![]() I think I’m more of an archaeologist than a playwright. In their tragedy, they rely on poetry, themselves, their mind, society, and their condition. My characters are wackos, but they are also beautiful people. I fall in love with the human imperfections. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but there are so many tragedies that people go through, and it’s interesting to me to explore that. I am a chronicler of our moral pestilence. Hector: The inspiration is always the human condition. Jelisa: Where does your inspiration come from? Eunice, the main character, stages the meeting with her mother and her friend, and things start to come out: regret, murder, secrets, darkness, and interracial relationships. If you go out and ask people, what is really tormenting you, but really tell me the truth. Here is the analysis thing, people are tormented by things. Harris, with whom I went on to do some great things with, he was a very good advocate.įifty dealt with a woman who has kept many secrets and on her fiftieth birthday, she decides that she is going to let one out-one that has tormented her. The Alley was a passport and there was a visiting professor, Dr. What would be the value of it to the students? I had an advantage, having had the Alley do my work. I proposed it and had to submit a questionnaire about why I wanted to do it. I wanted to see this play again and I submitted it to the committee at UNT. Hector: In 2003 or 2004, the play was called Fifty and it was actually done at the Alley Theatre’s HYPE festival. Jelisa: How did you become the first student to have their play receive a full production at University of North Texas? How was that experience? I think that lives are very rich and you have to analyze what’s happening within yourself and reflect on that. I love creating people on a piece of paper and have them have dialogues with people and also with themselves. I use my own family, my friends, things that I would like to happen to me and things that happen to me. I see people and I imagine things because I don’t know anything about them, and that’s how characters are created. I chose to write because I had been reading like crazy. It was about a brother and sister falling in love but they didn’t know that they were brothers and sisters. It was a one act play called Love in the Heart Zone that we did in my high school. Hector Amaya: I could say that I started writing as a kid, but my first official entry into writing would be in 1996 when I wrote my first play. ![]() Jelisa Jay Robinson: When did you start writing? Why did you choose to write? In between writing and teaching, Hector sat down with me to talk about his experiences creating new work, how his Garifuna identity plays into his writing, and his passion for playwright Edward Albee. Nowadays, Amaya uses his keen observations of the world to write stories that speak to the human condition. ![]() He also worked on a translation of Lope de Vega’s sixteenth century play Castelvines y Monteses, which he saw performed by UNT’s Theatre Department in 2005, and two years later by the historic Rose Theatre in London. ![]() While in high school, his play Fifty was the winner of the annual Houston Young Playwrights’ Exchange (HYPE) at the Alley Theatre, and three years later it became the first student written play to be produced by University of North Texas’ Theatre Department. In addition to writing plays, Amaya scripts short stories and poems, translates and works as a teacher. The Garifuna American playwright has scripted over two dozen plays that stem from his observations of the world around him. He quickly became my colleague, and we swapped plays and gave each other feedback on our stories. When I found out that the dapper man (he was always dressed in suits) who raised money for the regional theatre, also wrote plays, I wanted to know more. I met Hector Amaya in early 2015 while working at the Alley Theatre. ![]()
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