get up to sharpen my pencil and while I was sharpening my pencil I'd go and I'd memorize like the first two lines and then go sit down and work. Or, after that, the second time I couldn't sharpen my pencil again, but I had like I would ball up some paper and walk up to throw it the wastebasket by the teacher's desk","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=600.0,900.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"so I go like this [Solis gestures] and then look at things and go, Okay, and then go back to my seat. Well, finally you know, I had to admit I needed glasses. So, they got me some glasses and I hated wearing them. I hated them. And I would always put them in my back pocket and break them. They'd snap, or the lens would fall out and break. I just didn't take care of them because I didn't want to wear them. And it was too bad because, I was really bad because my mother worked so hard to get me glasses. They weren't cheap, and getting me a new pair, like three new pairs in one year you know it's just really expensive. My littlest brother, he had to wear glasses and we knew he had to wear glasses as a—before even I did. And it probably influenced my decision not to want to wear them because he had a lazy eye. So, he had to wear glasses as a littlest kid he had to wear glasses with a red patch over one of them and he called—everybody called him pirate or one eye and made fun of him. And I didn't want that, I didn't want that to happen to me. So, I just didn't want to wear glasses but then I saw an album by this guy named Elton John and he was wearing glasses, and I loved his music. And I said, “This is who I want to be!” So, I got glasses a horn-rimmed shaped glasses the way he had them. And I was very proud to wear glasses now. I said, Yes, I want glasses. And I got them, and I loved them, and I never looked back, you know? \n\nI—later on in college and grad school and even into my twenties and thirties, I had contact lenses. Because, as an actor you don't want to be wearing your glasses on stage all the time. And if I did, I wouldn't be able to see actors, my colleagues’ eyes. And if there was a blackout, good luck trying to get off stage. I once fell off the stage because of that in high school, I fell right off the stage in the dark and it was—oh it hurt. But for—at some point I made my peace with it and says, “No I'd rather, I'd rather wear my glasses. I like glasses.” And now I could even have you know Lasik surgery and correct it and, but I still like my glasses. I just—there's something about it. So, but it was because of Elton John, he gave me the sort of peace of mind to and the poise to put up with it and he could have worn contacts too, but I think at some point he has. But— and it's too bad because the glasses were part of his identity and he changed them constantly. And I wanted to change them too but my mother—and that's a day take it easy. So anyway, that was part of my high school career. \n\nAt some point, after my freshman year, I was asked to—I was I was thrown into this Drama 101 class because I showed up for registration and all my classes were already taken up. All the electives—excuse me—were already selected. So, I couldn't find any electives I wanted to take. I wanted to take art. I wanted to take creative writing. I wanted to take anything, but the only thing that was left was drama, and I went, Oh I don't want to be with those drama freaks, oh my god. So but you know there's no choice so I took it and the very first day of class they had us—the teacher Betty Griffin. Griffin. Griffith. Betty Griffith. Griffin. I think it's Griffin, G-r-i-f-i-n-g, G-r-i-f-f, G-r-i-f-f-i-n-g— was teaching our class and we were reading—I believe it was Midsummer Night's Dream, and we all had a copy of the book. And she assigned everyone to read three, four lines, or two lines and just pass—the next person would go in the row and then the next person, next person just read it aloud. And I was at the back, near the very end and I was—because I just didn't want to be there— so I would get in the back-- and I would look at the text and look at them and I go, I don't understand why they're struggling, this to me seems easy. I don't understand why they are fighting the language or why they can't get it. And because I think I know—and not only that, I think I know what they're saying. Where the students were reading, they had no clue what they were reading. It was like a foreign language. But I got it. It was very strange. So, when it came to me, I read the passage and I also had the opportunity to practice because they were all struggling with thee and thou and all that and when it came to me I just said it like “puh lah lah”—came trippingly off the tongue so to speak. As you know, it's it as Hamlet says, “You should say your text.”","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=900.0,1200.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I could feel Miss Griffigng just do this, going like, “Who is that? Who just read? Who is that?” I could feel her eyes on me, and I knew I was marked. At the at the end of class she came up to me and she said, “Hey you know you read really well. You know we're having auditions for our play Diary of Anne Frank. Our school play, we're going to be doing that. Won't you come and audition after school?” And I said, “Really?”  “Yeah, and you know rehearsals are going to be after school until like you know seven o'clock every night and then you go home and, but I think this would be really good. You should be with—you'd like this!”  “I don't know it's not for me, not for me.” She says, “Come on, do it do it!” And I went, “Okay I'll go.” And I didn't go. When school was out I would— just got on the school bus and went home. The next day she said, “You didn't come to auditions.” I went, “Oh yeah, I forgot. I forgot; teacher sorry.” And she said, “Look we're having—you're lucky because we're having callbacks today. So come in today, after school.” I went, “Okay.” I didn't. I got on the bus and went home again. I says, I have no intentions of doing this. The third day she says, “You missed it!” I went, “Oh you know I don't think I'm cut out for this teacher.” And you know we all called our teachers, teacher. And she said, “Well you're lucky for you we're having final callbacks this time. So, come on and do it.” And I went, “I don't know” and she said, “Okay well if you don't show, I'm failing you in this class.” (Denney gasps) And I went, “Okay, okay!” She threw the gauntlet down. I said, “Alright, I'll come.” And kicking and screaming, I went there. I did not want to be there, did not want to be with these drama people. And not only that—they were very religious. They prayed before auditions and all that. Some of them were part of the drama club already and they were very devout, and they prayed to Jesus and it was with the teacher also leading prayer. And I just said, I don't know if this is for me, but then I audition, and I got cast. I got cast in as the role of—in the role of Peter, Peter Van Daan who falls in love with Anne Frank in this. And then we did—right after that we started—because it was just a few more roles she'd been saving that for me. She was just saving that for me, because we had our first read right after that. And I showed and so we're sitting in a circle, and we start reading. And I can't believe it, I can't believe it. I am—most of the other people are like sophomores, juniors, seniors and they're really, really good because they've done this—they're part of the theater club, whatever drama club. And they're very good and I can't believe it while we're reading, I literally feel like someone has peeled back the walls of the gymnasium where we were and sent me right back to Amsterdam, 1942 Amsterdam. And that there's this this long-haired short dark Mexican girl is really turning into Anne Frank before my eyes, a little Jewish girl who's hiding in an attic. And I can't believe it. And I can't believe that the words I'm saying are coming, are coming from my heart out of my mouth that I'm reading and I'm like a natural at it. I can't believe that that's happening. And at the end of it, I'm just stunned that we were so transported to another place and another story, another lives, just by sitting and reading aloud this play. And I—and the teacher said, “Wait till, wait till we stage it. Wait till we get furniture and an audience and wait.” So, I was blown away and she says, “You want to leave now?” And I said, “No I'm staying here. This is where I belong.” I found home, so I stayed. And I did the play, and I did every play, I joined the drama club. I went out at speech team. We did—I was I was the BMOC [“Big Man on Campus”] of the theater department after that. And in a matter of time, I just became such a part of that little club scene. I found that, I found that this is where I belong. And the only issue I had with it was that there was a lot of praying going on and a lot of “praise Jesus” and you know all that and “amen” and all that. And we started rehearsals with prayer, and we ended with prayer. Something— doing something called the magic circle, right hand over left, and you know it was all very charismatic and very evangelical. And you know, I was Catholic and actually I had stirrings of something else. I was feeling not that Catholic anymore but not that Baptist either and I just started feeling like something about this","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=1200.0,1500.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"isn't right for me. Other students they kind of rolled with it and others who just absolutely did not want to do it would sit outside until prayer was done and then they’d come in. That's what she recommended they do. Which I found really not right because it was ostracizing, it was a way to ostracize them. One time in the middle of prayer circle I had to go to the bathroom, and I joined the hands quietly and I ran out to the bathroom in the hallway, and I saw two of them sitting down. Just sitting down like this [Solis gestures] bored and kind of looking sad and I went, “Oh this is not right, this is not good,” but you know what am I going to do? I'm just a kid. This is the structure that we have, and I am not going to make waves because I want to do these parts. I want to stay in the—do these plays and I don't want to get kicked out because I'm not Christian enough. So, I would join in with the amen's, yes father, yes father amen all that. \n\nBut then I had to think about my senior year, I had to think about where am I going to go to college? And I really struggled with that. And because I didn't know, and I didn't—my guidance counselor didn't help me with that. And so, I just said remembering, oh yeah UC Berkeley was famous. There was this guy named Mario Sava who was part of the free speech movement and I remember him, and I said, “I want to be like him I want to go to that school. Study theater there.” And you know there's probably zero percent chance that I'd get in there. Berkeley? Come on! But I thought maybe I have a chance. If Mario Sava could do it—I thought he was Mexican, but I don't think he is—it was he? I think he was Italian or something. Mario Sava. Anyway, and but the guidance counselor got wind of that and talked to the teachers and said, “You need to start helping Octavio, he wants to study theater. And he's—you know thinking UC Berkeley. You need to help him like decide where to go.” And so, the two drama coaches called me into their office one time after school and said, We need to talk to Octavio. And I went, “Oh okay.” And they said, “You know we understand you want to study theater and we think that's a good idea.” No actually they didn't say that's a good idea, I'm sorry. They said, “We understand you want to study theater”, and I said, “Yes, I do. I have this love in my heart for it. This is what I want to do, it's what I want to be, a theater artist, an actor.” And they said, “We think that's a terrible idea. (Denney gasps) We think that's awful, because theater is—you'll discover theater and at the colleges and in real life—is a place of sin, it's a place of immorality, godlessness. There's drinking, there's sex, there's homosexuality. There's homos in there. There's a lot of drugs.” And I was going, “Where do I sign up?” (laughter) But I was going like, “Really?” And they said, “Yes and so we don't want you to do that. We want you to stay a good Christian lad and maybe find some other thing.” And I said, Well—I was frankly astonished because for years they made me work so hard at my theater craft and my acting and devoted everything to it. And I could not believe that they were saying, “Don't go there”, at the end of it they were trying to pull me away from that and I could not believe it. And I just—I said so, I said, “You put this in my heart and now you’re telling me not to follow my heart. I don't understand.” But I told them, “You know I'll still be a good Christian. I will be a good Christian but I'm dead set on this.” And they went, “Okay, well since we failed at this we have a list of universities that we recommend that you should go to in Texas, because we think you stand the best chance if you get a—you know a Texas grant or something and it could get you that.” So, there was St. Edward's [University], there was St. Mary's [University], [University of the] Incarnate Word, and Trinity University. And they all sounded sort of Christian. St. Edwards, St. Mary’s, Incarnate—they all sounded really religious. And I said, “Well okay, I'll look at those.” And I looked at Trinity and it looked really great. Frankly, I didn't stand—I didn't think I stood a chance. But I applied to St. Edward's, which also I think was good, and to UT Austin had a great theater department and they [Drama teachers] didn't want that. But to Trinity, we all agreed, we should apply to that too and the only one that I got into, that accepted me, was Trinity! And I got a huge scholarship and a Texas equalization grant—that's what they were called then. And a huge NDSL student loan—national direct student loan—and it was great because now I only had to pay something like a thousand dollars","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=1500.0,1800.