Magdalena Gómez, is an internationally acclaimed teaching artist, performer, poet, lyricist and ... more

Magdalena Gómez, is an internationally acclaimed teaching artist, performer, poet, lyricist and playwright. Ms. Gómez was recently honored with a Proclamation from the Springfield City Council for her over three decades of work in the arts and her local arts contributions to the city of Springfield, MA. In 2008, Ms. Gómez was one of five recipients of the D.C. based Black Women Playwright’s Group’s, first 2008 national,Whisper. Laugh. Shout. Award for her national contributions to the field of theater. In 2007, she was named an Unsung Heroine by the Massachusetts Commission on the Status of Women for her arts-based community work in Western Massachusetts.Ms. Gómez’s plays, monologues, poetry and short stories are included in college syllabi throughout the country. She has performed her work in venues which include: Lincoln Center, Vanderbilt University, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Augusta Savage Gallery of the University of Massachusetts, New WORLD Theater and was the inaugural poet for the installation of Lasell College President, Michael B. Alexander earlier this year. Her poems have been widely published: Tea Party Magazine, Massachusetts Review, Latino Boom, Puerto Rican Writers at Home in the USA, Palabra Journal, upstreet journal, and the Berkshire Review, among many others. Ms. Gómez has also taught Media Literacy since 1984, and has been a guerilla cultural worker since the age of 17. In 2007, she co-founded Teatro V!da (www.teatrovida.com ) the first and only Latin@ run theater in the history of Springfield, MA., of which she is also Artistic Director. Teatro V!da has been listed on www.us-puertoricans.org as an organization making a difference. In less than two years, Teatro V!da has reached over 60,000 people through various forms of media, as they build leadership through literacy, activating the creation of new work on social issues with the additional intentions of using the arts to dismantle bigotry of all forms. In 2007, Ms. Gómez was commissioned by choreographer, Peggy Choy, of the University of Wisconsin, to write and narrate the text for a dance theater production, based on a concept by Ms. Choy, Gateless Gate: Women of the Scarred Earth, on the WWII Comfort Women, which premiered at the world famous Union Theater in Madison. She is a regular collaborator with composer and baritone saxophonist, Fred Ho. less