Four brand-new Latinx musicals will get their first public readings this weekend at UC San Diego, as the campus's Epstein Family Amphitheater in La Jolla becomes the stage for a national festival aimed at pushing new work toward regional and commercial theaters across the country. The 2026 Carnaval of New Latinx Musicals runs Aug. 28-30, free and open to the public, at the 2,850-seat outdoor venue at 9500 Gilman Drive.
The festival is produced jointly by UC San Diego's Department of Theatre & Dance, La Jolla Playhouse and TuYo Theatre, as reported by The San Diego Union-Tribune. More than 200 Latinx theater-makers are expected to convene for meetings, workshops and strategizing sessions alongside the public performances, according to the same report. The gathering is organized under the banner of the Latinx Theatre Commons, a national advocacy network and think tank that promotes Latinx theater as central to the American theater conversation.
A National Movement Rooted in a 2012 Meeting
The Latinx Theatre Commons traces back to May 2012, when eight Latinx theater-makers known as the “DC 8,” led by playwright Karen Zacarías, convened at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C. to address the historic underrepresentation of Latinx artists on American stages, according to HowlRound. One of those founders, Lisa Portes, now chairs UC San Diego's Department of Theatre & Dance and earned her MFA in directing from the university in 1992, per the Union-Tribune's report. Portes is serving as a co-champion of this year's Carnaval alongside Maria Patrice Amon, co-founder and co-artistic director of TuYo Theatre.
The commons' programming includes periodic convenings, the Encuentro and the Carnaval itself, the Union-Tribune notes. The Carnaval series began in 2015 at DePaul University in Chicago, where organizers presented 15 new plays; a 2018 edition at the same campus featured six new plays, and the festival's third iteration was held in Denver in 2022. Since 2015, the Carnavals have produced nearly two dozen new projects, and the inaugural 2015 gathering alone led to 10 writers' works being produced at theaters nationwide over the following three seasons.
Behind the Scenes: LTC's New Independent Structure
The commons is entering this year's festival under a new organizational model. As reported by American Theatre, the Latinx Theatre Commons announced in March 2025 that it would sunset its role as a flagship program of HowlRound Theatre Commons — its home at Emerson College since 2012 — and transition to an independent operational model under fiscal sponsor Producer Hub effective July 1, 2025. That shift sets the stage for a leadership change happening live at this year's opening ceremonies: an August 2026 festival schedule published by HowlRound shows Bridgett Martinez formally introduced as the incoming LTC producer, succeeding Jacqueline Flores, who had served in the role since June 2021.
The convening's core purpose, according to co-champion Maria Patrice Amon in a statement reported by BroadwayWorld, is to serve as a direct intervention against the “patterned absence of authentic representation” by connecting regional artists with national theater decision-makers. That framing underscores that the Carnaval functions less as a public showcase and more as an industry pipeline, linking new Latinx musicals to the executives who can move them toward mainstage productions.
What's Being Read This Weekend
This year's lineup emerged from a competitive selection process that whittled more than 50 applications down to 35, then 20, then 16 finalists, according to the Union-Tribune. The four musicals chosen for full readings tackle immigration, mythology, history, family and identity, and the festival also offers QR-code access to six honorable-mention plays for those who want to explore beyond the main stage.
Friday evening from 6:30 to 9 PM opens with “Sueños: Our American Musical,” written by Jesse Sanchez with additional music by Jeff Chambers and directed by Lisa Portes. The musical follows a Chicano family leaving Los Angeles in 1999 to start over on a rural farm in Watsonville, California. Saturday afternoon from 1:30 to 3 PM brings “Ybor City,” set in 1918 in Tampa's Ybor City neighborhood and featuring Cuban and Afro-Caribbean musical styles, with a book by Anita Gonzalez and score by Dan Furman. The show is directed by Dámaso Rodríguez, founding artistic director of Artists Repertory Theatre in Portland, Oregon, as reported by Production List.
Saturday evening from 7 to 9 PM features “Fruition,” with music, lyrics and live-looping by Satya Chavez and a book by Krystal Ortiz, directed by Juliette Carrillo. The musical depicts two Latina daughters coming out to their straight Latina mothers, and its performance will be followed by a slam of short readings from “Azul,” “Bayano,” “Café con Leche,” “Little Duende” and “Mija.” The festival closes next Sunday from 1:30 to 4 PM with “Daydreamer,” developed by TuYo Theatre with music and lyrics by Eliza Vedar, libretto and lyrics by Mario Vega, dramaturgy by Maria Patrice Amon, and direction by James Vásquez. The story follows two sisters journeying to save the morning after an ancient evil steals the sun.
Scholarly Sessions and the Local Theater Pipeline
Beyond the performances, the festival includes “The Scholars Mixtape,” an academic symposium featuring Dr. Jorge Huerta — a pioneer of Chicano theatre studies and professor emeritus at UC San Diego — alongside Dr. Daphnie Sicre, Dr. Teddy Rodriguez, Dr. Jade Sotomayor and writer David Davila, exploring genre definitions of Latinx musical theater, per HowlRound's published schedule.
Locally, the festival builds on recent institutional growth for host company TuYo Theatre, which received a $140,000 grant from the Conrad Prebys Foundation in August 2024 — its first funding that allowed the company to hire administrative staff since its founding, according to the Times of San Diego. TuYo has already announced its next local production after the Carnaval wraps: “Our Lady of the San Diego Convention Center,” written by Mario Vega and directed by Maria Patrice Amon, running September through October and centered on youth-care workers at the San Diego Convention Center during its 2021 stint as an emergency shelter for young asylum seekers.
The Carnaval's arrival also fills a gap in San Diego's regional Latinx theater calendar. The Latinx New Play Festival, launched in 2017 at San Diego Repertory Theatre before moving to La Jolla Playhouse, typically serves as the region's primary incubator for Latinx playwrights, but it is on pause this year and is scheduled to return in 2027, per BroadwayWorld. Whether any of this weekend's four musicals will land regional or commercial mainstage productions — as past Carnaval works have — remains an open question that organizers and the Latinx Theatre Commons's new leadership will be watching closely in the seasons ahead.