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"out of a tuition room and board. In those days, I believe it was something like thirty-five hundred. It was like thirty-five hundred. It's so different than it is now, but it still was a lot of money then, you know. So I went to Trinity, and I had done my research on Trinity. I said, “It was Methodist. It was associated with the Methodist church but it's—that affiliation is gone now, it's actually secular.” So, I said, “Okay I'm going there.” And in some respects, they [Drama teachers] were right. There were so many like people who were gay, some of them did drugs, you know we all smoked a little dope, and you know we drank some beers. I didn't see the crazy sex that they were describing anywhere but then I was a dork. I was just—I didn't score ever at Trinity, but I found my place and it was good and I liked it. Like when I came here. \n\nSo, I came here in 1976, my freshman year, my roommate was John Fisher, Jonathan Fisher, also from El Paso. We met at a kind of a wine and cheese get-together for students coming into Trinity hosted by students that were seniors, juniors. So, I met some of them there and some of them were from the theater department. One of them was named Bonnie. I can't remember Bonnie's name right off the bat but she's still in TV and film. I gave that— did I give it to you, [referring to Abreu-Torres] the name? \n\nABREU-TORRES: Yeah.\n\nSOLIS: Okay. What was her name? Anyway, Bonnie was one of the students there. And then there was another one who was really nice, and she was a senior. I had a huge crush on her. But it was like— you know to me she was like this—and probably I thought she was could be my mother. But she's really only four years older—but it's a huge difference between like eighteen and twenty-two. You know, huge! And so, I looked up to her and she said, “We'll get you through Trinity, don't worry.” But it's where I met John. And John didn't drink, he was a Christian scientist, but we bonded. We bonded really well, and we found each other at Trinity when we came. We just bumped into each other at one of those keggers that they throw for freshmen and a little get-together—wine and beer thing and I think tacos. And I met him there. I remember yeah! And we started hanging out together. I had a terrible roommate who just did not even look at me. He didn't even want to see me. And he'd rather hang out with his wild buddies. And I didn't quite know what was wrong with me that he didn't like me. But he didn't like me, and I went, Okay. So, he moved out, so I was living by myself. I said, Well I have the dorm room to myself, great! Then John found out that I was there and said, “You know my—your suite mate Rusty Morrell is also a Christian scientist and he's become a good friend of mine. Could I move in with you?” And I said, “John, come on, let's go! What else? You belong here.” So, he became my roommate, and we were in Calvert, the three of us, for two years at Calvert on the second floor. And we were really tight. When I wasn't with the theater people—who were mainly colleagues and students that we worked with, it was really also very competitive, very competitive all our acting classes again—but I didn't hang out with them when class was done. We all went our separate ways. I went to my roomie, to my roommate who was an economics student and Rusty was also in economics. And I didn't care that they were Christian scientists. You know, for one thing it meant the medicine cabinet was completely mine because they didn't have any medicines there. So, it was like room for—more room for my stuff, because they didn't take any medication. I don't think they even like—they didn't drink, and they didn't—I think they that there was something about coffee or coke that they weren't supposed to drink, no I think that's Mormons. Anyway, I don't remember. But they were Christian scientists and the three of us bonded and then the two—the three of us somehow met this other student named Antoinette Salazar, Tony Salazar from Texas City. Tall, dark, very amiable, very funny young lady. And she and Rusty fell in love. Rusty from Connecticut, from Stamford Connecticut who was redheaded—that's why his name is Rusty—and handsome as could be. Had the Kennedy good looks, the Kennedy chin and just looked like a Kennedy. But he and Antoinette fell in love, and they got married","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=1800.0,2100.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and had kids and I still keep in touch with them. They live here in San Antonio. John also got married, went on and had kids and I keep in touch with him and Julie, his wife. We're still quite close. At least, you know, Facebook and text well John—Rusty is really bad with sending us the corniest jokes. Corniest jokes. Sad jokes, you know really dumb dad jokes. And we just, we all groan. But I still keep in touch with Tony and Rusty and John. \n\nBut I was—they seldom saw me. Because I was at the theater department, and it was intense. There was one class called Integration of Abilities, with a book that was—that accompanied it that was written by the professor, Paul Baker, who was the chairman of the drama department then, and he truly was visionary, a compelling speaker, lecturer who got up and just would talk. And then the class would—this big class, all drama people had to take. And other people that were not drama students also had to—would take it. And then we'd break up in smaller groups and work with individual teachers in smaller classrooms. But there was always one lecture that we'd receive from him at the beginning of every week. And he was such a compelling speaker, and I was—I said, I want to follow him. He kind of brought a kind of experiment—highly experimental novel way of—a novel approach to theater making but to art also. And it was called the Elements of Form and I still use them in my own writing, in my own process. They're very important and—to me—but I was just learning it and other people thought it was like a Mickey Mouse sort of class. They could just fudge it and cheat on that and stuff. I took it seriously.\n\nI took him seriously. But that was his last year. He retired the end of sev—at the end of ’77. And the following year—and we knew he was going to leave, so there was an interview process to bring in a new chairman of the department. And they involved the students in it as well as the staff to interview these people. And there was one who really said, “I support that philosophy wholeheartedly. I will follow it and I want to keep with it.” Because we didn't want to lose that philosophy under which the theater was built because all the faculty was built around that too. And there were some amazing teachers. One of them was Mary Anne Colias and she was a superb directing and acting teacher, and a superb director too and was my mentor while I was here. Another one was Diana Devereaux who was also a fantastic acting teacher and voice teacher. And these were acolytes of Paul Baker. Another one was Peter Lynch, who looked like a mad hippie, had long hair—long bushy hair and a beard. And he was really quiet and intense, and he directed the first play I was in called Journey of the Fifth Horse. I was part of the chorus and carried an umbrella dressed in black and walked very, very slowly across the stage with a group of like six of us. Slowly, I mean really slow so it would take us the entire two acts of the play to get all the way across the stage. So, it was really slow so that people would watch the other actors and then would notice that—every time they looked at us, it's like we weren't moving at all. But then they'd watch the action and when they look back it's like, oh they're actually in a different place now! How did they get there? It's because we moved very painfully slow. That was the first play I did, and I still have the original actor script—you know the actor edition from that. I can't remember who wrote the script and I think it's—it feels Eastern European and in its form and I didn't know what it was about. I had no idea what it was about. I just knew I had to walk really slow. (laughter) I didn't have any lines. I just had to walk really slow. \n\nThere was Bob Bovard who was there. Also, he was teaching tech stuff. And then there was another person also named Bob. I think his name was Bob. He was really quiet and rather heavy set and he had a beard and he was balding. Really a sweet man, but he was the tech director, and he was always besieged. It was like he was always falling behind on everything, and no one was pulling their own weight","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=2100.0,2400.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and he had to fix things that students were—had built wrong. He had to constantly redo it. It was a trial and he and Bob Bovard worked together. I want to say his name was Bob too, but I really wonder if it was. Anyway, but I also—and there was also Frances Swinny. Frances Swinny was a superb instructor who taught Alexander technique in voice and diction. And she would crack a whip. She'd make you just—she taught you how to make sure you stood up straight and where to speak from your diaphragm and how to use the whole instrument in a way that was really good. So, she was—she knew people from the Alexander technique intimately and was connected with them. She's very important in our development as young actors. And then finally there was Eugene McKinney. And Eugene McKinney was my playwriting teacher, and I loved the man. I thought he was the gentlest. He was already sen— in his senior years then by the time I came here.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=2400.0,2468.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"But I thought he was wonderful, and he was a great teacher and I owe him a lot. I really owe him a lot. He's gone now, I mean most of these folks are gone now. But I—and I wondered, Why am I taking playwriting? I take it the freshman—you know that—in the fall then, I take it in the spring. The next year I took it again in the fall, and then I take it again in the spring. And I kept asking, why am I continually taking playwriting? I'm an actor! But I would do that. And but we really worked with all of us worked with our teachers to interview all the possible candidates that would take over after Paul Baker left. And the new director ended up being James Simons. Dr. James Simons, who was brilliant in his way. They had a program also at Trinity at the time that I qualified for, it's called a university scholar. And that’s if you kept up your grade point average to a six point five or better. Kept it up at after your freshman year, you could then focus actually—I think it was even after the first semester—if you kept it up—you had to come in with at least a 3.7 or something. I did, but if you kept it up after your freshman year to at least a six point five or better you would qualify as a university scholar. And that meant that you could focus on your major field of study—on two major fields of study. And take courses in at least two, you know, others you know whatever it was. So, I said, Well clearly theater I could focus on my major take all the classes I need to my major. And then the other major field of study became English. It just seemed natural to me—take English. So, I took a lot of English courses and there was—I can't remember the instructor's name anymore—he was here for a long time. But I took a fantastic course on him called Yates, Keats, Ya—no. Yates and Blake and it was on the poetry of and divisions of William Blake, who created this meta universe. This crazy world with a crazy worldview that he even drew art for and then Yates who also did the same thing, created a mythology. They had distinct mythologies and how the two of them kind of almost spoke to each other. I just found that fascinating. He was also the teacher of our romantic poet section and that's when I really got into the romantic poets. I love that. I took some other courses, but I don't remember what they were. I took one fiction writing course with someone who was also associated with Paul Baker and he's still around. I can't remember his name—he's in the—with me. I saw him recently at the Texas Institute of Letters. But he's a fiction writer, he's a short story writer. And he's still working, he's still at it. I took a fiction writing class with him. I don't think he was very impressed with me. I wouldn't have been. And I was terrible. I was terrible and so he didn't really—he looked at my work and go, “Okay, okay, next!” You know? I didn't blame him. I was looking at it good, I’d go, “This is awful.” I couldn't focus. But I also took courses in—besides focusing on that—the other two courses, two other major fields of study that I took courses in were geology","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=2468.0,2700.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and sociology. I felt I had to take some science because I thought, How can I get through a whole university program without taking a single science course? But I'm not really good with numbers. I'm terrible. I have no head for numbers and so my math is awful. And you need to know math for science, but geology is different. You need to know rocks. You need to know soil and you need to know all these things and how the forces of nature work on the earth. And I love that. I still love that. I loved it since I was a kid when I liked to look—hunt for fossils. And precious gems, you know stones. So, I would do that. So those were really good, really good courses that I took. And I maintained—I took an oceanography class. \n\nBut mainly I was at the theater. And so, my freshman year I thought went really really well. I was very happy with it and I went home. And I worked at this little taco palace in El Paso with my father every summer for like four or five years. And then when I was a student in high school, I also worked there on the weekends. It was called Chicos Tacos. Chicos Tacos is very famous in El Paso, for the kind of tacos it provides. But I would do that work and so you know work at Chicos Tacos. How am I doing? Doing okay? [Denney nods and laughs] Good. \n\nAnyway, then I came back my sophomore year. And James Simons had been selected and he brought in some instructors, he let some people go, and he came in. And he immediately just started dismantling the whole philosophy, the program, that had been there before. He didn't hold to his word. And it was nasty! And teachers were quitting, some of them were like conspiring against others. It was just a really ugly situation. He cast freshmen and before it was a kind of a process of you grow into the role, so that by your senior year you get the leads. And your freshman year, you're, you know— \n\nDENNEY: Walking slowly?