How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
The path to success isn’t paved for people of color. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories as we learn how to say Success in Spanglish.
How Do You Say Success in Spanglish?
Chronicles of a Puerto Rican Visionary in Literature and Theater - Jon Marcantoni
Jon Marcantoni is a Puerto Rican novelist and playwright. The author of five books, he won the 2017 Independent Book Award for Best Southeastern Fiction for his book Kings of 7th Avenue. After the success of his play Puerto Rican Nocturne, about the Cerro Maravilla murders and their aftermath, he founded Flamboyán Theatre in 2022. The company produces new Puerto Rican plays and seeks to build a creative hub for Denver's Puerto Rican community to celebrate their culture and stories, while utilizing multimedia and multi-modal forms of performance for a 21st century theatrical experience.
Summary:
Have you ever sat down with a storyteller whose words instantly teleport you to a world where every color, sound, and emotion is palpable? That's exactly what happened when Jon Marcantoni, a Puerto Rican powerhouse of a novelist and playwright, graced our podcast. With a life as vibrant as the streets of San Juan, Jon unveils the tapestry of his journey — from the military to mastering the art of Spanglish, all while keeping his abuela's legacy alive through his tales and the Flamboyán Theater.
As laughter and poignant memories interweave, Jon recounts the eclectic influences that shaped him: the wisdom of his late abuela Rosada, the cultural awakenings in the marina views of Fajardo, and the fiery spirit of the Vieques protests. These anecdotes are more than just stories; they're a testament to how personal history and the broader strokes of cultural and technological shifts can stir the pot of creativity, giving rise to a voice that's both authentic and relatable.
Navigating the intersection of art and business is no simple feat, yet Jon does so with the finesse of a seasoned playwright. He peels back the curtain to reveal the gritty realities of the publishing world and the theater scene, sharing pearls of wisdom on how to stay true to one's vision in a world that often seeks to commodify creativity. His journey teaches us that embracing our full identity is not just an act of self-love, but a key to unlocking doors previously thought closed. Strap in for an episode that's as much a masterclass in storytelling as it is a celebration of cultural richness and artistic integrity.
See more at www.successinspanglish.com
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Intro Song: Regaeton Pop - Denbow Ambiance
This is Raul Lopez, and you're listening to how Do you Save Success in Spanglish? The path to success isn't easy For minorities and people of color. Many attempt this journey with little to no guidance. Join me as I sit down with individuals who share their stories of perseverance so that together, we can learn how to say success in Spanglish what's good, mi gente, welcome back. It's your boy, raul. Welcome to how Do you Say Success in Spanglish?
Raul Lopez:Today, my guest is John Marcantoni. How's it going, john? Hi, I'm doing great. How are you Doing? All right, man? Thank you so much for taking the time to be on here Just to kind of give a little background on John. John Marcantoni is a Puerto Rican novelist and playwright, the author of five books. He won the 2017 Independence Book Award for Best Southeastern Fiction for his book Kings of the Seventh Avenue. After the success of his play Puerto Rican Nocturne about the Cerro Maravilla murders and their aftermath, he founded Flamboyan Theater in 2022. The company produces new Puerto Rican plays and seeks to build a creative hub for Denver's Puerto Rican community to celebrate their culture and stories while utilizing multimedia and multi-module forms of performance for the 21st century theatrical experience. John, welcome to the show.
Jon Marcantoni:Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited for it.
Raul Lopez:Oh, thanks, man. Yeah, and, like I said, what was great is, you know, I really appreciate you reaching out to me and, you know, wanting to share your story. So I guess, to kind of start off, tell me a little bit about yourself. You know who is John?
Jon Marcantoni:your story. So I guess, to kind of start off, tell me a little bit about yourself. You know who is john? Uh, well, you know I'm a father of three kids. Um, my oldest is in college and uh, then I got two, two teens, and, um, um, yeah, I believe you were telling me your child is 10. So, you know, I'm sure you've heard all the warnings, but actually I really love them.
Jon Marcantoni:They're 12 and 14, and they're turning into such creative, fun kids. But aside from all that, you know I'm a huge movie nerd. I'm one of those people that sees all the Oscar movies. So, like this, last weekend was like my Christmas, basically, and I also, you know, I've been in Colorado since 2014,. Actually coming up on my 10-year anniversary, which is kind of crazy to me. I came out here in the Army, which is a whole experience, and it's all due to the Great Recession making life really miserable for anybody who graduated in 2009, 2010, like I did. And you know I'm just your regular crazy artistic guy. I don't know what else to say.
Raul Lopez:Nice. No, thank you for that. And I'm a big movie guy too. So I just watched Dune 2 last weekend, and you know I love all types of movies. Remain in the theater. No, it's good, it's a really good movie. So I guess you know. My first question is you know, it seems like you've kind of been all over the place. You know, where did you grow up?
