D-Tours is a partnership with the San Diego Unified School District and beyond to bring LGBT-themed shows to middle and high school campuses across San Diego County. This traveling program provides an important opportunity to meet the students where they live and work with a powerful performance exploring LGBT themes and issues, providing exposure to the theater arts for youth from a broad spectrum of socioeconomic backgrounds. D-Tours reaches hundreds of students annually in San Diego County and is provided FREE of charge to schools.
At Diversionary Theatre, we believe it’s important to provide students from diverse backgrounds with the opportunity to experience live theatre, as well as have access to content that explores LGBTQ+ themes and issues. That’s why we created D-Tours, which allows us to connect with schools and students otherwise unable to participate in our Student Matinee series or other programming we offer as a way to ensure that educators across San Diego have the opportunity to provide their students with this unique experience.
About the show: With a single phrase, you can give up your country. With a single signature, you can tear a family apart. With a single word, you can learn to transform. In their first full-length solo show, (Un)Documents, award-winning actor and poet Jesús I. Valles journeys across both sides of a river with two names, moving between languages to find their place as a child, a lover, a teacher, and a sibling in a nation that demands sacrifice at the altar of citizenship
(Un)Documents won three 2018 B. Iden Payne awards for Outstanding Original Script, Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama, and Outstanding Direction of a Drama, and was nominated for Outstanding Production of a Drama.
Jesús I. Valles is a queer Mexican immigrant, educator, storyteller, and performer based in Austin, Texas, originally from Cd. Juarez, Mexico. Jesús holds a Master’s in Communication Studies from California State University, Long Beach, with a focus on performance and qualitative research methods. Jesús is a recipient of the 2018 Undocupoets Fellowship, a fellow of The Poetry Foundation and Crescendo Literary’s 2018 Poetry Incubator, runner-up in the 2017 Button Poetry Chapbook Contest, and a finalist of the 2016 Write Bloody Poetry Contest. Their work has been published in The Shade Journal, The Texas Review, and The New Republic (forthcoming). Jesús currently teaches social and emotional learning to high school students, focusing on those recently arrived to the U.S.
We will be touring (Un)Documents by Jesús Valles in San Diego area schools. Reach out to us to arrange a show by clicking the button below.
Questions? Email ssullivan@diversionary.org.
Arts Education is thriving at Diversionary Theatre, and our programs spread the seeds of understanding and tolerance around our unique mission as the third oldest LBGT theater in the country. Watch this video to learn more about each of our education programs.
By sharing LGBTQ stories with our community we bring stories that need to be told, directly into people’s lives. We provide a safe place for all students, and we are excited to extend a lifeline to our LGBTQ youth who may not have the support at home or at their school. We are giving people permission to be who they are, and for many this might be a life saving experience.
All of these programs are only made possible by the generous support of our donors and our community.
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