\n\nSOLIS: Walking slowly with an umbrella! Yes, exactly. (laughs) And the leads are the juniors and seniors. Everyone else is walking slowly with an umbrella. Very good. [referring to Denney] And that was dismantled because he cast freshmen and sophomores in the leads. And so, all the juniors and seniors resented the younger students coming in. And they resented him and his teaching style and the other professor that he brought in with him—who I think was Czech. They didn't get him. And I thought James Simons was actually a brilliant lecturer. He gave a lecture on [Anton] Chekhov that was like—almost brought me to tears. But I found him not that great a director. But Paul Baker was gone and there was like a real, just nasty atmosphere. Very bad karma in the building in the theater department. And I didn't I—the sooner I could leave there the better because teachers were all like backstabbing each other—students were kind of conspiring against each other—it was nasty, and I just didn't want to be part of it. And I told my mother, I was going to quit and come back home. Because I just didn't like this. And she sent me an article because she said, “Don't quit, stay in school. Here's something I read.” And she sent me an article that came from—it was in the El Paso Times that said that it's getting easier to study overseas and cheaper to study overseas now. So, I called her and says, “Do you want me to study like other places?” She said, “Take a break, maybe go study in the summer. You know, study there and then when you come back, you'll be better. It'll be better.” And I went, “Well, okay.” So I looked at the foreign studies department. It was a little room, and it was filled with all these catalogs from all these other universities. I started with looking at Trinity's first, which is a brief, I think two-week program at the time in London. Because I set my heart on London. I don't know why. Well, I know why, Shakespeare. Theater. Shakespeare. I was following Shakespeare. And I wanted to know everything about that. And I was a bit of an anglophile. I read English literature; you know. \n\nAnd I had—I guess this is a good time to also say that there was this big gaping hole in my education. Not once was there anything having to deal with my Latino culture. Nothing. Zero. And I didn't know that there were other Latino writers or Chicano writers or Chicano theater that I didn't know. And at that point you know there were all these—there was an explosion of teatros","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=2700.0,3000.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"all over the country. All over the country, over a hundred and seventy-five teatros at one point. In every major city, everywhere! In some there were like two or three, some of them were out in the fields. Like El Teatro Campesino, Teatro de La Candelaria, Teatro de la Guadalupe are some of the major Californian companies that toured the country. And there was nothing of that in my education, so I didn't even know about it, at all. So, I just thought you know I should be like everyone else and study Shakespeare and write like a white person. I thought that was me. \n\nSo that's why I went to study in England—in London. But I looked at all these programs and I found out that it was cheaper to go for a semester, than it would be to go for the summer. So, I said, Well, maybe I'll just go in the fall. Then I did more research and I found that there were some programs that it was cheaper to go for the whole year than to go for a one semester! And I said, Well that's what I want to do. So, I transferred to Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois and took their overseas program at Wimbledon. In Wimbledon at the Southlands College, which was part of what was called then the Roehampton Institute of Higher Education. And it was just a consortium of four small colleges that united to make a university and you had to take a bus to get to some of them. Some were within walking distance, some of them were a lot farther. And I went there and studied there for a year, and it was while I was there, that I started doing a lot of research on Shakespeare. I went to the theater almost every week, every weekend because I took this course in the English department, because I was a double major. And he said, “If you go to the theater, I encourage you to go to the theater. If you go to the theater and if it has—if the work has literary value.” It's a play like Shakespeare or Harold Pinter—even Oliver, which is Dickens you know, the musical—even if it’s Charles Dickens Oliver Twist. “If you bring back the ticket, we’ll reimburse you the full price of the ticket.” So, I said, Well, I'm using that. I didn't buy it at first and he gave me full money. So sometimes I would see like three plays on the weekend Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Get on the tube and go down to London and watch a play. It was like magical, and I could get my money back. And I didn't—believe me I needed it because I didn't have a lot of money. \n\nI hitchhiked across the English countryside for about three weeks when Christmas break happened because I couldn't afford to fly home. All the other students you know, the English students, they just went home. The Americans who, you know, they flew to Chicago or UMass [University of Massachusetts] some of them were from UMass. I could not. I couldn't do it. We couldn't afford it. So, I stayed, but I couldn't stay on campus. Because they were the—we had to be off campus. So, I hitchhiked across England in the winter in the snow for three weeks, three and a half weeks. And stayed with friends who said, We'd love to have an American stay with us for one night or two nights, whatever. And I joined the youth hostel association so, in towns where students weren't, I would stay at a youth hostel. But also, I would tell the students, “You know, I'm going to be coming to your house. You're in Manchester, I'll see you January 5th. You're in Leeds”—I never went to Leeds actually—“you're in Liverpool, I'll see you January 7th. You're in Wales? I'll see you, you know, in December,” you know? So, I would set it out ahead of time and make my path, you know ahead of time how I was going to do it. It was hard but I stayed on schedule. It was a really rough time because it was really cold. It's England! In the winter. And not only that, but the IRA [Irish Republic Army] had started putting bombs on lorries—on semi-trucks, delivery trucks—and would call them in and say there's a bomb and they would defuse it. And the radios and the police were putting out this report—this bulletin saying, “Don't pick up strangers. Don't pick up any strangers on the road.” And here I am going [Solis sticks his thumb out] and sometimes I'd be up there for like four or five hours in the snow and I'm going like, Is anybody going to pick me up? And somebody would pull over and out of pity picking me—would pick me up and take me to the nearest hotel or something because I was miserable. \n\nI had to do it again at Easter time. For their Easter break, three weeks and at that time I went to France. And I didn't know any","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=3000.0,3300.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"—I knew some French, but very little. But I hitchhiked across France and that was fun. That was a blast. All of it really, on like a $200 budget each trip. $200 to keep me you know fed and housed. Because you could stay for about maybe three dollars at a youth hostel, you know. And so, you could do it that way and then eat some food and sometimes you had to take a train and those tickets were a little more expensive. I don't know how I would end up back at the campus with like almost like one pound left in my you know in my pocket. But I would do it. Sometime around I think it was February of that—this was 1978-79—I also got into the whole punk scene and the new wave scene. It was—I saw the Clash, I saw Elvis Costello, I saw the Jam. I got into the music big time. And it was always on the radio. And it wasn't really big in America. The Ramones were big in England before they were big in America. So was Blondie and the Cars and those were really big there. But so, I started following them and I really liked Elvis Costello because I thought he was a great songwriter as well. And he wore glasses. He also wore glasses, so I shifted loyalties from Elton John to Elvis Costello and he's still one of my heroes. \n\nAnd but I got a call in February at the dorm and it you know it's just a payphone in the hallway and we don't have cell phones. That's not—we don't have personal phones in our room. Just one phone in the hallway. It rings, somebody says, Hello and says, Could I speak with someone? So they go, Hey it's for you can you—bang on the door. There's a phone call for you—well I got one of those. I seldom get one of those and I said, Who could it be? And I went and I said, “Hello,” and it says, “Hi this is Colleen Grissom and I just want to know are you coming back Octavio?” And I said, “Uh, yeah. I wanted to know—how did you get my number? How'd you find me here?” And she says, “I just want to know if you're coming back because you've been gone a while, and you know I've been following you and I really want you to come back. What are you doing out there anyway?” “Oh, I'm studying here English and—” “Well are you coming back? Because I want to pair you and John again. You and your old roommate, would that be okay?” I went, “Yeah.”  “I have an apartment set aside for you and it's right off campus and we're doing this with some select students and I want you to be part of it and with John.” And I went, “Well, thank you. Okay yes, I'm coming back.” So, it's because of her that I came back. I wasn’t thinking of not coming back to Trinity, but she insisted. And she was the Dean of Students and was brilliant. I had admired her from the moment I set foot on campus because she was very public, always inviting students to her home, we'd have tea, or we'd have wine or something. I was always treated like an adult around her. And she was extremely learned and had a fascination for literature which I had too. She knew I loved that, and she remembered me and would watch out for me. So, I said, If someone's like—I don't know how she got the number but if she's going to go to the trouble to find the number of a phone booth in my hall, to ask me please come back to just or ask me are you coming back, I need to go back. \n\nSo, I came back to Trinity. By then I think it was my senior year things had significantly died down and people were resigned. Devereaux was gone, Peter was gone. Mary Anne Colias was still there, and she was a sort of the stalwart, the lone sort of warrior in this. And I took a directing class with her, and she also directed me in a production of Othello. And you (referring to Abreu-Torres) found a picture of me in Othello there. I was so young and stupid. (laughter) Can't believe it. I played Iago. But I did have a session with her where I went into her office, because I wasn't getting cast in anything. And I went in the end of fall and said, “Mary Anne I just want you to be honest with me, do I belong in this? Should I be an actor? I want to be an actor. Do I even belong in the theater?” And she kind of looked at me and kind of just gave me a sidelong glance and smirk and says, “Yeah, you belong here. Yeah, you belong here.” And I thought she was not saying something, but she said I belong here, so I said, “Okay.” Yeah, I think she already had decided she was going to cast me as Iago in Othello","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=3300.0,3600.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"but I think she also was implying something else. Because I think she was saying you belong here in the theater, I don't think you're an actor, I think you're a writer or a director. But I just—I'll never know. But the following spring I was cast in Othello as Iago, and I acted opposite an actor who was a friend of hers who came from New York. His name—he's a really good actor—Reggie Montgomery. Reginald Montgomery. He later appeared in the world premiere in New York on Broadway or at the public of Suzan-Lori Parks—the play about [Abraham] Lincoln. The America—is it called The America Play? I don't remember but he was in a very famous production of a play by Suzan-Lori Parks, an African American writer and he played Lincoln. And it was really fascinating wonderful play. I saw another production of it later on but she [Mary Anne Colias] brought him down to act as Othello and I thought, I was you know I'm the lead and I've got this. And boy did I have a lot to learn. Because Reggie would not let me, would not let me just tune out and say the lines and just look—because I would act with him but look at his forehead and he could just tell that I'm just saying lines. And he would slap me! He'd go like, (Solis claps) “What was that? What did you say?” And he would do it in character. “What? What? What did you say?” And I'd be like, “Uh, uh.” And I'd say the line like again and this time with like being present. He just wanted me to be present, talk to me, don't just say lines to me, don't waste my time. And he would every time he would do that, boom, a little slap or he’d throttle me grab me like this [Solis gestures] and then I'd grab him too and it was intense. But I never hit him. You know, I was not going to hit him, but he would whack me and now I think, That's wrong. You know, don't do that, just stop and tell the actor, “Hey I'm right here, look at me. Look at me. Talk to me. Don't say lines, talk to me.” But he—I guess he got permission from Mary Anne Colias to just like (Solis claps) whack me every now and then like that. They were intense scenes, but it made me better. And I felt really strong in the role, like I finally got it, and I understood this acting craft that I said, Okay, you know, I want to be an actor. This is what I want to do, but I'm not ready to pound the sidewalk. I still feel young. \n\nI still feel like I need more education, I'm going to grad school. As soon as I made that plan, the Dallas Theater Center started courting me. And they sent professor—teachers from there—they weren't professors but teachers from there to come down and look at me and talk to me and say, Come visit us! Come see our campus! And I did. Right after graduation, I flew up there to talk to them and then I got accepted into the Trinity University MFA [master’s in fine arts] program and I spent three years there. And it was like—now I'm back with Paul Baker. Paul Baker's there! He's running his theater company. Because he was doing both. He was being chairman here and then working at the Dallas theater center. But also, what happened there was I lost him again. He was there for one year and his second year he was forced to retire. His board fired him basically. He was just getting old. And he went out kicking and screaming. He did not go silently into that good night. He was nasty and so I went through my second year there was also so fraught with so much animosity. So much uncertainty. We didn't know what was going to happen, and so I stuck around for a third year to finish my studies. And I was taking classes with—again Eugene McKinney—and a new playwriting teacher, Glenn Allen Smith, who had also grown under and developed under Paul Baker. And he was terrific. The two of them were good teachers. And that year, the third year the interim director was Mary Sue Jones, who had also I think come through the Trinity program through Baylor, I think. Her husband was Preston Jones, who wrote [A] Texas Trilogy.