Jon Marcantoni:Well, kind of all over. I've been down the East Coast, but mostly in the South Georgia, south Carolina Florida, georgia, south Carolina Florida Spent a lot of time going back and forth from there to the island, particularly to Fajardo and to Guadalajara, so it's kind of like two sides of San Juan, and Fajardo, for me, was always home. I was very, very close to my mother's parents, especially m y abuela. She was kind of more of a mother to me, to be honest, but yeah, her home in Fajardo is where I always called it to be my hometown, even though I lived in Augusta, georgia, which is mostly known for the Masters. But yeah, it was very different being Puerto Rican outside of the normal enclaves that you usually think of Puerto Ricans to be in, and I think that that offered me a unique experience which I really treasure.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, I mean Georgia. Is there a big population of Puerto Ricans in Georgia at all? I know Florida is, but not.
Jon Marcantoni:Not particularly Well, not that part of Georgia.
Jon Marcantoni:I mean Atlanta does land of its own people, but you know, the Latinos I was mostly around were Mexican-Americans, and also I lived in kind of a strange place because my dad was an engineer, or is an engineer, and he worked at a nuclear power plant called Savannah Riverside and being a nuclear power plant, it invited people from all over the world. So I had a lot of Asian classmates, I had a lot of African American classmates, a lot of Indian classmates in particular, and so it was very cosmopolitan. For not being a very cosmopolitan place, I guess you could say it was a small city, but it felt a little bit like Queens. You know some of those parts of Queens you can go into where you hear like 20 different languages you didn't even know existed, but it's one big community, like there are parts of Augusta that are like that and, just as a funny anecdote, it's also why I'm one of the few Puerto Ricans who loves spicy food, but it always messes up Americans, americans are like what are you talking about?
Raul Lopez:You're Caribbean.
Jon Marcantoni:You have to love spicy food. No, no, no, that's just Jamaicans. Aside from Jamaicans, the rest of the food is savory and sweet. It's not spicy whatsoever. The rest of the food is savory and sweet. It's not spicy whatsoever. But I had for a little while. When I was a kid, we had neighbors who were from South India and they would invite us over all the time. Wonderful family Invite us over all the time and got me addicted to spices, got me addicted to that curry. You know so. So you know it's. It's done well for me.
Raul Lopez:Now, living in colorado, um, my, my wonderful girlfriend is mexican and it allows me to hang with her, if nothing else yeah, it's funny the way you mentioned that, because I think it's, for I remember the first time I went to, one of the first times I went to this puerto rican restaurant to have mofongo, uh, and it was in houston and there was the owner, who was also the chef and cooking everything, and he comes up to me and he goes, oh oh, try this pique. I made this pique. I made this pique and I'm like, oh, yeah, let me put it on. And it was like the most mildest hot sauce I've ever had. I was just like, oh okay, no, it's good, it's good. I'm peruvian, I know what spicy means, but no, it's cool, it's, you know. Yeah, but it's hilarious the way that you mentioned that. So that's awesome. So, uh, I got my wife getting a little more spicy too, because she's Puerto Rican, so I'm getting her used to some of the Peruvian spices. Oh, okay.
Raul Lopez:Okay.
Jon Marcantoni:Yeah, no, my sister-in-law is actually Peruvian. Oh nice, yeah. So my brother married a Peruvian who he met in Germany, Nice, we're all over the place, which is a great entryway to just talk about. Like you know, Puerto Ricans are like all island people are. We are a gateway to the entire world and I think that, more than being citizens of any one place, we're citizens of the entire world. And that's one of the beautiful things about us as a culture is that we can let in all sorts of people, appreciate the different things about them, appreciate them as human beings, and still maintain who we are intrinsically. And I think that that is something special with island cultures that we welcome in the mixture of different people and different cultures.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, I mean the fact that you guys are such a melting pot that it allows you to be open to all sorts of, you know, different cultures. Because you guys have so many different cultures, I mean someone who's grown up his whole life people thinking I'm Puerto Rican. You know what I mean. You guys blend in everywhere. It's great. I love Puerto Rican. I mean I married one. I mean obviously one. I mean obviously so. It's been great. And so I know now you run the Flamboyant Theater in Denver. But I mean, did you have a?
Jon Marcantoni:passion for the arts early on in your life. Yeah, you know, when I was six I started going to this school in Georgia. Funny enough, the drama teacher had been my babysitter when we had lived in Baltimore previously. So I say I was living in Georgia, when I was six.
Jon Marcantoni:It was the fifth place I had lived in, so it's giving you an idea of what my early, early childhood was. So the elementary school that I went to it had a really good arts program. In fact it was a mandatory arts program we had to every week. We had art classes, music classes and drama classes. Every week. We had art classes, music classes and drama classes, and the drama teacher had actually been my babysitter when we lived in Baltimore. We moved to Georgia from Baltimore and that was actually the fifth place that I had moved from by the age of six. So I was all over the place. Just to give you an idea of what my childhood was like Were, you guys moved because of like military.
