Roberta Colindrez
Colindrez at the 2019 Montclair Film Festival
Born	Mexico
Nationality	Mexican-American
Occupation(s)	Actor, playwright
Years active	2006–present
Known for	Fun Home I Love Dick Vida A League of Their Own

Roberta Colindrez is a Mexican-American actor and writer known for originating the role of Joan in the musical Fun Home. Colindrez is also known for roles in the TV shows I Love Dick, Vida, and Amazon Prime's A League of Their Own. Colindrez is also known for films Cassandro and Ms. White Light. Her main contributions to the film industry include portraying queer Latine characters and adapting them as her own to avoid stereotypes.

Early life

Born in Monterrey, Mexico with Argentinian and Honduran heritage,^[1][2] Colindrez migrated from Mexico to Houston when she was 5 years old. Colindrez lived in Houston for six years then moved to Austin, Texas^[3] when she was 10 years old.^[4] She first realized she wanted to become an actor at age 12, when she and her brother took a theater class together.^[5] Her first performance was a monologue she wrote about a fictional suicide tape.^[6] She went to Westwood High School, and went to the University of Texas in Austin and graduated with bachelor's in acting to pursue theater.^[7] She wanted to make movies, but she first wanted to be in plays. She moved to New York City when starting out as a professional actor.^[8] Since her parents were immigrants, they encouraged Colindrez to travel, know the world, and take risks. She has learned that the world is small, life is short, and to embrace her passions. She has a sister who lives in Italy, and a brother who lives in Austin, Texas near her parents.^[9]

Colindrez describes her time in Austin fondly, and people in New York are surprised to learn she is from Texas since she does not have an accent and portrays herself as a New yorker.^[10] When she was discovering her sexuality, she would frequent a bar in Austin called the Rainbow Cattle Company where butches and other lesbians would go. She was excited about seeing other people like her at the bar.^[11]

Colindrez always knew going the New York would be the next step in furthering her career.^[12] While trying to find work as an actress, she also worked in restaurants and once as a janitor in a church. Some time after arriving in New York, she joined the New York Neo-Futurists, a theater company that focuses on creating affordable and interactive shows.^[12]

Career

Colindrez made her off-Broadway debut in 2006, starring in Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind. She appeared in several short films and regional theatre productions after that, and in 2011 she wrote and starred in the film Otis Under Sky. In 2013, she began playing Joan, a "confident young lesbian",^[5] in the musical Fun Home off-Broadway.^[5] The show closed in early 2014, and after a cameo in the Academy Award-winning film Birdman, Fun Home opened on Broadway in 2015, where it won 5 Tony Awards and was nominated for 7 more.^[5] Colindrez describes her experience in Fun Home as transformative and humbling. She knew the story was important, and it reminded her that the entertainment industry does produce labors of love and is still true to humanity.^[13]

Colindrez has also made guest appearances on several television series and her performance on I Love Dick as a butch artist was described as a "breakout" in an interview with Vanity Fair;^[8] showrunner Joey Soloway described Colindrez's performance as "masterful", portraying "a queer cowboy masculinity".^[8] In I Love Dick, Colindrez played the character Devon, who is a struggling artist drawn to spiritually entangle women in some form of art. Colindrez recalls the character being very similar to herself, even though it wasn't intentional. Similar the character, Colindrez has lived in a friend's backyard trailer as a playwright in Texas.^[14] This show also allowed her to fill out one of her dreams of being on a sex positive set, and allowed her the chance to embody a character with representation she would like to see more of.^[14]

In 2018, Colindrez joined the cast of HBO's The Deuce about the life of sex workers in New York City in the 1970's to 1980's as the character Irene. In the show, Irene takes care of the sex workers to make sure they are healthy, safe, and paid for their work.^[15] This show takes place during a time where sex work was rampant, and women were treated brutally by pimps and police. Irene offered a safe space for sex workers.^[15]

In 2019, Colindrez joined the cast of Latino TV drama Vida about sisters who come home to manage the bar after their mother's death in East Los Angeles neighborhood Boyle Heights as a series regular from the second season as the character Nico. Nico was brought onto the show as a mixologist to help make drinks for the bar. Nico presented as an idea of optimism and potential for the bar and love interest Emma to help her improve on her relationships and community.^[16] Although Colindrez had some reservations about joining the show, she was ultimately excited to have this role to be celebrated as queer, and show queer Latin American experiences.^[17]