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=3600.0,3900.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"A series of three Texas plays that were—that took Dallas by storm. They toured it to the Kennedy Center I think or maybe the arena performed it there. It was like a great thing because you could see all the plays in one day. And they would provide lunch and dinner in between the plays, they were full lengths. But Preston Jones died after, shortly after the plays, had a heart attack collapse and he passed away. And the era died. An era died with him. And he had been a real close friend of Paul Baker's. Sort of the court jester of the whole group. He was very funny, and he died. And he—and Mary Sue Jones who was a tremendous actress was very stricken and never the same after that. But she became the interim artistic director just to hold the place together and while they conducted a search. That was when Adrian Hall came in and he became our artistic director. He came from Trinity Rep [Trinity Repertory Company] in Rhode Island. I think it's Rhode Island, Trinity Rep. I don't remember where. I think it's Rhode Island. And he was a artistic director there and here so. \n\nBut by the time he came I was already gone. I'd already graduated, got my degree and I became an actor. And my intention was to move to New York, but my car got stolen. (Denney gasps) or actually I needed to save more money. So, I took on a job bartending at a local pub and then my car got stolen. \n\nAnd an offer came to teach playwriting at the Arts Magnet High School. And I said, Well sure. They were paying nineteen dollars an hour for four—you know to teach four classes and I didn't have—my first class was at eleven, so I didn't even have to come on campus until eleven. I had all three lunch shifts; I could go off campus for lunch and then come back at one to—or one thirty to teach until four thirty. The next three classes in playwriting and one of the classes that I taught in the morning was that Integration of Abilities class that I took as a freshman. I was now teaching it. So, it came full circle, because Paul Baker also started the Arts Magnet High School. But again, he wasn't there, so I seemed to be chasing this man who just kept disappearing on me, but I went through the whole institution. Trinity, DTC [Dallas Thater Company], Arts Magnet. And I say I graduated from there because I left after four years because my students were doing really well. They were graduating and then coming back and saying, I just got to play at La Mama, I just got to play at NYU [New York University]. They got produced and da da da. I said, Well, when am I going to get? But I wasn't taking my playwriting career seriously because I was still thinking of myself as an actor. In fact, when they offered me the job I said, “Playwriting? I'm an actor.” And they says, Well you come very highly recommended by Glenn Allen Smith and Eugene McKinney, so do you want it? I went, Well the money's good, sure but I have to—you know, figure out how to teach. I wasn't even a teacher. I didn't have a teacher certificate. I wasn't trained that way. But they said, It's okay, we want artists. And I went, Okay. But I wasn't even a playwright, so I said, Alright. So, I had to become a playwriting teacher but in the course of doing that I kind of taught myself too. And I remembered all the things that I received in those seven years of playwriting classes and of course being an act—all the training I had as an actor also feeds into the playwriting too. You know how to write for actors’ voices, actors’ needs. You know what an actor wants, and needs, requires for the role, for the play. \n\nAnd so, I did very well but at some point, I said, I have to work on my career because I was bartending, and I was teaching and trying to maintain an acting career somehow. Doing industrials, you know for an airline or whatever and finally my girlfriend at the time said, “You know, why don't you just”—first of all she asked me to move in with her because my roommate left, and I couldn't afford the rent on the place I had. And my girlfriend at the time Jeanne Sexton, who I met in Dallas, said, “Why don't you just quit your bartending job? It’ll give you time to focus on your writing and because you're gone on the weekends anyway bartending. And I never see you and what do I do? Stay at home on the weekends? So, I come and hang out at the bar and get hit on by everybody","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=3900.0,4200.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"because I'm sitting alone at the bar it's just not good for me.” I went, “You're right, you're right.” So, I quit the bars. I was drinking too much anyway, because I'm working at a bar and just drinking all the mistakes, you know? I can't throw it out. It’s a margarita! “No? nobody? Okay, I’ll drink it.” You know so. And so, I had to quit the bar business and that was good. That worked out. But I still couldn't find time to write and then she said, “Quit your teaching job.” I said, “But I—how am I going to make money?” And she said, “I got you covered. Don't worry about income. I'm a lawyer.” She worked for a very big firm in Dallas at the time that is now no longer existing called Jenkens and Gilchrist. And she was making a lot of money as a lawyer. She was doing very well, and she says, “I got enough for both of us. You focus on your writing.” I went, “Okay.” “But here's the deal if in five years’ time, you're still in the same place you are now, I will be the first one to say, ‘Get a job.’” So, I had five years. Well, within the first year, things started happening. Boom. Boom. Boom. (Solis claps) I started getting productions in Dallas. I worked with María Irene Fornés in New York, in the ‘88. I worked, I got a play at a reading of an—of a new play at South Coast Repertory in California, Orange County. That led to a production the following year. Things started happening right off the bat. And I haven't looked back since. So, she says, “This is what you do now, you're a writer.” So, I've been able to support myself on my writing. Well, I don't support myself, but you know it's discretionary income so to speak. Because you know, I think what I make as a writer each year could probably pay maybe two months of our mortgage you know. (laughs) It's just the writer’s life. That's why most writers are teachers. But she says, “You don't have to do that because—you know, first of all, you're doing something important. I'm just pushing paper and taking money and giving it from one party to another, that's all I do. You're doing something important, and I want to be with your crowd.” She liked hanging around with directors, actors, other writers. I hung around with artists and poets, painters, musicians. We just did all that. She had been [married] before and her husband just did not care for any of that, and she wanted that full rich artistic life. So, she's got that. So anyway, she led me into—away from teaching and the bar business to work in—\n\nDENNEY: You were talking about how after you left teaching and started getting all these productions.\n\nSOLIS: Yes. Yeah so, I started my career, my official career as a writer. And it's gone well. All without moving to New York. I'm one of the few people who can say, I have had a successful career of a writer—of being a writer and getting productions every year at major theaters and at small theaters since 1989. I've never written a play on spec [speculation]. They are always commissions. And the commissions have started—my very first play was I wrote for a thousand dollars. That was now—that was then, now it's up to twenty [thousand] or more and all without having to move to New York. I don't have any aspirations to move to New York, because I feel I’ll lose my voice as a Chicano writer. As a writer—Latino writer from the West writing with that perspective and it's very different than East Coast. Very different. It's like East Coast West Coast hip-hop you know? It's very different worlds. So that's sort of how I became a writer. That should answer—probably the second question? (laughs)\n\nDENNEY: You touched on a lot of the questions I had. We had a question about Paul Baker. \n\nSOLIS: Oh yeah, okay yeah. \n\nDENNEY: In an interview in 2013, you noted that you didn't identify as a Latino playwright, citing that you didn't want to be placed within a box and that although many of your characters are of Mexican heritage or descent, your stories are universal. Have you always felt this way and have your feelings changed at all since that interview?\n\nSOLIS: Yeah, it changes constantly. The next year I'll feel like, No I'm a Latino writer and I have an agenda as a Latino writer to, not only get","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=4200.0,4500.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"other Latino actors jobs gigs and to promote their careers, and see them you know become stars, like Stephanie Beatriz, who I work with on Lydia is—went straight to “9-1-1”—what no “Brooklyn 99” you know. And I'm happy to see their careers blossom and to see them become their own artists, their own writers’ etcetera, directors. So there—so switch from that but then sometimes it's like, I feel like I'm chosen simply because I'm a Latino playwright. \n\nSimply because they need to fill a slot that is for a Latino writer. And it's like well, is it because they really want me or because they want to do a Latino work? I'd rather just—I hope they chose me because the writing is good. Because I'm a good writer, not because they need a Latino to fill—they need a Latino to be, you know, fill a slot. So that's when I probably said that because I was feeling like pigeonholed. I'm pigeonholed and not only that, but as they expect me to have a certain viewpoint attached to being Latino that we're all think alike, that we all have the same perspective and we're not. We're as diverse as anyone else in terms of where we see ourselves in a society. Where we think we're going and where we think we should be. And sometimes it's in concert with someone else and sometimes it's an opposition with someone else. And that's okay, because that's what makes this country so great and the world so great is that diversity of viewpoint and opinions. But when they start thinking that I'm going to be a certain kind Latino, promoting a certain kind of work and then when they read the word they go, (Solis gasps) Oh! We misjudged you, we don't know if we can put this on. Then—and they get nervous. I go, You selected me. I'm not, you know, I'm not going to be able to deliver the quote, unquote, “happy brown people play” that you think you want. I'm going to be writing the play, it's going to be acerbic. It's going to be providing—it's going to push buttons for everyone. Everyone's buttons are going to get pushed. Everyone's going to get triggered from my plays. It's just—that's going to happen because I'm that kind of writer. I generally write about outsiders because that's what I was. I was an outsider. I felt like that Frankenstein monster. I was an outsider when I came to Trinity, being one of the few brown faces I could see on campus and one of the few brown faces in the theater department. I think there were three of us. And the other two by the way, have made the names as television stars, Juán Cantú made it in “Breaking Bad” and Bonnie—I forget what Bonnie's last name was—\n\nABREU-TORRES: I don’t have the paper.\n\nSOLIS: Yeah, she's—she was in so many TV series and continues to develop have a active film and TV career. I'm very proud of that. That they were able to do that, because you know, I don't know how supported I felt in that way here. Especially considering that we had no education in the theater of our culture. That—because I don't think they knew. They were ignorant. There was a blind spot that they had toward that. We didn't read any African American playwrights at all. I didn't know about any of them. We sure know now. A lot of that and boy, when I started—when I got selected, had my play selected at South Coast Repertory for this program—I'd never even heard of—called Hispanic Playwrights Project. It was a play called Man of the Flesh. I went there and it was like there were all these playwrights from across the country gathered there. Some, a lot of them from LA [Los Angeles], some from New York, some from Chicago, some from Minneapolis and Seattle. I was like, What the heck is going on? With professors showing up, dramaturgs who were Latino, all the actors were cast from the LA acting pool, so they all were like these Chicano actors that I never even knew were around. And they were and directors too! All the directors were Latino and some of them I still know and work with. I was at my reading was read with a play by Cherrie Moraga called Shadow of a Man. It was just a reading and that now is part of the canon of our works. There was also Edit Villarreal was there,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=4500.0,4800.