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= Coya Paz = Coya Paz (full name is Coya Paz Brownrigg) born on September 7, 1975 in Cuzco, Peru. Paz is an Artistic Director with Free Street Theatre.

Early Life
Paz lived in Cuzco, Peru for a year before being adopted. Her adopted mother, an anthropologist, was in Cuzco during her birth. She has lived in 27 cities and 8 countries. Some include Peru, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Brazil, and the United States. She also studied English in Sweden. Paz attended St. Mary's College of Maryland for Theater. Paz has only done Theater in the United States. She has lived in the United States since 1987. She received her PhD in performance Studies from Northwestern University. She is very interested in social change. She also studied lynching as an americanizing tool in the years following the Mexican-American war. In 1996 Paz moved to Chicago, Illinois. She has been living in Chicago for 21 years. Chicago is her home and she plans to help change the segregation.

Career
Paz is an actor, writer, and artistic director. She began her career in the theater as an actress. Her first paid job was playing a french girl in Maryland Renaissance Festival. She is primarily known for directing and developing ensemble-made work, though she also writes and performs solo material under the name The Lovely and Talented Coya Paz. Paz uses theater to facilitate difficult dialogues. She has a book coming out next year called Ensemble-Made Chicago: A Guide to Collaborative Creation (co-authored with Chloe Johnston). She is also working with ProPublica to develop a theatre curriculum for engaging communities around the news/journalism.

Teatro Luna:
Paz was a founding co-Artistic Director of Teatro Luna with Tayna Saracho in 2000. Due to irreconcilable differences between Paz and Saracho they left Teatro Luna in 2008. Teatro Luna was where Paz was able to begin reaching out to the community and bring theater to fund raisers, collaborate with other groups, and spread the Latina voice.

Some work done with Teatro Luna:
Machos (2007-2008)

S-e-x-Oh! (2005)

The Maria Chronicles (2003)

Kita y Fernanda (2002)

Generic Latina (2001)

Dejame Contarte (Let Me Tell You) (2001)

Free Street Theater:
She has been the Artistic Director of the historic Free Street Theater since 2013. Free Street Theater will be 50 years old in 2019. Paz is working on a new piece called Block Party. Block Party is an immersive performance piece that celebrates Chicago summers. She has also done a number of works with Free Street Theater. Paz joined Free Street Theater in a 2018 project that uses theater to engage people in the news, part of a collaboration with ProPublica Illinois. They will take theater on the road and continue to spread awareness.

Some work done with Free Street Theatre:
100 HAUNTINGS (July-August 2016, October-December 2016)

The Real Life Adventures of Jimmy de las Rosas (July-August 2015)

B is for BANG! (April 2015)

COMIC BOOKS LIVE (October 2014-August 2015)

Nerd, Sluts, (Commies) and Jocks (May 2014)

'DOPE! 420 Stories About Pot, Weed, Kush, Parents, Prisons and People. (April 25-May 4, 2013)'

Some of Paz's Influences:
Paz is deeply influenced by the Chicago tradition of ensemble-created performance and social justice theater, stemming from Viola Spolin and Neva Boyd's work at the Hull House Theater. She is also influenced by Boal, Hip-Hop Theater traditions, Teatro traditions, and early medieval performance (pageant wagons, site specific community performance).

Paz's artistic goal for her theater:
To foster artistic spaces that allow for the creation of new ensemble-created and solo performance, and to use performance to imagine and rehearse new ways of being together in equitable, just, and loving ways. She am an artist and she does administrative work - She is most proud of the work she does to facilitate other artists' work.

Achievements
Coya was named one of UR Magazine's 30 Under 30, a GO-NYC Magazine 100 Women We Love, and received a Trailblazer Award for her service to LGBTQ communities. She has been awarded 3Arts Residency at Ragdale. Above all, Paz believes in the power of performance and poetry to build community towards social change.​ Her work regularly comments on race, media, and pop culture. While she was still with Teatro Luna she was awarded highly-coveted Outstanding Ensemble award from Jeff Awards for "Machos" in 2008. She has been a featured reader at dozens of poetry events, including Proyecto Latina, Paper Machete, Palabra Pura and Revolving Door. Coya's artistic work has been profiled in The New York Times, American Theatre Magazine, Theater Journal and the Chicago Tribune, among others.