Vanessa Garcia, nominated for the Miami Herald’s “20 under 40” up-and-coming artists, has helped transform Miami’s theatre and writing community over the last few years. Her presence has added a new voice to the growing chorus. In fact, her theatre company, The Krane, has just returned from a successful showing of Two Islands: Island Blogospheres & The Jewish Nun at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. And, she’s getting ready for bigger things. In her own words, Vanessa reveals what motivates her and why she’s so optimistic about the future.

Neil de la Flor: Vanessa, you’re a painter, performer, and a writer who does a bunch of amazing things. I’d like to know: what motivates your creative life?

Vanessa Garcia: I have a lot of energy but the things that motivate me are all of these projects I want to put out there in the world and we have so little time! I also see amazing people, every day, writers and actors, and artists, and poets — people that see the world at different angles, people I think really need to be out there (or their work needs to be out there). I had a painting teacher that told me that talent was nothing but “guts and desire.” That was Archie Rand, I don’t know if you know him, but talk about prolific — the man paints and paints and paints, and then paints some more. Anyway, I catch myself repeating that a lot because I believe in it. I try and do things I’m scared of all the time and I simply love to write, even when it’s hard, I can’t help it. And I really believe in the power of words and art. I believe it does make a difference, and by difference I mean that I think it moves people, it changes brain chemistry, it shifts set mind patters, it makes us better.

ND: Are you optimistic about the future of the arts?

VG: I absolutely am. Because artists will keep making art and they are, sadly, used to making due with less. However, something that does worry me is that the arts are always the first thing to go, especially in schools. When you take away art in a kid, you take away a desperately important outlet that prevents violence and hatred. I’ve seen this first hand. Kids need art. People need it. So instead of funding another standardized test, I’d shift the tide. I believe there are people that can make that shift happen. People in local government, on a national level, and teachers on a one-on-one level, which I personally see, that try despite rough conditions and tough odds.

ND: You have said, “I don’t see different disciplines as disconnected entities. They work together, and they’re better together. Like the world in which we live, they mesh and merge.” How are different disciplines “better together” and what makes better, better?

VG: By better I mean that when you go to the ballet, you’re not just watching limbs interlace and the trained legs and arms of dancers ribbon out in front of you, you’re also seeing a set, painted to further the mood, you’re also hearing music, which the dance is interpreting or vice-versa. You are getting sound, and sight, and touch, you’re getting a whole picture that enhances your experience. You can have a silent dancer, dancing solo in front of you, without music, without set and still be moved. But you can also have painting, music, and dance mixing together and that can, sometimes, when done right — to quote Pretty Woman — make you say: “It was so good I almost peed my pants!”

ND: Oh, my. Onward! How do you feel about crossing and mixing genres?

VG: I’m all for it. I think the more artists put themselves in boxes, the harder it is to record the world in which we live, which is fluid, and ever-changing. I believe this in regards to writing as much as I believe it in the ballet I was just talking about. Why should a piece of theatre be fiction? What is fiction? Who says what these things are and what belongs where. That comes later, after the fact, after things are made and people need to make code and language in order to talk about them. That kind of classifying should never come during the actual art making. Everyone who makes something is trying desperately to capture the world, building on the past, and that’s hard, it’s sometimes seemingly impossible to capture even a second of the world you live in, the real physical aspect of it. What if someone told Shakespeare he couldn’t have any poetry in his drama. Sorry, Shake, Iambic Pentameter and drama don’t blend. What if someone told Shel Silvestein or Lorca to stop making those doodles that went along with their writing. It just doesn’t make sense.

ND: Hear, hear! What’s it like to be a writer compared to being a painter, actress or teacher?

VG: Writing is the most solitary of these. That sounds like the most obvious answer. But, when you right you live so much in your head, with your screen, in your room, at best at a coffee shop or doing an interview for research. It can be lonely. Painting is similar. But teaching and acting, it’s like I need them because I need the collaboration, the interaction, the human touch. Even though painting and writing have the human trace, they don’t have the literal human touch.

ND: Interesting. So, what are you brewing?

VG: I want to do a show for the anniversary of September 11, next year. I want to make a show of shorts — depending how many submissions I get and, more importantly, how good they are and how much grant money we can get. I want this to be about the world after 9/11; I don’t want these plays/performance pieces to talk about the towers, or the mushroom cloud, none of that. I want these plays to be about what happened after. How our world changed. And I welcome dancers, writers, artists to participate. The shows will go up next year in Miami, LA, and hopefully NYC. Maybe further.

I also have a web series in the works and a documentary that’s milling around in my brain as well as a book of non-fiction, but that’s all to come, those are just seeds.

ND: If you could be anywhere in the world right now, where would you be and why?

VG: Right now I’m in Southern California, which is pretty idyllic — I love it here. I love places I’ve never been. No matter where you are there’s that human element that ties us all together, our basic needs, the things we build. I want to go to China, sail on the Panama Canal, and can you believe I’ve never been to Venice? I’ll stop now before I get carried away.

Call for Writers: The Krane is accepting plays and performance pieces for 2011. Contact Vanessa Garcia by email at [email protected] or [email protected] and she will send you all the info. Submission deadline: Nov. 1. For more information on Vanessa Garcia or The Krane visit www.vanessagarcia.org.