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and she had a play called My Visits with MGM or My Visits with My Grandmother Martha and lovely, lovely, gentle, beautiful play about her grandmother. And mine was Man of the Flesh, which was just this crazy play about Don Juan set during Day of the Dead. And it was the one—they all got received wonderful readings. Mine was selected for production the very next year, but I met this—I came in contact with this network of Latino artists that I didn't know existed and I don't think any of us knew existed, until we had this very first gathering with this play series, play reading series, new play reading series. It was astonishing. All started by this young man named José Cruz González who is himself now a pretty well-known playwright who wrote American Mariachi and some other works. He works a lot—writes a lot of YA [young adult] theater. He's really a good friend of mine and I owe my career to him because he brought me to South Coast Repertory. And South Coast Repertory is the one that launched my career. \n\nSo yes, I do have issues sometimes when I'm pigeonholed and called, “You're a Latino playwright, Latin playwright, so you write this kind of magical realism plays.” And I go, “I'm not sure I'd call it magical realism.” You know, I understand what the term implies and know Gabriel García Márquez and Carlos Fuentes, I know what they do. But I'm not sure my plays fit into that. And—but José Rivera's plays do, Migdalia Cruz's plays do as well in the most beautiful way. But I have suddenly found that might—I thought I was a realist in my writing, it's not. It's also, you know, there are several planes of existence and planes of being in my plays too, so I share that with José, I share that with Migdalia.  But I find that many other Americans who are working in the canon don't access that. It's not part of their orientation. We go there automatically. Ghosts are with us all the time. The past is with us, chasing us all the time, and it's present. And weird shit happens all the time, in our plays and it's a given so I guess that's called magical realism. But sometimes I rankle against that and I rankle against being lumped together with them. Because we have our own separate individual visions that I think in the end are going to are going to become so strong, that they'll just be part of the American fabric—of the fabric of American letters of American playwriting. And it'll just be called that. And you know there's a point where when the Irish came, they were called Irish. They were just the Irish and then they became Irish Americans. Now, we don't even use Irish Americans anymore. At some point, I'm going to stop being a Mexican American or a Mexicano or Chicano and just be an American. We'll lose the hyphen, because too often we exist on the hyphen. Instead of in one world and one or the other, we're always on the hyphen. And my plays are—seem to be about the struggle to jump out of that hyphen. How could we not be defined by that. So that's what—those are my concerns. \n\nIncidentally, I should mention that while I was starting to do my own plays in a little punk club where I was bartending in Dallas, Texas in the mid-eighties—I was still teaching at the time too—but I decided to start writing my own little funky plays. And they were based on the stories that one of my students would tell me. Almost every day something happened, would happen crazy, like got in a fight with her father, or her boyfriend—broke up with her boyfriend—or had her first sexual encounter and she'd tell me all this stuff. And one time I even had to talk her down, because she was tripping on LSD in school, and I just calmed her down. All of these I ended up writing several little plays about her, but I disguised her as this character called Gia Matricia. And I created a little world around that the Good Town Brown it was—that's where they live, and they all met at the Holy Whore Cafe on Mary Magdalene Avenue. And I played a character named Brigger Morgan, a kind of death figure, but also a father figure to her. And my faithful assistant was Corpus Christi","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=4800.0,5100.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and so, it was very silly. They were comical and they were written in verse, and they had songs. I would even have like dance interludes because somebody would say, one of my students would say, “I have a friend and she's a dancer could she come and dance in your thing? She wants to do a little dance, a little modern dance thing.” I said, “How much time does she need?” “30 seconds” “Alright, I'll write it in.” (Abreu-Torres laughs) So I'll write it in, and she come and do a dance. It was so fun and so innocent and wild.\n\nBut I was doing those plays and I wrote a series of them that we did at this club. My first audience was probably twenty people. By the time I did the tenth play—I did them like every six to eight weeks—it was like 200 in this bar that would come and see. It became an event, because it wasn't a run. We couldn't, we couldn't run a play in a bar, but you can do it for one performance, like a club gig you know? It was like that. It was fun to do. A lot of work, because I would write them really fast in two weeks and then rehearse them in two weeks. You know, wherever, catch can rehearsal and with music. We'd had it on, because they had these musicians, they had a band and said, We want to be in your play. So, they became the composers for it and then we put it up for one day and that was that. So then, I had to write the next play. Well, I accumulated these plays but none of them had to do with anything regarding my culture. I just didn't know what who I was or—I said, This is my culture. Students, artists, that's my culture. So that's what I would write about. \n\n\nThen I had a person named Cora Cardona approached me and she said, “I have this theater called Teatro Dallas and I want you to write a play for us.” And I went, “Okay.” “And it's with Dallas Parks and Rec and I think you'll love us.” And I went, “Really? A play?” “Yeah, and I want you to make it ready for Latinos to act in.” I went, “Latino? You mean you know other Mexican actors?” “Yeah, people that look like you, they're actors.” I went, “Really? They exist?” Because the only actor I knew was Erik Estrada. That was it. On “CHiPs.” That's what I thought was Latino actors. And I said, Okay, and I got a hundred-dollar commission to do that! And it was my first play and she said, “I have only two rules; two things and as commission it has to be for Day of the Dead”—so it has to be a Day of the Dead play—”and it has to be about Don Juan.” And I went, Okay, alright I'll do that. And so, I had to do—you know we didn't celebrate it in my home, Day of the Dead, and in fact I never saw anything for Day of the Dead in El Paso at the time. It's exploded, now everybody—even when it's not Day of the Dead—they're celebrating Day of the Dead somewhere, we are. I almost wore my t-shirt that has (laughter) like Day of the Dead calaca on it. Calacas, I call them. And so, I had to do research on that, and I said, Oh, okay. So, I started writing that and then I had to do research on Don Juan, because I didn't know. You know Don Juan I thought he was you know, womanizer, but I didn't know that it—that he and that he's an archetype of you know the insatiable lover sex lover you know all the time. But I didn't and you know I learned that he's an archetype, he's our newest archetype. All the archetypes are ancient. He's actually created in literature by Tirso de Molina who wrote El burlador de Sevilla and that's the first appearance of Don Juan. And then there was another Don Juan Tenorio play by [José] Zorrilla in Mexico. And so, I read that one too. Then, Molière did a version of it—I think it's called a stone guest or something like that, stone feast [Don Juan or The Feast of Stone]—I don't know. And I read that one and there was another one, I think [August] Strindberg did one. I don't remember. There were several. Mozart did it. It was called “Don Giovanni.” He did his own and then [George Bernard] Shaw got into the act. The English and he wrote Man and Superman, one of these great plays its about John Tanner, Juan Tenorio. And there's a Don Juan in Hell scene that's in the middle of the play, that is very different from the rest of the play and it's a masterwork, all of these plays were great. And I said, Well, now I have to write my play. And I just said, Just go with what I know, about my Chicano culture. Now that I know about Day of the Dead, that's great and set it in Dallas and set it in Highland Park and do it and just have fun. We did it. It went really well, but it was still a really young kind of raw play. I didn't really know what I was doing, and I got an opportunity to really work on it with South Coast Repertory. \n\nSomebody had taken that play and sent it to South Coast Rep for Hispanic Playwrights Project. I didn't know that program existed.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=5100.0,5400.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Somebody sent it and forged my signature on it (Denney gasps) and also sent it to Irene Fornés to get into her lab, Hispanic Playwrights Lab at Intar [Theater] in New York and I got accepted to that. And I didn't even realize that that had happened until she called me. She says, “Well are you coming?” “What?” “This is Maria Irene Fornés, you got accepted! You know, we hope to see you soon. It starts the day after Thanksgiving, you know.” I mean, “Oh it's in a week.” “Yeah, we haven't heard from you.” “I was accepted?” “Yeah, you submitted, and you were accepted.” I went, “Oh, I guess I better—I guess I better come.” (laughter) So, I came, and I was working with her until like almost a year from November through late June—late July. And then we did writing every day with her. And she wrote too, we shared our writing from nine to one and not only that we were paid. We were paid. Not much, $200 a week, but paid to be in New York. You know, I didn't have any money. I didn't have to worry too much about it because my wife was subsidizing me—at the time my girlfriend, at the time—we got married in San Francisco. But it really those—that play opened up so many things. Number one, it opened up my eyes to there is—there are companies of Latino actors who are looking for plays and then that play connected me—because somebody submitted to SCR and then to Irene—it opened up this relationship with Irene Fornés, who became a lifelong mentor to me and also opened up South Coast Rep, where I realized there's a network of other. Well in both places, I realized, there's a network of Latino writers. Of every ilk, Salvadoran, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Mexican-American, Mexican-American from Chicago, from Seattle, you know everywhere. And especially LA. And we all have our different orientations, and we bring something to the table. It was—that play started my career and I did have not looked back since. All my plays have been, in some respect, about the Latino American experience in this country. Only one that I that—the only play I've written on spec that I wrote last year. I just wrote it because I want to write about Oregon and just write about my reflections on Oregon. In sort of little, small vignettes. I don't think of it as a Latino play, but it's the only play I've written since 1989, ’88, that is not considered a Latino play. And it’s also the first play I've written on spec. Since then, every other play has been a commission. So, I've been given money in advance to write plays for specific companies. I've been very fortunate in my career to have that and to be able to have a sustained career as a writer, because of that. \n\nDENNEY: What does on spec mean? \n\nSOLIS: On spec means that you write it and you're not giving—you're not writing it for anyone. And specifically, you're writing it and nobody's giving you any money to write it. You're writing it and then sending it out, hoping somebody will produce it. Like if you wrote a short story and submitted it to all these magazines and if one of them chooses it and publishes it. That's good, you get money, but you essentially wrote it on spec. The opposite of that is to write on commission and when you're writing on commission, that's when a theater company calls you and says, “Octavio we want a play from you, and we want to pay you, I don't know, let's talk about it with your agent.” And they'll come up with a figure and then, you know, we'll come to an arrangement. They'll send me a contract. I have to deliver a first draft by a certain date, revision of the second draft by this date, hopefully a production by this date. A final draft by then— “You'll get your final amount of money on the day we open or whatever,” you know, around there. So, there's a schedule for it. They have the right to also, when you write the play and submit it, they have the right to say, Eh, not for us, thanks. But they have to give you the money, the commission, all of it. And that's happened a lot to me, and I have a plethora of plays that are stillbirths. That I haven't done. But sometimes, I'll write the play, they'll pass on it. Then I'll go to another theater company, [say] “I got this play.” “Yeah, we want to do it. We want to do it.” So, I'll have a production anyway, but I won't get the advance because they didn't commission it. \n\nI will get royalties. That's different. That's money you get from a percentage of the box office.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=5400.0,5700.