Washington, DC – Enrique (Quique) Avilés, Salvadoran poet/performance artist and director of GALA’s Paso Nuevo youth program, will travel to El Salvador for a week-long residency in April as part of a cultural exchange between GALA and Teatro Luis Poma. The residency will culminate in a performance on April 21, 2017 by Avilés of his one-man show Los de Allá at the theater in San Salvador, sharing personal experiences as a U.S. Salvadoran and long-time DC resident. Over two million Salvadorans reside in the U.S., representing a fifth of that country’s total population.

 ABOUT QUIQUE AVILÉS

Quique Avilés is a poet, actor and community activist whose work is dedicated to addressing social issues through performance and poetry. A native of El Salvador, Avilés has been writing and performing about issues of race, identity, and the plight of poor people in the U.S. for almost 35 years. His solo performances merge poetry, monologues, music, and visual images. His style is known for being humorous, thought provoking, touching, confrontational, and poetic. His one-man shows include: The Children of Latinia, Rehab, Caminata: A Walk through Immigrant America, Chaos Standing/El Caos de Pie, Latinhood/Latinez, Los Otros Dos/The Other Two, and Salvatrucans. Avilés has performed at a variety of venues in the Washington area, from public parks and libraries to GALA the Smithsonian Institution museums, and the Kennedy Center; DC Hip Hop Festival; Loyola University; and throughout the U.S. Latinhood/Latinez was also presented in Spanish at the Teatro Nacional in San Salvador in 1996.

His poetry and commentary have been featured on NPR’s Latino USA and This I Believe.  In 2004, Quique published his first book of poetry, The Immigrant Museum, an artbook designed in collaboration with Raíces de papel and printed in Mexico City. In addition to performing, Avilés has maintained a continuous commitment to working with youth to use the artistic process as a tool for finding one’s own voice. In 1985 he founded the LatiNegro Theater collective, and in 1999 co-founded and was artistic director of Sol & Soul. He currently directs GALA’s Paso Nuevo youth program, a recipient of a 2012 National Arts and Humanities Youth Program Award at the White House.

GALA Hispanic Theatre and Teatro Luis Poma Artist Exchange is supported in part by the National Association of Latino Arts and Cultures, with Southwest Airlines and the Ford Foundation, through a grant from the NALAC Transnational Cultural Remittances Grant Program.

GALA is a member of Theatre Communications Group, NALAC, the National Performance Network/Visual Arts Network, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and Cultural Capital.

GALA is an acronym (Grupo de Artistas Latino Americanos) and should be written in all capital letters.  The name of our venue is GALA Theatre. Please refrain from using any other terms.