She also does voice acting work, most notably in the podcast Alice Isn't Dead.^[18][19]

In 2020, Colindrez joined the cast of Amazon's comedy pilot A League of Their Own^[20] about the All American Girls Professional Baseball League in the 1940's as the character Lupe. After Colindrez started the show, she was surprised to learn more about the history of women taking over the All American Girls Professional Baseball League during WWII, and how there were more Latin players in the league than portrayed in media at that time.^[21][22] The character, Lupe, feels like she has a lot to prove to the league and audience to be seen as a professional baseball player instead of just a Latin person. There is a racial hierarchy in the league that bans Black women players, but the character has to deal with the microaggressions of being Latin in an American league.^[22] Colindrez relates this to present day and reveals people mistake her as being Spanish rather than Mexican, Argentinian or Honduran. To prepare for this role, Colindrez trained with Justine Siegel, and thought she was "pretty good" at playing baseball during training.^[22] Colindrez gained insight on the subtle communication between pitcher and catcher and how they exchange messages about what the pitch will be without letting the other team know, which is shown throughout the show.^[22]

Colindrez also originated the role of the farmer in a 2022 workshop of the first act of the Césaire José Carroll-Domínguez's epic historical play Spreckles which premiered in the 2022 Beyond The Box performance festival in Marfa, Texas with the group 'Marfa Live Arts' in the Crowley Theater.

Colindrez also writes for the stage, preferring "dark, heavy, comedic nuance".^[5]

Personal life

Colindrez identifies as queer^[5][23] and butch.^[24] When growing up, she was confused about her sexuality and would see herself as a man in order to be with other woman.^[25] Now, she is fully comfortable with being a woman in love with other women.^[25] She was scared to tell her parents her sexuality since her mother mentioned that gay people belonged in the circus when she was young.^[26] Her mother also thought Colindrez had secrets because after Colindrez slept with a woman for the first time she discovered a gray streak in her hair. Colindrez's mom said she had gray streaks in her hair as well after she started keeping secrets.^[26] After this, Colindrez came out to her parents and she has good relationships with them.

Colindrez is also fully bilingual. When growing up she would speak Spanish to her parents, and would hear people talk about them in English as if they could not understand. She knew a lot of Mexican kids her age that would not speak Spanish because of how people would villainize and violate the beauty of knowing a different language.^[27] Colindrez found the beauty of growing up multilingual and being stereotyped as a "spicy Latina". She knows Latin people are passionate people, and likes how that is portrayed. However, she realizes that there's the connotation that it's a bad thing to be fiery, and how it can be weaponized against Latinas, when she just believes it means to be passionate.^[27]

Colindrez nearly passed on Vida because she was worried about being typecast.^[23] Prior to Vida, she had faced difficulty establishing her acting career because of her sexuality and gender nonconformity^[23] and has spoken about Hollywood being "a place where people who are queer will only be seen as queers".^[5] She was also worried about playing a Latin character, and people only casting her as a Latin character. She knew people were comfortable seeing her on screen as a non Latin character, and she was worried about the show bringing her back to that.^[28] However, she wanted people to be able to see a different kind of Latin character, and thought it was empowering to have her character be the same ethnicity as herself.^[28] Since she identifies as butch and Latin, there were worries of the character having machismo with toxic masculinity, coming from a poor or harrowing background, and portraying a Latin masculinity stereotype since many characters that have these descriptors fall into this stereotype.^[29] After expressing these concerns, she was assured she could give the character more depth, and portray a Latin butch character in a different way.^[30] She accepted the role after showrunner Tanya Saracho persuaded her that the character would not be a stereotype.^[23]

Colindrez became close friends with Bobbi Salvör Menuez on the set of I Love Dick, which she found helpful when filming a sex scene with Menuez.^[8] Menuez gave Colindrez a stick and poke tattoo as a memento of their friendship.^[8]

For the future of the industry, she hopes that the breakdown of characters include descriptions of their whole life, trajectory, passions and characteristics, and that being gay is just added on rather than the whole character. Colindrez is not preoccupied with other people's definitions of her as a butch Latina.^[31]

Credits

See also

• LGBT culture in New York City
• List of LGBT people from New York City

References

External links

Wikiquote has quotations related to Roberta Colindrez.

• Roberta Colindrez at IMDb 
• Roberta Colindrez at the Internet Broadway Database
• Roberta Colindrez at Playbill Vault (archive)