Breath of Fire: in 2003, founded to support the work and enrich the lives of Latinas in the visual and performing arts. Since its inception, it has produced twenty-two play's "from classical works to oral-history projects" that reflect the stories of Orange County residents and bring the arts to life for communities that are often ignored or overlooked on local stages. Our original play, The âMexicanâ OC: Triumphs and Contributions of Orange County's Mexican American Community, a California Council for the Humanities Story Fund Grantee, and was featured as an artistic work during the Lincoln Center Institute at SCR. Breath of Fire has been recognized as an Outstanding Community Leader by the O.C. Human Relations Commission, the County of Orange, and the California State Senate, the 2007 Best New Theater and 2009 Best Artistic Directors by the OC Weekly. The work has also been chronicled in Gestos, a scholarly journal published by UC Irvine devoted to the critical study of Spanish, Latin-American, and U.S. theater and cultural theory. This summer marked Breath of Fireâs staging of Cherrie Moraga's world premiere play, co-production with Moragaâs See-what production of Digging Up the Dirt, made possible by a 2010 National Association of Latino Arts and Culture Master Artist Grant.
Today, Breath of Fire is still the only theater company in the entire Orange County area where dramatic works are produced that specifically tackle the Latina/o experience in America. Joel Beers, theater critic at the OC Weekly, has described us as: âcommunity theater in its finest mode⦠a theater that cares [about] its surrounding community⦠producing vitally relevant and topical work.
