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= Brian Quijada = Brian Quijada is a Salvadoran-American actor, playwright, musician, and a solo performer, well known for his multimedia theatrical works involving topics on immigration, humanity, identity, and American experience incorporated with Latinx childhood. His most prominent work, "Where Did We Sit on the Bus?" for Teatro Vista, Latino Theatre Chicago, manifests his childhood experience of being a child of immigrants from El Salvador in the Chicago suburbs, starting from a trailer in Glenview, his first home.

Background
Brian Quijada identifies himself as Salvadoran-American. His parents, Eduardo and Reina, moved to the United States in 1970s with their two children, Fernando and Roberto, and gave birth to Marvin and Brian Quijada after they had moved to the United States. In his interview with Stage & Candor, Quijada said that he thinks his parents named him and his brother Brian and Marvin to give them "easier lives in the States." The family settled in a place where Eduardo and Reina could afford, a Trailer Park in Glenview, IL, and later moved to a house in Highland Park, IL, which Quijada explained as "a 'burb that's surrounded by a very affluent - I would say 70% Jewish town." He faced identity crisis after being surrounded by his Jewish friends, later leading to his creation of "Where Did We Sit on the Bus?" For education, Quijada graduated from The University of Iowa as a Theatre and English major, and he moved to New York City to pursue his career as a world-wide actor, playwright, musician, and a solo performer. To Quijada, being a part of two different cultures is "like switching languages for me." According to his interview with Chicago Tribune, his playwriting works are heavily related to his duality of culture: about how both culture mutually influences each other in his daily lives.

Development
Quijada worked in a band in Denver Center, that goes around theatre conferences to perform, with his friend and a playwright Idris Goodwin as the rapper and himself as the looper. While performing at The Denver New Play Summit, Quijada met Chay Yew, the artistic director of Victory Gardens in Chicago, who later became the director of "Where Did We Sit on the Bus?" Yew introduced the idea of playwriting to Quijada, which led him to start a workship, leading to the creation of "Where Did We Sit on the Bus?" that he submitted it to terraNova Collectives soloNOVA, which made its way through Ignition Festival and Millennium Stage at The Kennedy Center.

Acting
Quijada extends his passion for acting in different fields, ranging from theatrical works, television, and voice over. Out of all different types of acting he has done, he clarified that he is most passionate in theatrical new work, which he discovered during his time at the University of Iowa while working on a new play development for Iowa's New Play Festival. After graduating from the University of Iowa, he took part in variety of theatre festivals all over the United States, such as The National Playwright's Conference, The Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, The Kennedy Center's MFA Playwright's Festival, The Denver New Play Summit, The Lark, Seven Devil's Playwright's Conference, and La Jolla Playhouse, to promote his interest in new play development.

Playwriting
Quijada's talent in writing showed when he wrote spoken word poetry at a young age, which led to public performances at poetry slams in Chicago. His interest for playwriting stemmed from his desire to portray the stories of minority onstage, especially Latinx stories like his own. His own, unique multimedia style of playwriting involves sounds of his childhood, such as Latin rhythms, hip hop, R&B, and 70's and 80's rock, often times made live onstage with looped music, digital finger drumming, spoken word, clowning, and turntablism. These sounds are incorporated with the main themes of his works: his childhood as the youngest of the four brothers of Salvadoran parents and search for his identity. He is currently working as a writer-in-residence in The Kennedy Center and The Eugene O'Neil Theatre Center. He wrote plays like "Where Did We Sit on the Bus?", "Kid Prince and Pablo," "Strip," and "Til the DJ Quits Playing."

Where Did We Sit on the Bus?
His first and most prominent work is "Where Did We Sit on the Bus?" , derived from his childhood experience in Northern Chicagoland Area, from a trailer park in Glenview to a house in Highwood, when he asked "Where did we sit on the bus?" after the lecture about Rosa Parks in his third grade and received a reply, "They weren't around." This play starts with Quijada's question about his potential children's identity and how they will fit in the world with three different backgrounds: Salvadoran, Austrian, and Swiss. Quijada shares his story using looped rhythms, raps, songs, poems, and spoken-word pieces, in attempt to find his identity. One of the sections of his play called "White Bred" portrays Quijada attending a middle school in Highland Park, causing him to be surrounded by white friends, which opened up a lot of new questions about his identity. This section also peers into the past of Quijada's parents and how they thought Quijada's love for theatre is only temporary. Almost to the end of the show, there is a section about immigrants that asks, "Why don't we just let them in?" followed by an uncomfortable silence that leads to more questions about Quijada's identity. Quijada developed the play in need for himself, to be able to clarify his identity after his question. However, after his audience's responses, he realized that it's a story that other people also needed and could relate to, which defined his purpose for art: "to have as many people watch it."

Kid Prince and Pablo
Kid Prince and Pablo is a play that Quijada wrote for WildWind Performance Lab in Texas Tech University, where the university brings in established artists in the playwriting industry, to serve as new play development and a way for the theater students to have conversations with and collaborate with professional artists. Kid Prince and Pablo, based off Mark Twain’s The Prince and the Pauper story, takes place in the future of an alternate universe of America, where a king exists in the United States, and the people are mixed race, except the Royal family, who stayed white. It's set in this hip-hop world where the Prince is this aspiring rapper, while a poor pauper named Pablo, a Mexican boy, is a bucket drummer. Therefore, when the two's worlds are altered, Pablo has technology, futuristic, beautiful hip-hop technology to be able to make beats and become a producer, while the Prince is asking, “What is this, what are these streets? What are these colored people?” After his hardships, the Prince is able to actually rap about something as opposed to rap about a life of luxury. Quijada collaborated with his brother Marvin for Kid Prince and Pablo.

Honors

 * "Where Did We Sit on the Bus?": Nominated for Best New Play at The Chicago Jeff Awards in 2016
 * "Kid Prince and Pablo": a semi-finalist for The National Playwright's Conference at The Eugene O'Neill Theater Center.