Young Latinx women from South London stand on stage and dare you to call them invisible.
My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar follows a group of activists as they challenge injustice and fight for the representation they deserve.
My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar began with conversations between The Advocacy Academy alumni and activists Valentina Andrade and Elizabeth Alvarado and Creative Director Tom Ross Williams about theatre as a potent tool to amplify activist collective, LatinXcluded’s, campaigns for Latinx rights in the UK.
My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar exists not just as a show but also as a body of work in allyship, activism and grassroots community organising.
This formally innovative project weaves traditional playwriting with direct action and a live-art aesthetic, capturing the urgency of an activist rally and the celebration of a festival, bringing together the creators’ experience as theatre-makers, campaigners and activists. Our work explores dual identity, class and gender.
The project follows a model of co-creation in which the members of LatinXcluded inform the process at every stage, creatively capturing their campaigning, thus becoming a tactic itself to put pressure on key decision-makers and highlighting activism by Latinx youth.
Examples of this include seeing Arts Council England commit to adding a LatinX box on their monitoring forms and King College London carrying out an audit of LatinX students. Part of the outreach of My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar includes the collaboration with Latin X Actors UK through the creation of LatAM Arts, a new directory of Latinx creatives working in the UK; a resource for the community as well as gaining visibility for the community and highlighting the wealth of talent and experience this group brings the UK arts scene.
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My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar the show premiered at Brixton House in June 2023 for a 2.5 week run reaching over 2000 audience members. We sold out, received a slew of rave reviews (5 & 4 stars) and got nominated for Best Play at the Off West End Awards. MUINPE also received a Special Award for the impact it had for the Latinx Community.
Valentina Andrade
Co-Creator
Valentina is a community organiser, activist and campaigner. She is 23 years old, originally born in Bogota, Colombia. Graduate from King’s College London and alumn of The Advocacy Academy. Since the age of 17 Valentina has campaigned against the invisibility of Latinx youth within institutions of power and higher education. She has worked with several organisations such as the Community land trust campaign with Citiznes UK, she is a member of LatinXcluded and is currently the festival producer of Latin X Brixton.
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Valentina Aims to increase visibility as well as encouraging academic achievement within the Latinx community, she focuses on the effects of dual identity (being a first generation migrant) and how this affects your experience as a British latina. She aims to delve into media communications, presenting and journalism in order to further voice her options and work.
Elizabeth Alvarado
Co-Creator
Elizabeth is a 22 year old Ecuadorian activist and campaigner from South London studying at Royal Holloway. She was part of The Advocacy Academy fellowship from 2016-207 and since graduating has worked on the programme as a changemaker. She is passionate about drama and the arts and has been fighting for Latinx rights since she became an advocate.
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Alongside Valentina, she has already been crucial in ensuring that the actors involved in this show can really relate to their unique experience in terms of their working-class background, gender, mother-tongues and dual heritages as being both from South London and Latinx. She has been key in challenging any representation of homogeneity of the Latinx community, strongly advocating for a real diversity of queer, afro-Latinx, white-passing, Portuguese and Spanish speaking actors.
Tom Ross-Williams
Co-Creator, Co-Director
Tom is a theatre-maker, filmmaker, performer & activist. Tom’s practice is rooted in the union of theatre and direct action; be that getting audiences to hack gendered marketing of toys or partake in guerrilla gardening to protest gentrification. For 5 years they were Artistic Director of the political theatre company, Populace, which performed work in venues across the UK.
As Creative Director of The Advocacy Academy, they focussed on the intersection of art and social justice and as well as developing My Uncle is Not Pablo Escobar, most recently produced and co-directed WE THE PEOPLE, a documentary commissioned by the Museum of London about intergenerational activism in Brixton.
They are actively involved in LGBT+ and Gender Equality activism. They write and talk about these issues in various settings, including as a regular contributor to the Huffington Post, a frequent panellist at WOW Festival and most recently, as a guest on BBC Radio4’s “The Moral Maze”. In 2017 Tom was featured in the Guardian as one of the “young activists changing politics”.
Their work as an actor includes RSC, Kneehigh, Soho Theatre, Bush Theatre, Royal Exchange and Lyric Hammersmith. They were nominated for Best Actor at the 2017 Off West End Awards for their one-person show, RUN at The Bunker.
For more information visit www.tomrosswilliams.com
Lucy Wray
Co-Creator, Co-Director
Lucy Wray is a director and collaborative theatre-maker working across scripted and devised shows. Her work explores big political topics through intimate stories and encounters. She was shortlisted for the GENESIS Future Directors Award 2020 and RTST Sir Peter Hall Directing Award 2019. She was longlisted for the JMK Young Director Award 2019. Directing credits include [LAST] a climate crisis show co-created with Contemporary Theatre students at East15; Left My Desk (New Diorama, HOME Manchester) & Goodstock (New Diorama, Greenwich Theatre, Pleasance Edinburgh) for Lost Watch Theatre Company; Celebrate (VAULT Festival, NETFLIX Stage to Screen Award Nomination) & They Built It. No One Came. (Pleasance Edinburgh; UK Tour) by Callum Cameron; COW (Theatre Royal Plymouth, Bike Shed Exeter, Wilton's Music Hall); RUN (The Bunker, Nominated for Best Production & Best Actor Off West End Awards; EGGS (VAULT Festival). As Dramaturg: Give Me Your Skin by Tom Ross-Williams and Oonagh Murphy (BAC & UK Tour).
She was Resident Director on A Taste of Honey for the National Theatre in the West End and on tour, and for The Tragedy of King Richard the Second at the Almeida. As Associate Director for METIS, Lucy makes interactive interdisciplinary performance projects, and facilitates workshops in the UK and internationally with diverse participant groups. She is a reader for the NT New Work Department and Bruntwood Prize for Playwriting.
Joana Nastari
Co-Creator, Dramaturg
Joana is a Queer, Brazilian-British performance artist and dramaturg based in London. Her work has been described as “beautifully chaotic, poetic & political.” An actress by trade, she now writes and performs her own work. Jo’s debut show, Fuck You Pay Me, won People’s Choice Award.
Jo blends music, comedy, and poetry to make dark, observant, funny theatre about strip clubs, psychedelic drugs and matriarchal Brazilian families. She works across artforms such as storytelling, cabaret, dance, Latin music to create productions that are ethereal, glittery and grotty.
Dais has been the lead producer for MUINPE since 2019.
The Hale is a creative producing & cultural organising company specialising in socially-engaged work that is not restricted by form. ​The Hale was founded in 2021 by creative director Dais Hale. We describe ourselves as your cultural nightclub: in any room, anything could be happening. We make shows, parties, cabarets, workshops, digital happenings, cultural events that can happen anywhere, anytime.
We produce and develop artists who have been traditionally ostracised from mainstream spaces, with a focus on Queer, Trans, Global Majority & Learning Disabled & Neurodivergent identities. We prioritise long-term strategic partnership with artists and other producing partners. Our artist portfolio is small because our aim is sustained collaboration: we strive to be the most agile to benefit the artist we work with, developing long-term relationships and strategy.
For more information visit www.the-hale.com