Jon Marcantoni:No no. Well, what's?
Jon Marcantoni:funny is, my dad was in the Navy, but he got out before I was born, like right before I was born. He was just, he was an engineer and he was trying to move up the ladder and so he would just take, uh, whatever job would help him in his career and that meant a lot of moving for us, um. But but in this elementary school, um, my drama teacher was this really, really wonderful lady named Miss Thornton, and she saw a lot of potential in me and I love drama class and I really I had already started to become obsessed with books and wanting to write my own stories. I think the first short story that I wrote that could be called like an actual like story was, um was when I was eight. Um, I wrote I think it was a vampire story is what I wrote. Um I was. I was very obsessed with horror also at the time. So, yeah, I immediately felt a connection to and a warmth for theater and also for literature, and I think that that passion for it also invited certain adults in my life to see some promise in me and I got pushed toward that direction quite a lot.
Jon Marcantoni:All throughout my childhood. I had several teachers who I remember. This one. She was my 11th grade English teacher and she was like I remember her telling me she was like John grade English teacher and she was like I remember her telling me she was like John, you can write, like yeah, there's a lot of kids interested in writing, but you have a talent, this is an actual thing that you can do, and her being incredibly encouraging.
Jon Marcantoni:And then, just you know, theater became a home for me. That's for a lot of kids, especially kids with dysfunctional families, which I'm totally open to talking about. I mean, it's just a part of who I am. It was a very chaotic household that I grew up in and theater provided a sort of stability and theater people being very accepting and very nurturing. I felt very safe in that environment and the kinds of mentors that I got in doing first community theater and then regional theater theater and then regional theater and eventually, when I was 18, I actually joined a professional street street performance group and we would do performances all around town and first friday events and that was an amazing experience to have as a young person. But it all kind of started with having that support system so.
Raul Lopez:So you said that the theater helped support uh, give you support from your dysfunctional lifestyle that you were dealing with uh is it. Was it one of those situations where it's like the less time you were home and the more time you were doing theater stuff, the better you felt?
Jon Marcantoni:Yeah, yeah, that's exactly it. I, you know, even like in high school, being involved in different theaters, and especially the fact that I was able to get roles outside of like a school play and I was doing things outside of just like what school had to offer, um got a big ego out of that and really felt like I was an adult. That was one of those kids that that definitely, definitely wanted to grow up. I wasn't interested in staying a kid, I wanted to already be driving and going out to all the adult places and just being around adults. I was very obsessed with that at the time and I felt special. I felt special to, you know, when I was 18 years old, get cast in a regional production of Angels in America. This is a very difficult play, it's a very advanced play for any actor, and the fact that I got cast as a character 10 years older than me and that made me feel special. It made me feel like, okay, I must really have something.
Raul Lopez:And do you think the people that were part of this theater group, the part of your theater life, helped influence you to keep motivating, to keep succeeding and doing more for your life?
Jon Marcantoni:Yeah, absolutely. You know, I feel very fortunate to have been around very ambitious people. I feel very fortunate to have been around very ambitious people and aside from that, aside from just the encouragement that I got from peers and from the community, my parents have an incredible work ethic.
Jon Marcantoni:And even if they didn't always understand why I was doing the things I was doing or why I was so interested in the arts, I think they did respect and still do respect the hustle and the persistence that I have in pursuing the things that I want to pursue, because that's how they were. You know, my mom was an educator and had to overcome a lot of sexism and racism. Being an Afro-Puerto Rican woman, I never let that stop her from expressing her opinions and expressing what she felt was the right way to teach kids. She was a Spanish teacher, so she really had no tolerance for a white male administrator telling her how to teach Spanish. You know, how to teach her own language, you know.
Jon Marcantoni:And my dad my dad was someone who, I mean he was very career minded and very ambitious. He was also very thoughtful, you know, as he became a manager early on and actually a lot of his experiences as a manager and as a leader in his own industry has been very inspirational for me and has inspired some of the ways that I try to work with people and try to be both empathetic but still get the job done. So, you know, I think it's kind of in my blood to be a leader and to be ambitious and then to also get that encouragement from the outside world. It really made me feel like, okay, this isn't just in my head, you know, it's not just me thinking that I'm great, it's other people are seeing that I do have something to offer. So I think it was a mix of those things.
Raul Lopez:Nice, and you mentioned that your grandmother was a big influence in your life. Can you tell me a little bit about your grandmother, sure?
Jon Marcantoni:Yeah, so my abuela Rosada, she, I don't know what to say I mean you know as an abuela.
