cin martinez

Artist Statement

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Humanity, storytelling, worthiness, validations, empathy and unapologetically tribal at its core… I am here to make space, for us. The people of color, multilingual, marginalized, from the “I just want to get by to the I want to thrive.” This artistic work formulates access.

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It was during the development process of the docu-theatre one-act play ‘Frog Hollow State of Mind,’ among Hartfords’ highly dense boricua population, that I became inspired by the idea that everyone I interviewed referred to home, not as their current residence but home being Puerto Rico. It’s visceral.

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I was magnetically pulled toward writing more about the Puerto Rican existence. And so the spark grew into cooking up the story of playing dominos...y la alegría (joys).

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Something powerful is gained when people exhale stories; a liberation of truths. The way their words dance to the rhythm of memories... their world has a raw shape, I crave to capture that essence in Pegao.

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Pegao uses the combination of my childhood memories of my family jugando dominos, expert interviews of the islands’ history and stories from many, many boricuas. Imagination bound it all together to form the play Pegao.   

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There’s a level of savagery that must be tapped into in order to bring muffled voices to stage. This both scares the hell out of me and causes utter fulfillment. Representation matters. Pegao will debut fueling vibrancy on stage, a pulse, an identity portal, a jaded mirror in which the audience finds a piece of themselves in a character, causing a shift... a revolutionary act; loving or even liking themselves, more.