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"In commissions, when you get a commission for a play, a certain amount of that is going to be held against box office. Which means that up to, maybe ten thousand or something like that, some—I'm just throwing out any figure—of the box office is already paid to you in advance. But anything after that, you then make it in box office. So, I've been very fortunate to have a career that extends through all that without having to hold down an extended career as a professor, as a teacher. A lot of my colleagues, that's their option, that's what they have to do. And or moving to New York and working with New York. I tried, being with Irene, kind of showed me that oh boy you know I would see theater in New York, and they were very New Yorky plays. They all take place in New York, and I said, That's not going to happen with me. I'm not going to write about New York. But if I move here, that's what's going to happen. I want to write about this big open landscape, the desert, Texas, California. The open road. I want to write expansive plays. They write plays that are going to take place usually in the theaters in New York. And the stages are really small. They're not really big. You know, the public is big, and the Broadway theaters are big, but most of the little other theaters like Cherry Lane—which is a very famous theater, very—or Manhattan theater project, their stages are actually really small. You couldn't do my plays in those, you know, without sacrificing something about scale. First of all, a lot of my plays require a large number of actors. I do that. I write for nine, ten, thirteen actors and especially in this post-COVID climate, they're very difficult to produce. Somehow, I'm still getting them done. My new play, Quixote Nuevo, Quixote Nuevo uses, I think, ten actors. Mother Road has nine and that's kind of unheard of. Most people write two. Actually, what theaters are looking for now are one-person shows. Because they are easier produce, and they need to make money and they'll build up so they can have more. The Oregon Shakespeare Festival is in a different place, they need to do one-person shows, but they want to grow out of that real quick, because they’ve dropped in like over a hundred actors for the company. And you don't want them sitting idle. You want to do shows that’s going to have them in more than one play, because they're in rotating rep anyway. I do know how fortunate I am, not only as a Latino playwright, but as a playwright in general. I do okay, I can't complain. What was I going to say? Anyway, your next question?\n\nDENNEY: These next couple of questions are about Trinity in general. Do you remember having any Latino professors or instructors? \n\nSOLIS: No. \n\nDENNEY: Okay, how did you feel about that at the time? \n\nSOLIS: I thought that was a given. I thought, you know, I had in high school, I had Latino teachers. Ms. Duarte taught French and I remember her. I remember so many of other Latino teachers. Our principal was Latino, our vice principal was Latino. So many were.. my math [teacher]. Some math teachers were Latinas, but of Mexican descent. But somehow, when I came here, I just didn't see that many people. Because also the student body was largely white. Very well to do white. Really well, you know, polo shirt collars up shorts and you know cocky walk and you know, and I was not of that world at all. I didn't own a polo shirt. I didn't know. I was wearing t-shirts that said, “Shake your booty,” you know. (laughter) I got called down by a student about that and I'd never forgotten it. She says, “That shirt Octavio, it's really offensive.” “What? it’s this KC and the Sunshine Band.” “Yeah, but it's—come on.” But anyway, no but because I saw that all the student body was like that and I just thought they were all going to be white, and they were.  \n\nI didn't see a single Black professor, didn't see a single Asian [professor]. I thought I might see at least one Latino face because some of the students were from—were commuting so I saw that's also the Latinos I saw. But that lives on campus? Very few. Me, Antoinette, and I don't even remember if Juán Cantú lived on campus,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=5700.0,6000.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and Bonnie was only there her senior year. I don't know. I think she had her own apartment by then. By the time you're a senior you want to find your own pad, you know, you just can't live on campus all the time. But no, I—how did I feel about that? I kind of just accepted it. I didn't think I had an option. I didn't think that I had that. I thought it was a given. I'd been to UTEP [University of Texas at El Paso] and I saw Latino professors there, but when I came to Trinity I said, Oh this is a different environment. This is like Ivy League, and I just assumed it was going to be more white and it was, it was. \n\nAnd I said, Boy am I lucky to be here, but I feel like a fish out of water. Really felt like a fish out of water. I think I never encountered any prejudice per se. I think maybe there might have been some from that roommate who I initially was with because he did not even want to talk to me, didn't want anything to do with me, so I just thought maybe he just you know. But I didn't think that all white people were like that because John couldn't wait to move in with me and Rusty—I mean these guys loved me. They still love me. They're my brothers. But that guy was a little, you know, he gave me some moment for pausing you know. No, I generally just felt like I was an outsider, even within the theater department. I felt like I was a bit of an outsider. \n\nThere was one student who was his name was Oliver Czimas. And it was with a C-z-i-m-a-s. Czimas. And I think he was of Czech background or some Eastern European background, but he was American because he spoke without any noticeable accent. But he was tall, and he had the same olive tone I had, maybe even slightly darker, and his name was Oliver. And he was also like skinny and tall, like much taller than I am, and they would confuse us. They’d call him—they’d call me Oliver and they’d call him Octavio all the time. And I said, Come on, I'm not—he's not even Mexican. How can you call him Octavio? He's not Mexican. That's what I was saying inside, but I would just quietly correct people and says, “No it's Octavio sorry.” And they go, Oh yeah, yeah, that's what I meant to say. And it's you know, all because we just kind of have the same skin tone and we had our names start with O and so that happened a lot, even with my professors at the beginning. But then I became kind of a darling in the department with the professors, because I was, you know, I was such an eager beaver of a student. I was eager to please. I wanted to learn. I wanted to be a sponge. I wanted to do the best. I wanted to like be up there in the first row and whenever in English class when somebody asked a question, I was like [Solis gestures] the first one with his hands, you know, straight up in the air saying, “Call on me! Call on me! I know! I know!” And you know they would go to me and then after a while they kind of would ignore me and go, Anyone else? Anyone else? (laughter) You know I was just an obnoxious student that way, but it made me liked among the faculty. \n\nThey did like me, especially Mary Anne Colias, and she reached out to me a few times when she would come to Berkeley to visit her friend. She told me she had MS [multiple sclerosis] and was suffering from it. And she wanted to make a movie and wanted me involved and to write her a script, but I was just so committed with my plays. I could not pull away from them and she was a little mad at me that I just you know she says, “I got this money. I got this thing. I got the resources. Come to Texas now, we can make a movie. Come on, we can do this.” I said, “I can't just tear myself away Mary Anne.” I felt really bad, but I let her down. But we kept in touch, you know I'd write to her; she'd write to me and or make a call. We make a phone call, or she'd call me when she was in Berkeley. And then I heard that she was in hospice care because her MS had [gotten] really bad and that she eventually passed away. But she was a model for me because she was—she just had an eye that wandered. So, she had an eye that looked out here this way. [Solis gestures] But she was so intense and a serious professor, but also a sense of humor. We all just leaned in and just loved her.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=6000.0,6300.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"We loved her. She could be harsh. She could be really harsh and some—especially the girls would have issues with her. Like it's I don't know something that boys don't get, you know. “I hate Mary Anne, I can’t, she's making me do this and I really don't want to do this.” I just didn't understand said, “She seems fine to me,” (laughter) you know. It's something that you know I just didn't get. Some vibe going on between. But I found her really powerful. A powerful instructor. She had a class called Rep Acting where we studied Greek acting styles for a certain length of time, then Roman comedy, and then medieval acting. And in the course of a year and we had to do studies, performance studies on those and it was just an amazing experience, really immersive. And I learned a lot from that. And I've always wanted to find some way to translate that into writing in some way and I'm still struggling with that. I still don't know how quite how to do that, in my experience. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. Did you participate in any student organizations? \n\nSOLIS: No.\n\nDENNEY: Oh okay, just theater?\n\nSOLIS: The theater didn't permit me. (laughter) They just did not permit me. There was a young lady, I remember her, I had a massive crush on her. She was Latina, from San Antonio, who went home but she knew Antoinette. And she and Antoinette connected with this group, she was part of this group and then Antoinette joined it, and they wanted me to join, and they really worked on it. It had to do with Mexican-American engagement presence in the campus. But I don't really know what it is, how it worked, or what it was called. And I can't remember her name. She's beautiful, beautiful. And I really wish that I had given her more time because she was very smart, very committed to it and just you know a sweet lady, sweet young lady. But the theater just would not permit me. I was a slave. It was like slave labor. I belonged to that. I'd be rehearsing until one o'clock in the morning on campus. And then go home and try to do homework because I mean not—we wouldn't be rehearsing like a play with teachers there, you know, those rehearsals were done by ten or eleven. It was scene work and you had to get with your scene partner, when are we going to find time to work our scene? Well, I don't get out of rehearsal until like ten or eleven, so we have to start there. And then there was another scene partner for another class. When are we going to get there? Well only time is at midnight. Alright, let's work for an hour until midnight and sometimes later. And then I would do solo—my solo work. We had solo scenes, monologues, and it was just whenever I could. Whenever I could find a spare room or we would come into the theater, turn on the ghost -the ghost light would be on. Work with the ghost light on. And it was eerie performing your Agamemnon monologue or you know Orestes monologue in that darkened theater. And you could just feel these ghosts in the theater. Just the energy of all the performances that have been going on there and the emotions. They're still resonating. And if you're listening just in stillness, and you take that stillness, and you inhabit the role, you can just feel your body still in conversation with those performances from twenty years before. It was really powerful. And I still feel that energy there. I went, walked in and saw the new theater. And it's completely redesigned from what it was. \n\nSCHNUR: What do you think about that?\n\nSOLIS: I miss the old theater, because it used to be the main stage and then it had these two wings that came out that were made this an amazing panoramic kind of space. But they never used it. Even when I was there. What they ended up doing is they curtained it off. And I think there was one couple of plays that I saw that did use it. And it was great because you could do scene one, scene two, then another scene over here, and then come back. Or while they're doing this one, that changed, the sets changed, because the curtains come down. And then it goes up and it's a different set. And so, you could just—everything had a flow to it. But at some point, I think they, you know, nobody knew how to really make that useful. So, it's sat idle. It was real estate that was just sitting there.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=6300.0,6600.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"I loved it. \n\nWhat I didn't like were the swivel seats. There was a floor, and they were all swivel seats, and they were separated. There was some distance so you couldn't really seat as many people there, because you needed distance because people's legs would hit each other. And at first, I thought that was a great idea because you could swivel from one stage to another and then to another. But if you're just doing a play, as soon as anyone gets a little bored, they start swinging around, (laughter) swinging around, and so you would start watching a lot of people start swinging around when the play got dull for them, and it was so distracting, so distracting. One of the wondrous productions I remember being part of it on that stage—it was called Ruth Taylor's theater at the time—was a production of One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Mary Anne Colias directed that, and I played Warren, one of the wards. And Glenda Love played Nurse Ratched. And Paul Shontay—I forget this guy who played McMurphy. He was really good. I can't remember his name, but I think it was Glenda Love. I think that was her name, who played Nurse Ratched. She was marvelous. It was so good. It was so well directed. She did such a fabulous job. We did a lot of research on it. Reading the novel, watching the movie, but also, we went to wards. We went to several mental wards [to] just interview people and study them and brought that back. And I was watching the attendants, because that's who I was playing. I was playing one of those attendants in white. And we did the play. But what was really astonishing was this one performance—actually it was two performances that we did for busloads of mental patients that they brought. Specifically, a performance especially for them. Made especially tailored for them. So, it didn't have regular audiences. It was them. So, they filled in all the seats, and we did the show, and they were yelling at the play. They hated me. They hated Nurse Ratched. When they jumped and met McMurphy. When they put the electrodes on him and gave him electroshock therapy, they cried out. They yelled and it was as if they were going through electroshock therapy. And it was so electric and scary. Some of them looked like they were going to rush, bum rush the stage. They would stand up and talk to the character and you know half of us are kind of laughing like this, and then the other half are kind of a little just terrified. Not knowing what's going to happen but at the end they would love it. They loved the show. I think they were—I think we did it twice, to two separate groups but it was one of the most remarkable experiences I'd ever had in the American theater in my life. Because I've never done that before. \n\nI've worked with Cornerstone Theater. I've written a play for Cornerstone Theater, that is performed for a community in which the actors, the majority of the actors—95% of them are members of that community, whose stories we got because that's how that works. And the audience is largely often that community that we're presenting the play for. That's what Cornerstone does. It's a very special company. \n\nThis was a little like that. Because we went and looked at them, studied them, interviewed them, and we said, We had to give them a gift. Come and see the play as our guests. You get to come see. So, they came and saw kind of themselves on there. It was really special and electric. So electric, that I just thought a riot's going to start, because they were like almost unruly. You could almost not hear each other, but they were following the play, every bit of it. And it took all our concentration to focus to get on that. I don't know if anyone even remembers that from that era, but I do. I do. I remember it very well and Doug Post was one of the actors in it. This is my sophomore year, I think. Maybe my freshman year. I don't remember, might have been my freshman year. I don't remember. Anyway, you can find out. One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest. Doug Post is now a playwright of note in Chicago. He was from there and he went back and he's taking all that experience and he's become a playwright.