Debuting Artist: Miguel Muñoz

I’m a Peruvian-American playwright, director, and actor from the Pacific Northwest. For the past few years, I’ve been studying at UNCO to get my Theatre Education degree and have been lucky to act in a wide number of productions in the Northern Colorado area, both at school and at some local theaters! Although I love, love acting, my main passion is playwriting and have begun developing my career there, currently working under my first commission. I’m hoping to continue building on all aspects of my theatre career in the future years.

I knew people who had acted in OpenStage productions before but hadn’t been able to familiarize myself with the theatre company very much until I was reached out to about “Sweat” by Sarah Baker, an old college peer who now does Social Media at OpenStage, amongst other things.

I’m a huge sports fan, if you couldn’t already tell from my super athletic build. I don’t play as much as I used to (darn you, ankle problems) but I love watching them. My favorite teams are the LA Chargers, Peruvian national soccer team, and Portland Trailblazers. Oh yeah, and I watch an insane amount of movies. They’re my first love.

The team is lovely. It’s a very heavy show, but everyone approaches it with just the right amount of levity and laughter.

For me, the most challenging (and fun!) part of playing Oscar is how silent he is throughout the play. Lynn Nottage writes this very intentionally, and as an actor, the script calls for me to speak to the audience with the languages of my eyes, my body, and my attention.

An underrated/overlooked detail in this play that I LOVE is how many of the scenes take place during one of the characters’ birthdays. We start with these birthdays being the cause of celebration and joy, but as the events at Olstead’s unfold, the birthdays feel melancholic and dreadful, becoming a representation of how time is passing them by as the world changes.

It’s a deeply human story. People say and do awful things in this play, but when put under the microscope Nottage so carefully operates, we are able to understand them and our fellow Americans at a deeper level. It’s both a cautionary tale and a hopeful (albeit frightening) message that the enemy is not your neighbor, but the powers that be who profit off divide.

I had an absolute blast playing the role of Khlestakov in UNCO’s recent production of the Russian classic “The Government Inspector.” Equal parts conniving and comedic, that character’s Tartuffe-like disposition allowed for so many fun moments as an actor.

My absolute favorite changes often, but right now it has to be Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night.” It speaks to me in a different impacting way than it did before and I think about it often. I just bought a 500-page biography on O’Neill’s latter years, when he wrote the play.

Lots of writing ahead of me! Currently writing a TYA play/musical under commission for American Stage in St. Petersburg, Florida. It’s called “Familia de Flamingos” and I’m having a blast working on it. Other than that, lots of personal writing projects. Hopefully more acting opportunities, too.