Jon Marcantoni:she was just the sweetest, most loving, most encouraging person possible. You know her and my abuelo, who unfortunately died when I was six. You know her and my abuelo, who unfortunately died when I was six. They got a house in Farhungville, overlooking a marina actually, so it was just on a hillside and, as you can imagine being a kid and like seeing the sunrise over the marina and being able to just play out there in the marina and, um, being able to, it's just play out there and it's like the palm trees and they have this like big bean tree and you have the ocean in the distance.
Jon Marcantoni:Um, it was a really idyllic place and my abuela you know my spanish wasn't very good growing up. Um, I would say that by the time I was a preteen, I could have a very basic conversation in Spanish, but I didn't become fluent until after she had died. She died when I was 19. And yet we still communicated and she helped me with my Spanish a bit, I helped her a little bit with English, and even I remember during the Vieques protests in Puerto Rico. Are you familiar with that?
Raul Lopez:Yeah, but if you want to explain it a little bit for people listening, for any Puerto.
Jon Marcantoni:Ricoans who aren't familiar. The US used Vieques, which is an island off the coast of Puerto Rico this is part of Puerto Rico Used half of it as a bombing range for 15 years and in I believe it was 98, one of those bombs killed two Puerto Ricans. Bombs killed two Puerto Ricans and in the aftermath there was these massive protests that lasted over a year, well into 2000. And in the end the protests got the US to remove the Marines from the ECAS, which is a huge triumph for the Puerto Rican people. And Fajardo is actually to get to Vieques, you have to go to Fajardo first, so, like the boats that leave for Vieques are there.
Jon Marcantoni:So a lot of the marches for well, against the bombing of Vieques went in front of my Obama's house and I remember I was about 15, writing a short story about those protests and I put myself into it and, you know, did all the dramatic things that you do, and I remember being able to share that with her and she was so encouraging, even though probably half of what I wrote she didn't understand, you know, it didn't matter, but she was encouraging. I'm her, I'm her, um, you know and um, and she just provided stability. You know she, but she also is is a badass woman. You know I hope it's okay to say say uh, that word, but you know she um, after my abuelo died, she just like reinvented herself. You know, she um got really bingo nights, like playing bingo and slot machines was like that was her, her passion. And in bajarala there's a place called El Conquistador which is a five-star hotel and casino, and she would go there and gamble once a week and also see her friends, and she built a whole friend group for herself and she had a community.
Jon Marcantoni:She didn't. Her identity wasn't just being a mom or an abuela like her. Her identity was also about herself and about living the life that she wanted to live. And that was very, very inspiring for me to see that sort of confidence, especially that sort of confidence after what had been a very difficult life that she had. So, so yeah, she's just, she's still very special Nice.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, I mean, as someone who's my grandmother's favorite, you know, I know that love and that bond, you know, and and it's nice to to have something that's inspirational like that and it also seems like, because you're close to your grandmother, you also spent a lot of time on the island and that kind of overlapped with your love of Puerto Rico and your love of that and that seems to have influenced a lot of what you're doing. Did you know early on how you were influencing yourself? Not, did you know, but did you start? I know you said you started writing about puerto rico, about the vehicle. Is that kind of starting your, your whole path into focusing on including your love of your, of your island, with your art?
Jon Marcantoni:um, you know that that that story was was probably the yeah, it probably was the first time that I had written about the island a couple years prior to that. So we're talking like 96, when the internet finally becomes available to everybody. Aol for a while, yeah, and it was AOL. It was dial up. It took 20 minutes to log on and you always had to get off because somebody had to make a phone call.
Jon Marcantoni:Um, but in those early days of the internet, when it was mostly text-based like a lot of people don't remember the internet was largely just text and, as a result, um, the the only law that's ever been passed in regulating the internet is from that time period, and so it placed the internet under the same category as literature, and there was actually, just like a year or two ago it was very recently, it was post-COVID there were some legislators wanting to revisit that law, because one of the things that that law allowed and I know I'm getting a little on face, but I promise I'm going to come back so the thing with that law is that it's the reason why pornography is so rampant on the internet, because there were a bunch of laws passed in the 1960s protecting freedom of speech for writers and? Um, so you have a bunch of pornographers operating under under laws for writers, and but you also have a lot of protections for political speech, and so all these conspiracy theories and all these blacko stuff that you see online is also protected under that law, right, and so there's a lot of people that want to like change that so that they um, so you can be a little more strict, but, um, back in the early 90s, because of that law, you ended up having tons of stuff on the internet that hadn't been so readily public before. Amongst those things, material on puerto rican independence and the fight for puerto rican independence, and especially pedro avicenca, who in his day, was public enemy number one. He he led a a revolution against the United States in 1950 to liberate Puerto Rico. That resulted in him being sent to a prison in Atlanta where he was tortured for six years, and the torture that he experienced were radiation experiments where they would blast x-rays into his prison cell, and he ended up burning 60% of his skin irreparably, that he had burns all the way until he died, and he ended up dying of those injuries um 12 years after he got out of prison.