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=6600.0,6900.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Really great playwright like, you know, so many others. \n\nMary Anne Colias did another production of Stage Door. I think it's called Stage Door, and it was a movie and she actually used like TV cameras in it. It was being shot like they were making a TV broadcast, or I think it was film. But I think they used like the mock-ups of a TV camera because there was then the play and then there was a crew outside of it, so it had a meta feel. So, it was really interesting. It's very kind of experimental that way. Very, very wonderful. She a was visionary and I miss her. I owe so much to Mary and of everyone at Trinity, she's the one that really walked the walk with Paul Baker's philosophy. Of everyone, she's the one who really truly walked the walk and therefore really came into odds with James Simons in a really particularly nasty way. I don't think, I don't think she was long there after I left, after I graduated. What else?\n\nDENNEY: Oh okay. During your senior year you directed a three-act play The Love of Don Perlimplin by Frederico Garcia Lorca. \n\nSOLIS: Oh yeah!\n\nDENNEY: What was that experience like?  \n\nSOLIS: Oh, The Love of Don Perlimplin. Yeah, it was my—I don't know why I chose that Lorca play. I think it's because I love Lorca. Yeah, and I read Blood Wedding and I said, I want to do Blood Wedding, but it was too big a play. And I had to choose a small one and I was directing it, and I selected a good some really good actors. I don't know what's—I can't remember them all. One of them I do, because she became a really good friend of mine, Elizabeth Herring was her name. And she was in it and it also—the play also has this like fairies and so I had two younger actors also act as like little sprites or fairies and move through the play. And they look like—in a dark sort of romantic drama it looks like an anomaly. Like why these little fairies moving through this play? I could never really explain, but I know I had to have them, so I did. And one of those actors in it also has become a friend. I can't remember her name now, but she ended up in LA and has been an LA actress for quite a while. And both of them actually, I actually see her more than I do Elizabeth. Elizabeth ended up working in voice, I think, and is a good coach. I think she's a good coach. She's not acting much anymore, but she's still working in the business in some respect. She's got a family and, but she was someone that she's the last person that I did that last—in the Attic Theater. It was part of my directing class presentation. I was very proud of that little thing. I didn't know if I knew exactly what I was what I was about. But I really liked the play and I said, There's something here about Lorca that really attracts me. I really like him. And it connected me with Elizabeth. We became really close and then I left, you know, this term was over and I went to England. And so she had another year without me and by the time I came back—wait, when was that? \n\nDENNEY: I thought it was your senior year but also— \n\nSOLIS: It was my senior year. You're right, it was my senior year. Well, I graduated and then she stayed. (Denney laughs) You're absolutely right, because I said, Wait a minute, I didn't do directing until my senior year. So yeah, that was it. And I still have good memories of that. I think I still have the script. \n\nDENNEY: Oh wow.\n\nSOLIS: I think I still have the script somewhere and in storage. I'll tell you about another play I did. I did a play called Crito. It was someone else's directing project my sophomore year and I was playing Socrates, and it was a play based on Crito, one of the books of Plato's Republic. And it's about Socrates and before he's about to be executed—drink the hemlock—and they offer him a prostitute. So, they cast this other actress and me. I remember Peter Lynch, one of the professors there who directed that Journey of the Fifth Horse, he put on this old man makeup on me.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=6900.0,7200.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Completely transformed me. And it was so good. It was so good. I looked like an old man. And I was, you know, I'm barely twenty. And I'm looking at him, I look like an old man. It was great and then they put these robes on me. And I worked on the walk. I looked like an old man, it was great. I did this scene. It was for like—it's one of those names I will come back to. I think Doug reminded me of it, because he saw it and he said, “I thought you did a really good job.” But he didn't mention something even more important about that. \n\nThe director decided to create a wall in the attic space by nailing some sheets, bed sheets, to a two by four, a long two by four, a couple of them, and hung them from the rafters. You know, from where the lights are but just put them up there, he didn't tie him down or anything, he just put him up there. And then there was a bench no wider than this table, that was our cot, our bed. And at the end of the play, she lies there, and I'm supposed to go and lie on top of her, and lights fade out and scenes over. Well, we practice that several times and—but behind the bed right along is the wall, was that fake wall, which is a bed sheet. She must have had some hang up and needed to get off stage right away because when we actually did it before an audience, I got on her and she's right below me and then we go to black, and she just pushed me out of the way got up and ran off. Well, she pushed me back. And I fell back and ended up grabbing the sheet and pulled on it and brought it down, the whole two by four. (Denney gasps) I just went. I fell down and I heard this clunk on my head and then the lights come up and there's me, looking like a ghost with a sheet over my head and everybody's laughing. Erupting in laughter! Everyone. And I'm like just thinking, I just ruined this poor student scene, aw man, and this is terrible and I'm embarrassed. And I just—and then I hear somebody saying, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, you're not moving. Maybe he's hurt.” And they went over there, and they pulled the sheet off—Mary Anne Colias and some of the students—and they gasp. And they all stood back because I was dripping with blood. I cut my head open. I was dripping with blood, and they all said, Oh my god, oh my god! What? Are you okay? I said, “What? What’s going on? Did I do okay? Did I do the scene well?” I was a little dizzy. And Mary Anne says, “We got to get you to the hospital. You can't—just get you to the sister, to the sister station”—because it was a nun at the at the nurse's station—“and we got to get you to the sister right away.” So, I started walking, but that other teacher that I said was burly and with a beard, he swept me up off my feet like this [Solis gestures] Gone With The Wind (Denney laughs) and ran all the way down through the parking lot. And I'm going, “I'm okay. I'm okay.” I'm wearing a white shirt underneath this robe and I'm dripping with blood, and they get me to the nurse's station, and she says, “Get him out of here! No! Take him to the hospital. I can't do that. I can't deal with that.” So, they take me to the hospital. I have to wait. I’m still this—just like a little fountain of blood, it just won't go away. So, I have to hold something on it like this [Solis gestures] and I want to remember that teacher's name. It is Robert. Duffy! It was! Robert Duffy. Bob Duffy. And Mr. Duffy I called him, although we all call him Bob and or Duffy. And he was really concerned for me, and I said, “I'm fine, I'm fine.” And eventually went in there, it was three stitches. (laughter) Those little head wounds, honestly, it's just three little stitches, but they're real bleeders. I was like soaked. So, you know by the time I get home, it's well after dinner. I missed dinner. And the words gotten out to John, and Rusty, and you know my friends that I've been injured. So, I come back to the you know everybody's looking at me going like what happened because I'm still wearing this bloody shirt and I have some shaved thing and a little patch up there. And I'm a little embarrassed by all that and a little woozy tired and dizzy. And I'm drugged. Also, I'm drugged.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=7200.0,7500.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"So, I come into my room and John's there and Rusty's also there and they're very somber. John's been doing his homework, and he looks, and he goes, “So I heard something happened today.” And I went, “Yeah something happened.” You know, they’re Christian scientists, so I can't say you know, I have to be very careful about talking about injuries and things like that or pain, because they don't take any medication and they don't talk about illness and pain in that way. So, I just decided not to talk about it. But they were very concerned still, and he says, “I brought you dinner.” I said, “Thanks John, appreciate it.” From the refectory, they had a tray of food. And I said, “Thanks, I appreciate it. I think I'm just going to lie down for a minute or so.” He said, “Okay, you need us to leave?” I said, “No, you can stay.” And I lay down and I slept until the next day. I slept until the next day. But we never talked about it. Because, you know, they have very different set of beliefs about pain that you know in some respect, that goes back to the transcendentalists that put that poetic movement, Mary Baker Eddie came out of that. And so, I see that all pain, and all harshness is a veil that you have to see through, and you work hard to see through, so I know that they were acknowledging my pain. But I could feel Rusty going like quietly praying to himself to deal with that, you know to—and probably praying for me too. I got it and I understood it. And they never pushed any of that on me, so I respected them. I still do. And the next day I just took a shower and went back there. And they all—everybody was still laughing about, “Man that was so hilarious. Dude, you had us scared there.” But I think it was for—I think it was Crito. I think that's what it was. Maybe it was a different play. Anyway, one of those I did a scene for a student, and I cut my head wide open. Yes? That’s just the digression. \n\nDENNEY: Looking back on your time there, what was it like for you to be a student at Trinity in the late 70s and early 80s? \n\nSOLIS: What was it like to be a student? It was—I would say it was intense, because I took I those studies seriously and I could see around me people that were only half engaged. And I decided I have to be the best at this, because I knew that people were going to look at me and thinking, Oh he's not going to cut it and so I worked to be the best. To get the best grade. To get the best understanding. To be the most engaged student there for whatever all those classes were. Whether I was good at it or not. Whether I actually thought that I had any kind of future in those kind of studies at all or not. Even in geology, I try to stay really engaged and I could tell the professor was kind of looking at me like, you're not really going to be a geologist, you know, but okay I’ll humor you. Because I kept raising my hand and participating. So, for me it was intense because I took that seriously. I went home and I studied and read when I had to do that. But mainly the theater department kept me really kind of cemented to all our scene work. Working at the theater it was—and it was just as bad at the Dallas Theater Center. That was even worse, because you were assigned to crews, and it shifted every semester. You spend one semester working on set crews, you helped build sets after taking four hours of classes in the morning. You had a half hour for lunch, then you build sets for four hours, and then you either go home or you come back and finish working on sets, or you go into rehearsal after dinner, if you're cast in a play. I was seldom cast in a play, so I was on crew a lot. And then you'd switch the next semester to costume, it’s, you know, work in the costume shop. And I was a really good seam ripper. That was all I did, is undo the you know the seams of someone’s bad sewing job, usually my own. \n\nDENNEY: Oh.