Today we’d like to introduce you to Andrés López-Alicea.
Andrés, we’d love to hear your story and how you got to where you are today both personally and as an artist.
I started when I was six years old and my mom noticed my drawing skills. She decided to put me in art classes where I learned how to draw with charcoal, watercolor and oil painting. When I was 11 years old, I participated in a school play. My role was very small, but while I was behind the curtain waiting for my entrance, I started feeling something that I had never experienced before. As soon as I started walking on to the stage, I felt that there was a silence and I could only hear my footsteps and it was amazing. I said my lines and went off stage. From that point on I knew I wanted to be an actor. There was no drama class at my school so I forgot about acting and theater. I kept drawing and building houses for my action figures with shoe boxes. One day while watching one of my favorite TV Shows when I was a kid, The Brady Bunch, I saw Mike Brady with a house model and I said “I want to do that! I want to be an architect” . I went to college and finished my undergrad in 2006 at The School of Architecture at the University of Puerto Rico. After applying, being accepted and attended for a year to grad school for Architecture, I realized that that was not my passion. I dropped out of my master and I went back to do an undergrad degree in Drama. While studying, I created my own Theater company named Producciones Arte Zanquia’o where I directed, produced, and acted in a variety of performances that ranged from improv shows to original works. I graduated in 2012 with a BA in Drama and in 2015 I moved to NY and in 2018 I graduated from an MFA at The New School for Drama in New York.
We’d love to hear more about your art. What do you do and why and what do you hope others will take away from your work?
I am a Director, Actor, and Producer.
I have a company in New York named Teatro 220, who focuses on Improv Shows in Spanish for our Spanish speaking community. As a producer, I want to create a show to entertain the audience while making them part of the show. As an Improv show, the audience gives us suggestions in order for us to create new stories.
As an Actor, I love studying and understanding the character at a level that the audience can see the character and not me. When the audience starts understanding and believing that the character has his own life on stage, that’s when I feel completely satisfied of my job.
As a Theater Director I look forward to exploring, expanding, and physicalizing the essence of the text to highlight the character’s states of mind. My work provokes the audience to submerge into the darkest and purest places of the psyches of each character and the play.
The sterotype of a starving artist scares away many potentially talented artists from pursuing art – any advice or thoughts about how to deal with the financial concerns an aspiring artist might be concerned about?
Financial Challenges is one of the most difficult things as an artist. My advice is to create your own work. Yes, keep auditioning, keep looking for gigs, but while you wait for someone to call you, start creating your own work. The truth is that finding an artistic job that can support your daily basis is very hard. Specially in New York. Another advice is to find a job that can help you pay rent, but that also gives you the time to do art in the city.
Do you have any events or exhibitions coming up? Where would one go to see more of your work? How can people support you and your artwork?
The audience can learn more about my work on my website and on social media.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.andreslopezalicea.com
- Email: andreslopez9@gmail.com
- Instagram: @andreslopezalicea
Image Credit:
Joe Loper, Joel Perez, Anthony Ruiz
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