Jon Marcantoni:Um, an incredible hero, um, someone I've always idolized um, as does anyone who loves cultism idolizes him, and I learned about him because they were able to put this up on the internet and the government couldn't stop it. I learned about Pedro Luis Ocampos. I learned about the revolution. I learned about the Ponce massacre and the Rio Piedras massacre. I learned about Cerra.
Jon Marcantoni:Maravilla. I learned all those things when I was like 13, 14 years old, so very formative time for me, and I would say that that really radicalized me, in being not only politically radicalized but also just identity. You know, my brother and sister struggled, uh and still do struggle, with um feeling like they belong with puerto ricans, um feeling like they were receptive I've been there enough but for me I was like no, no. So you know they've been you know, I'm I'm a son of a bison, like, like.
Jon Marcantoni:I completely identify with his struggle, and I'm, you know, the reason that I'm here in this country is because of what the US has done to us and have made Puerto Rico so inhospitable living, and so I'm fighting this fight too. I'm here with you, don Pedro, you know, and that kind of strengthened my own sense of saying F? You to anybody who ever questioned my Puerto Rican-ness. And I think because that happened at a very formative age and then was immediately followed by Vieques, and Vieques was the first time in over 20 years, at that point, that Puerto Rican independence had even been popular. And the US has a history of basically every time there's an upswing in a desire for independence, either one of our leaders are murdered or, in the case of Central Maravilla, our activists are murdered, and it's all a scare tactic to keep us down.
Jon Marcantoni:So, yeah, those were very formative things for me and writing that story was the first time that I learned about Puerto Rico, about being Puerto Rican and what that meant to me. And really, from that point on, I mean all of my books. I've written five books. All of them deal with the Puerto Rican experience.
Jon Marcantoni:My two plays, puerto Rican Doctor and Empire of Solitude, which is about Julio de Bordos, those are about the Puerto Rican experience and wrestling with a lot of these philosophical and political um ideas that are are very difficult to express in an environment where, because we are pinned as just latinos and the latino movement is largely Mexican-American at the expense of everybody else, the Latino movement is all about assimilation to the United States. It's all about coming to the United States, loving the United States, revering the United States. It's very pro-American. And then the Puerto Rican and Femin Independence Movement is very get America off our land. You know, and it puts you in a very weird place as a Puerto Rican artist to be proudly Puerto Rican and outspoken about your own support for that independence, because it does put you at odds with the listening community in a way that also has been very fascinating for me as a majestic person.
Raul Lopez:I think it's very hard for a Puerto Rican to not be somewhat political in their ideology one way or another. It's just in your nature. Other it's just in your nature, yeah, but it. But then also, you know, I think people don't understand how much writers have influenced revolutions. You know, from like jose marti to. You know, all over the place where you have, you know, and I think even like in cuba, you know the downfall that got castro into into thing was that we had a lot of college kids that were allowed to write, which allowed freedoms of writing. That way we get spread out. So, like the same way you learned because of all the writings on the internet. And so you know, tell me a little bit about the books that you've written and your process and you know getting published and stuff like that. Like, tell me about that.
Jon Marcantoni:Yeah, well, well, man, well, first let me tell you about the publishing process, because mine was very, mine is very different. It's not the typical like, oh, I got an MFA and I, you know, went to NYU or I got an agent, no, no, no. So I first got published in 2006 in a short story I thought was called the Shortcut, and that was actually for a story called the Revolutionary, which was about a Puerto Rican patriot who, for reasons that are revealed over the course of the story, fled Puerto Rico in the 1920s and is living in Cuba in the 40s and he befriends a young girl who's going through a really hard time and the story is about that friendship and it's about how he begins opening up to her about what his past was and in unlocking his past, he's able to give her, um a hope for her future and uh. So, yeah, it was a really good story still one of my favorite stories and um, and so that gets published in the short story anthology.
Jon Marcantoni:When I was 22 and then, when I got out of college, I well, because it was a great recession, the only job I was able to get, so originally I was going to return to Puerto Rico. I had a job lined up for me with Instituto de Cultura in San Juan and that was my plan. I was going to go back to San Juan. My ex-wife supported that at the time. Then in Puerto Rico it was a depression it wasn't a recession, which we still have not gotten out of. All of the programs that LAC Curriculum were cut. Everything I had worked for for four years was out the window. So I ended up getting a tech support job, a very bad tech support job. But you know I could use my degree because it was a bilingual job and my degree is in Spanish studies. So while I was working that job, I was still like well, I want to be involved in literature in some way. Right, and I got a job as an editor at a publishing house called Sibong Books, which still exists and it's based out of Hawaii, and I became an editor for them. I ended up representing four or five of their authors over the course of the time I was with them and I gained such a good reputation with the authors that they actually wanted to make me the editor-in-chief. But because they were a small company and the publishing industry being the way it is, I wasn't going to be paid for doing that. I would only be paid royalties, which is the same as being an editor and it doesn't pay you nothing. It pays you nothing.