\n\nSOLIS: So, it was always—I was Mr. Seam Ripper. That's all I did then. I would work on light crew. I love light crew. And that was fantastic because I learned a lot about how instruments work and how to, you know, set up presets and all that. I also worked on sound design and then box office. I worked box office, so I got to work in all those fields and that was part of the philosophy and it made sense. It really made sense because they wanted us to be good at everything in the theater because I think they understood.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=7500.0,7800.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"And I took that seriously, because when I started working with small theaters, I was ready to, you know, clean the toilets and mop and sweep the stage to get the ourselves open. I was ready to like hang my own instruments where the play I was directing, even if I was writing it, I was ready to you know be box office, I was ready to act in you know a supporting role for a colleague's play if they said, We need you. Would you help us with this play? All for like pennies, you know. Came as part and parcel of our philosophy. I think in the theater world, the professional theater world, things are so siloed that actors are only allowed to be actors, designers are only allowed to design, and they can't participate in the acting process in any way. They think directors are just directors and they can't—as soon as they start writing, people think you're not a writer, you're a director. Why are you writing? Now you want to do everything. Well, that's what brought me to Trinity. Paul Baker believed in the Renaissance artist. In making us good at more than one craft, because that's how we run his theater. Randy Moore, who was the elite actor of his company for decades, was also an accomplished light designer, he was also an accomplished acting teacher. John Figlemiller ran the box office and was also in plays and he also taught. There was Irene Corey who was a fantastic designer for costumes but also was great at set design. There's another actress, I can't remember her name, she's a fantastic actress. She's still working in Dallas now, who was really good actress, but was also a fantastic costume designer and boy did they use her in that as well. So, you know it's like they got one salary to do all those jobs and it was you know good salary and not only that, but it was in this one home. So, everybody did a little bit of everything you know. But everything has become so siloed now that in the Broadway world, you can't even touch a prop during a break. Only the people who and the set people and backstage crew are allowed to touch any props until you actually use it for the stage. You can't even move your own furniture and all my plays require—not all of them, excuse me—in some plays I require the actors themselves to change the scenery, that's part of the play. \n\nEspecially Quixote Nuevo. They become calacas and they become part of the changing of the set. Because I don't like seeing people walk on in all black and headphones to come and be the set movers and then disappear. “Pretend you didn't see us, we're not here.” You know, if the curtains up and the lights are on and sets are moving, I'd make it part of the show. I write it that way because it should be continuous, so the scene changes have music, have dance elements in it, as the sets change. The little staging elements that I think are—should be part of the work. Because I just hate to see crew. You know, I don't like to see crew and they don't like to be seen either frankly, (laughter) you know they go, I'm not here. They do it really fast and they're off. So, to me, what was best about Trinity was my engagement with my suite mate and my roommate. The more I think about it now, I keep evoking them because they were such good souls and really have been really good souls. And my theater experience, which was both rich and also fraught with so much conflict and stress and strife, inner strife, internecine sort of strife that I really didn't think belonged in there, but I understood how it happened. And that was too bad. I felt I was kind of caught in the middle of that. A lot of us were, who just wanted to work. Just wanted to study, instead of like take sides, the Bakerites, and the Simonites. You know, they were calling us that and it just made for a really bad atmosphere and it tainted things for me. That's why I left for a year and my senior year; you know we're all walking on eggshells because it was still a little like that. But I think the war happened my sophomore year and my junior year when I wasn't here. \n\nDENNEY: Thank you. So, would you consider Trinity an institution that supports its Latino students then or now? \n\nSOLIS: I don't think that the theater department thought of me as a Latino student,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=7800.0,8100.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"you know, like that and so I don't think that they look to support me and give me any kind of support as a person of color. I don't know that that kind of thing existed, and I think the students themselves had to do it. They had to come up with their own sort of support system and unfortunately, I couldn't be part of it because I was involved with the theater. \n\nBut today, all I see are people of color. I walked to campus and I just I said, “Are we at UTSA? [University of Texas at San Antonio] What happened? Where am I?” (laughter) Because I see so many people of color, Asian and especially Latinos. So many people and it was not even po—it was inconceivable back then. You know, if you saw other people of color, they would be Iranian, some African, a lot the—African Americans were always because of the football program or track and some Asian because of tennis and computer science. Computer science was just coming into being here in the seventies. It was trying to explode and then as you know we had a—my suitemate for one year Rusty's roommate was a Malaysian student named Aslan Abdullah from Malaysia. He was Malaysian and I think he came on a tennis scholarship. But as I was mentioning earlier to Dania, he also liked to drink a lot. And I was going, you know, I thought about it after I said, Wait a minute, he's Muslim. (Denney laughs) He should be—and I think it was like—because in Malaysia they're very strict about that, they could it could punish him badly for that—but here it's like woohoo, I guess you know. Let his hair down and he literally had long hair. He was very cool, but I just don't know how he got around some days through classes. So, in our suite there were two people of color him and me. For one semester, for one year, and you know Rusty's girlfriend, who's now his wife, was Antoinette Salazar from Texas City by Houston, and I got to know her and her and especially her parents and really sweet, sweet, lovely people. So, I don't know that I felt like supported here as a Latino student. I felt supported by Colleen [Grissom], the Dean of Students, because she's watching out for me. I think she thought that I was something to like care for, because she clearly wanted me back and so she was keeping an eye out for me. I think she saw potential in me that even I didn't see in myself and that takes a special kind of vision, so I credit her with that. Mary Anne Colias certainly adored me. She really liked me. She could be rough on me though. And Mr. McKinney, the playwriting teacher, was really great too. Spinks! That's the professor who taught that Yates class. Lee—no not Leon Spinks. He's a wrestler—he's a boxer. Professor Spinks and he also—he always had on his door to this classroom had a different cartoon of Shoe, you know, remember those strips with these birds that went to diners and he wore tennis shoes and that—it's called Shoe. It doesn't exist now. He loved Shoe. And he posted different cartoons there. \n\nDENNEY: Is there anything else you want to talk about?\n\nSOLIS: Is there anything else I? You know, I just feel that Trinity has come a long way from what I see. And not only it's range of courses that it's teaching by focusing as an undergraduate university that keeps it still in the top tier, but also by just the diversity of its students, of its student body, and how they seem so relaxed and chill like they belong here. Like they really belong here. They're part of this and it's like, I mentioned this to my wife last night on the phone and she said, “Well it's the rest of the country. What do you think the rest of the country is looking like that?” It's all looking like that, even Oregon. Medford, Oregon. Rural Oregon, is like so diverse now and it wasn't that, even 15 years ago. It's changed and everyone has to sort of like adjust now to the way,","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=8100.0,8400.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"the new dynamic. \n\nIt's a new day and it feels really like a breath of fresh air for me to come on here and see this and feel like, ah, all these people look like me, well except forty years younger, forty-five okay. If you're going to be specific okay, forty-five. And it's wonderful, you know, so I just have that reaction. And also, the fact that Trinity wants to bring me back, the Theater Department wants to bring me back as a guest professor, to teach, to do a lecture and direct my own play, a play that I'm crafting for them. I think it's really—just says a lot because I thought, They'll never have me here. Well actually Roberto [Prestigiacomo] really tried. He brought me back for Lydia, when they did Lydia and now I've come back several times since then. I came back for, I think, for another talk I attended a few years ago and then I came to San Antonio for the Book Fair. So, it's really fascinating. Fascinating coming back to my alma mater and being kind of given this treatment. It seems so weird, really weird, and you know I have to sort of tailor my behaviors too because I'm not enough from academia anymore, if I ever was. And so, it's like I have to watch my p's and q's. Because in my world, you know, I curse all the time. You know, during the pandemic that's what we all learn to do at home. We just cuss like sailors. My wife and I, we just all—and now it's like no we're part of a socialization is getting to like learn codes of behavior and here in the hallowed walls of academia, you have to really be careful you have to watch your p's and q's because it's a different age and students are more empowered in a way that they have never been before. Which is both good but also, it's like well, sometimes, let's give the power to the teachers. There's a reason they have that kind of position, because they need to teach, and everyone needs to follow a certain program. So, it's, you know, it's a negotiation. We're still negotiating that, and that's healthy. That's healthy. It keeps universities relevant in an age where a lot of people think that they're irrelevant. That community colleges should be it and you know, wow, yeah. \n\nCommunity colleges provide a lot. My daughter went to two years of community college, before she transferred to U of O [University of Oregon]. But there's nothing like the concentrated education you can get from a university. There is no substitute for that. None. You can get focused education in your major field of study and also get that full liberal arts education that includes math, science, the humanities, you know, English, you know, sociology, religion, psychology. All the things that are included in a liberal arts education. But in order to keep it relevant, that system, you have to be willing to examine the programs. Examine how teaching happens and make adjustments where you can because it's different. The days of sitting in the hall with a hundred other students while there's one professor up there and a board and the kind of dislocation you feel from the actual instructor are over. Those are over. I did that here at Trinity, and I attended like lectures and in sociology -Culture and Personality, it was called- and we're part of 150 students and everybody's like this [Solis gestures] and looking up like that. I don't even know what the professor looks like, because I’m way at the back and I have to see things on a big chart and there's none of that personality. None of that actual person-to-person teaching, that I think is now more important and crucial to university education. \n\nI've been working with some people at SOU, Southern Oregon University in Ashland, and the classrooms are all small. They're very careful to keep it trim to like twelve, fifteen students, keep it modest. And if there's even only four, they think, That's good. That's really good. You can really focus on that.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=8400.0,8700.0"},{"id":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051/transcript/87335/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"You know, makes it harder to fund, (Dr. Abreu-Torres laughs) you know, but they're not sneezing at it either because at least they got four you know. I’m heartened. I’m very heartened by what I see, and I hope that I see it more. \n\nI’d love to see—I don't know what the dynamics are in the faculty, I don't know how the demographics are operating there. As far as I understand, I heard from Katie [Kathryn Vomero Santos] she said that—now she's in the English department—that it’s still largely white. But theater department the set designer is Latina, the tech director is Latino. And Roberto well—he's Italian you know he's may as well be Latino. (laughter) He's my brother, I love him. I love Roberto. Anyway, so, I can't really speak to that, because I just haven't been exposed to that. But I appreciate the efforts that Katie, as a person who's not a person of color, the effort she's doing to address issues that are important to people of color and I’m a champion for that. Champion for you, the work you do. Dania, you know, so. \n\nDENNEY: That's all my questions.\n\nSOLIS: That's it! We got through it in record time? Or did I take too long? \n\nABREU-TORRES: Little but more but it’s cool. (laughter)\n\nSOLIS: I am a chatty Kathy I should have—\n\n[END OF INTERVIEW]","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://trinityuniversity.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2313/collection_resources/146812/file/298051#t=8700.0,8811.84533"}]}]}]}