Imagining Different Worlds

Meet theatre major Dante Tirado Morales.

Hometown: Mexico City, Mexico

Thesis adviser: Professor Kate Bredeson [theatre]

Thesis: “And We Must Stay Awake”

What it’s about: Revolutionary theatre—and how to do revolutionary theatre under state censorship and surveillance.

What it’s really about: The power of theatre to create change. Theatre can let us think of different ways of existence—so we can create connection, imagine different worlds.

In high school: I was cast in El Rey de los Machos, the first Disney television show with a trans man as the protagonist. It was an open call and I just wanted to say, “Oh, it’s going to be a fun thing to tell my grandchildren: ‘Once, I auditioned for a Disney show.’” And I ended up getting the job. The day I flew to Reed was the day we finished shooting the show.

Influential professor/course: Kate Bredeson is an incredible human being, one of the smartest people I’m privileged to know. The amount of things she knows about theatre . . . I want to be her when I grow up. She has a class on playwriting, and it was so, so formative for me—so much that I’ve taken the class twice.

Influential book: Theatre of the Oppressed by Augusto Boal and The Diaries of Judith Malina. Judith Malina was the founder of the Living Theatre, a really influential radical theatre company in New York during the 1950s and ’60s. She was an anarchist-pacifist, two things that usually don’t go together. In the book, you can see the hardships and the heartbreak of making theatre in a world of prejudice. But she made it.

Outside the classroom: I’ve been an activist during my whole life. I’ve done activism for the environment—and when I came out, I created an organization for trans kids and trans teenagers and their families, teaching them about their rights and what they can do in their daily lives to protect their rights and their children’s rights.

What’s next? I’m thinking of doing Spanish translations of plays that I’ve read at Reed, to bring them to Mexican audiences. Bringing plays from France and Germany and the US into Mexico would be a really fun exercise.

Tags: Academics, Students, Thesis, What is a Reedie?, Performing Arts