Jon Marcantoni:And it was around that time I got sent away to the Army. But prior to going into the Army, the guy who was the editor-in-chief this guy named Zach Oliver he well, I edited one of of his books and then he became editor and she decided to turn his job down and and I asked him like hey, I have this manuscript which, um, I, I, it, I, this manuscript had almost been published two other times and both times the publishing house that picked it up folded this book, was cursed. But I still ask that, like hey, could you look at this and just tell me if I should keep trying to get it published? And it was a book of short stories about interconnected short stories, and the connecting strand were these two friends who take a cross-country trip trying to escape their lives, which are going nowhere, their lives which are going nowhere, and the ultimate, what ultimately happens on this cross-country trip, is that one of them decides that he wants to go back to Puerto Rico and fight for independence. So a lot of these stories also deal with Puerto Rican independence. It included that short story that was then published bbc and um, and so I I give it to zach and I'm just like, be honest with me, 100. If it's not good enough, I'll just dump it and I'll just write something else. Um, and about a week goes by and he emails me and he says we're publishing this. I'll tell you this right now Not only should it be published, but we are going to publish it, and that was how I got published.
Jon Marcantoni:That was how I started off being an author, which is very different. It was from the inside. I was an editor. I'm really glad that I had the experience in publishing. That I did, because it actually set the groundwork for what I now do with Flamboyant, with our American Playwrights Program, where we develop new playwrights not only creatively but also professionally.
Jon Marcantoni:There's an astounding lack of professional development for writers in every field, and so what made me aware of them is, you know, I got published because I was an editor. Being an editor meant that I got to learn the ins and outs of a publishing house. I got to learn why they make the choices that they make, the way that they regard writers, the way that they look at writers as a commodity and also as a creative partner, and having that professional insight as a writer was game changing for me, and it was also something that I saw. The more and more writers that I worked with, I saw the astounding lack of knowledge that they had about the way that the industry actually functions. So, as a writer myself, I was able to navigate spaces more intelligently and more efficiently. So that you know, I'm 39 now.
Jon Marcantoni:I can't tell you how many writers I know in their late 40s, their 50s, their 60s, who haven't been published as much as I have done.
Jon Marcantoni:And that's not just with books, it also with articles, with short stories, poems, all of that sort of stuff. I've been published a lot and I was able to do that because I understood the way the business worked, and now I'm trying to do that with theater, which we can get into in a little bit. But having gotten my first book published that way, it was very easy for me to get my next book published, which happened after I had started being in the military and when I got out of basic training. Zach had left Savant and started up his own publishing company and he asked me to run its editorial department me to run its editorial department, and it was through that experience that I came to represent over 20 writers in about seven different countries, and it's where I also got introduced to the literary scene in New York as well as the theater scene in New York, and that ended up opening up the door for me to eventually create Flamboyant.
Raul Lopez:And so tell me a little bit about Flamboyant and what you guys do there. Yeah.
Jon Marcantoni:Well, so, um, flamboyant essentially came about because, um, so, after Hurricane Maria I, I decided to change a book that I had been developing about the Sacramento BA Murders into a play, which is Puerto Rican Nocturne, and I had a few friends in New York who had asked me to be a part of a short play festival that they were doing as a fundraiser, and that was the germ of the idea of making Puerto Rican actor in a play, and I was able to get the resources put together to put that play on.
Jon Marcantoni:It was going to premiere on March 13th, 2020, which is the day that everything shut down, so that production went out the window and instead, two years later, after I had moved up to Denver I had been living in Colorado Springs prior to that, which is about an hour south of Denver I moved to Denver in 2021. And then, in 2022, I made enough connections that I was able to do a full production of Puerto Rican Nocturne here. It premiered at an historic theater here called the Bug, which started its life as a silent movie house, and in getting that play put on. So, being a representative for authors in the publishing world taught me how to interact with the media and how to get the media to pay attention to you, and so I was able to get a lot of coverage for Puerto Rican.
Jon Marcantoni:Nocturne even though I didn't really have much of a base here in Denver, and a lot of the people who ended up coming out both to audition as actors and also as audience members for the show itself ended up expressing to me how alone they have felt here in Denver and that they didn't even realize there were other Puerto Ricans here. They, um just feel like the the whole culture of Denver ignores them. Um, because Denver actually has a very large Latino art scene, but it's all Mexican and Chicano, um, and just to the exclusion of everybody else. There are a couple of institutions, most notably the Museo de las Americas, that is a lot more inclusive and brings in all of Latin America into their exhibits. They're a wonderful institution. If any of your listeners plan to go to Denver, I highly recommend it. So yeah, not only did I get that response, I also got the response of there's actually a large amount of Hurricane Maria refugees who live in Denver and this community is just very unknown and nobody has tapped into them.
Jon Marcantoni:I initially started off Flamboyant as, more broadly, bipoc, but I wasn't able to get much traction with that and I was like you know, what am I doing? Why am I going away from what I know myself to be. I'm Puerto Rican. Puerto Rican arts are what bring me passion, my people are what bring me passion, and it was, frankly, fear. I was afraid of just going all in on the puerto rican thing, um, because I thought there wasn't room for us here, but I've instead found, since refocusing flamboyant to being just about pu Rican artists, so much support because there are Puerto Ricans who are working in all sorts of different fields here and who have businesses here and who are really hungering for stories to represent our people. And you know, and we, we do this through our original productions. I mentioned Empire of Solitude earlier, which is about Juliana Borges and is a celebration of her life and her poetry, connected with a lot of other veterans here, and one of them being a writer, denise Subisarretta, who wrote a play called Denise, which is about her time in serving in Guantanamo Bay after 9-11 and how it affected her marriage, which is a story that I believe a lot of veterans, no matter your background, will relate to. But especially being able to tell a Latino veteran story in this vein is very important, I believe, for our community.
Jon Marcantoni:And then our Emerging Playwrights Program, which just launched yesterday. We have two really exciting writers, bailey Schlitzman and Alejandro Valdearre, who is a Mexican-Puerto Rican, both of them living out in the western United States, and the theme for our Emerging Playwrights program this year is Western Boricuas, focusing on the diaspora that is west of the Mississippi and is overlooked, and trying to connect them back to the rest of the diaspora, the more established communities in Chicago and New York and Orlando, as well as the island itself, because I believe that the future of our people depends on the unity of our people and this program. You know, these writers are mentored on their scripts, but they also engage with content that I've created, these classes which focus on professional development, these classes which focus on professional development, on how to engage with the media, how to engage with an audience, how to build a budget and a marketing plan, how to work with a director, how to work with actors, how to work with a tech crew, all the different things that you need to know to actually produce a play. And this is all in the whole, because, like, I'm doing this kind of stuff, but this stuff that I'm doing does not matter if the people I teach don't then teach others. So what I'm hoping for is that Bailey and Alejandro and all of our future students I'll just call them students that they will take this knowledge and teach it in their own communities and set up their own theater companies. But once you know the business side of theater, once you know the way that it functions, then you're able to do a lot more with your creative work.
Jon Marcantoni:And one of the things that is most important to me in communicating in this program is how, even though the business side is all about commodity, you, as the artist, have to keep your humanity.
Jon Marcantoni:If you lose your humanity, there's no point in you doing this. You have to keep who you are, and the more you see yourself as a commodity, not only do you limit yourself as a human being, but you also limit your work because you're trying to write things for your TikTok and Instagram and Twitter followers instead of what is most important to you in your heart. And what's most important to your heart might not seem marketable, but here's the great thing about the age that we live. We live in an age where the internet allows you to reach any audience who's interested in anything, and so this whole idea that, oh well, because of where I live, because of my racial or ethnic background. Because of my particular interests, I can only tell certain kinds of stories because there's only one kind of audience. That is old thinking, that is pre-Internet thinking. We're in the Internet era. You need to embrace that there is a community and there is an audience, no matter where you are and no matter who you are.
Raul Lopez:Yeah, one of the questions I was going to ask you because that was something you brought up in your pre-interview about. You know, keeping your humanity and it reminds me of this book that I really like by Simon Sinek you know, start With why. You know where it's the how and what you're doing doesn't matter. If you have a strong why, if your purpose is strong and you have a strong reason of doing it, everything else will fall into place, as long as you can always maintain that, like you said, that humanity as your goal. So it's a wonderful thing that you're doing there. And, you know, do you have you seen a lot of? Because you're talking about a big factor that I think a lot of people misunderstood, don't understand when they're trying to start off something is not just knowing the passion and not knowing just the what you're good at, but understanding the, the business.
Raul Lopez:You know understanding the media, like you know have you noticed that people who have come to your classes, have come to Flamboyant, are starting to like oh, that's. That was the missing part. That allowed me to branch out.
Jon Marcantoni:Yeah, I think that is the response that I've mostly gotten has been like okay, now I understand why this is run this way. Lot of there's a lot of misunderstanding of why arts organizations make the decisions that they do, um, and why. You know, there there's there's a tendency amongst um the artist to look at the institution that they're trying to appeal to as not also being people or not also having their own business concerns. You know, because, like we're, we're putting our heart out there, we're putting ourselves on the line and so if we're not accepted, we take it very personal. Amazed, how many times, like, I've submitted work and I get told no, but then an editor who had also reviewed my work reaches out to me later on and says hey, we really enjoyed what you submitted. Will you mind submitting again? We'd really like to showcase you. Or, you know, one time I submitted a story for a grant and I was turned down for the grant but the publication came back to me and said, hey, we still want to publish your story and we can't give you what the grant offered, but we will give you the stipend.
Jon Marcantoni:You know, the people who run artistic institutions and organizations are fans also and they are having to cater uh, their tastes for what the organization is wanting. It does not mean that they're always selecting the thing they themselves want the most. So just getting yourself out there and exposing yourself to more people and getting more people to know you, that's really the most productive thing. And you don't necessarily want all institutions to love what you're doing. It might speak to pulling punches on your part as an artist. It might speak to like, maybe you're not taking risks the way that you should.
Jon Marcantoni:You know, rejection is not necessarily failure. And when these writers find out about the way the business works and the way that, um, the the reason why decisions are made, the way that they're made, um, I I hope that it's kind of a relief for them to see, like, okay, I, I can navigate this space, not take it personally, also not sacrifice myself and make better decisions about who I reach out to. You know, because not every place is going to be made for you, and if you can't find any place for you, that's when you need to start looking for yourself. Yeah.
Raul Lopez:No, it's a great lesson to learn and you know, it's something, I think that comes with time the whole idea, you know, not taking things personal, and realizing that rejection isn't the end of the road, it's just a different opportunity and you have to branch off from where you're at. So great lessons to kind of learn. And speaking of that, if you were trying to go back in time and talk to the younger version of yourself, what's some lessons you'd give yourself to help you on your journey that you wish you had known?
Jon Marcantoni:What's some lessons you'd give yourself to help you on your journey that you wish you had known. You know I would tell my younger self to not sacrifice any part of myself.
Jon Marcantoni:I've really struggled with censoring myself in order to please others. I I've struggled with the people pleasing gene and um and standing up for myself and saying, like you know, this is really the thing that I want, um, and I think I would have. I would have pushed my younger self to to do that more because, you know, I I've experienced a whole lot of happiness and a whole lot of opportunity in the last couple of years and every time that it's come about, it's been because I've not censored any aspect of myself. I have been 100% John Marcantoni, and people respond to that. People respond to your authenticity and people can tell when you are anything less than yourself, and people can tell when you're not really passionate about something. So, you know, just save yourself a lot of time and even if it seems risky, even if you're nervous about it, just go for it, because you know who you are and nobody can take that from you and it's also the thing that makes you stand out from others Awesome.
Raul Lopez:And then my last question for you before we go is how do you say success in Spanish? What does success mean to you?
Jon Marcantoni:And it's authenticity, authenticity all the way. You know the way you interact with people and the way that you engage with your loved ones, with your community and, mostly, with yourself.
Jon Marcantoni:You know if you're spending your days just posting online, like online is the last place you'll ever be, authentic, um, you know, um, I mean I, I know, but, but he's like a buddy of mine, like jerry star has. He's done a great job of showcasing his authenticity online, um, but he is a rarity and he's also very self-aware about what he is presenting to the world. Most people aren't. Most people are really just trying to get the likes and really just trying to fit in. And you know, simply because you can express an opinion doesn't mean that your insecurities and your fears aren't coming out in that opinion.
Jon Marcantoni:You know, I, I'm definitely someone who believes that if, if people are agreeing with every single thing that you're saying, then you need to think about what you're saying. You know, because if you're really being yourself and you're really being honest, you're going to have some pushback and you want that. You want dialogue with people. You don't want to be a dictator who just everybody is a yes, man or woman and letting you get away with your worst tendencies. You want people who will call you on your garbage and yeah, so it's just authenticity man, nice man. Well, john, it's been wonderful having you on your garbage and yeah, so it's just authenticity man.
Raul Lopez:Nice man. Well, john, it's been wonderful having you on here. You know, if you want, tell me a little bit, tell me how people can help out, just any way they can help out, or keep up to date with what you guys are doing. Yeah.
Jon Marcantoni:You know, follow Flamboyant Theatre at flamboyan F-L-A-M-B-O-Y-A-N underscore theater and that's theater E-R, not R-E, so at Flamboyan underscore theater on Instagram. That's the best way to keep up with what we're doing. And you know, yeah, that's the best way to keep up with what we're doing. And you know, yeah, that's the best way. Nice.
Raul Lopez:All right. Well, thank you so much for being on here. I really appreciate you taking the time. I appreciate the fact that you reached out to me as well. I wish you all the best and I look forward to you know what more comes from you guys out there in Denver. So thank you so much.
Raul Lopez:No, thank you, I appreciate you and I love, love your show and I hope you have much success for a long time. Thank you, I really. I really do appreciate that when random people hit me up and say, hey, I listened to your show and it's not just somebody, I know it's like that feels great. I'm really glad that I'm getting a reach out there. So I do appreciate you taking the time and for everyone else listening, you know. Thanks again for jumping on and listening and I hope you'll join me again next time as we continue to learn how to see success in space.
