In OSF’s Production Building in Talent, Charge Scenic Artist Gabriel Barrera is painting a metal spiral staircase with rust-resistant solution for The Odyssey, using strokes both swift and careful. The scenic artists working on other projects around him include a diverse blend of genders, people of color, people with disabilities and ages. 

This may not seem unusual, but it is a result of years of commitment to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (ED&I) efforts led by Barrera. Between 2008, when he was first hired as a scenic artist, and 2011, when he became head of the department, Barrera was the only regular employee in the Scene Shop who identified as a person of color. He encountered casual racialized comments, snubs, assumptions, jokes and countless other microaggressions. Barrera was determined to change both the face of the department and its culture. His years of commitment to ED&I and his reaching out to bring in young artists of color has led him to provide access to individuals from underserved and underrepresented communities and backgrounds. “To see how this works,“ Barrera says, "one should visit the OSF Paint Shop. We work and challenge ourselves to live and work by these values, and they improve our working relationships as well as our lives.“

A born artist

Barrera grew up in Southern California in a family that supported his artistic abilities. “I’ve always been doodling, sketching, drawing, painting,” he says. “My dad always wanted to be an artist and he always practiced painting and drawing, and so I followed him. He was a machinist at the time and didn’t have a lot of time to do art. But he did show me the basics, and eventually I kept it going.”

That love of art got Barrera through the difficult years of high school. “I was shy and very introverted,” he says, “and I think art was my outlet and enabled me to stay engaged in order to continue through high school.” And he made money at it, too, airbrushing t-shirts, accessories and people’s cars.

The young artist got a job at Knott’s Scary Farm, where he painted signs and Halloween mazes. “I realized that all the skills that I had as an artist were being utilized in that position as a scenic artist,” he says.

Barrera attended graduate school at Long Beach State University to study scenic design. The connections he made there led to various jobs painting for university and community college theatre departments. He got a job at the Watts Village Theater Company in South-Central LA, which came out of a residency that OSF Artistic Director Bill Rauch’s former theatre company, Cornerstone, did in Watts. Then South Coast Repertory hired Barrera to temporarily build props, and he eventually moved up to a full-time position as a scenic artist. “That’s where I really excelled,” he recalls. “I learned a lot more of the artistry, a lot of the techniques and methods under Charge Scenic Artist Judy Allen.” While at South Coast Rep, he met OSF's Associate Artistic Director Christopher Acebo, who encouraged Barrera to apply to the Festival.

At Long Beach State, Barrera also met his wife, Merilee Ford Barrera, who is now OSF’s Costume Director and also is very involved in ED&I efforts.

OSF’s FAIR program (Fellowships, Apprenticeships, Internships and Residencies) brings in a diverse group of artists for short stints, but Barrera wants to see more artists of color hired full-time. He started to see that a lack of access—from education to hiring practices—created invisible barriers that kept out people of color. Exposing those barriers is not an easy task. 

“I look at the disparities of who has access to education to achieve four years of school experience,” he points out. “I started seeing the numbers of people of color dwindling, especially in theatre. I didn’t come from a theatre background, but my skill level and my ability to be a scenic artist were there. That’s led me to believe you don’t necessarily need a degree to do this work, just a passion to do it. I believe a lot of these job descriptions that require theatre experience can be analyzed and rewritten to remove those barriers that keep certain individuals from even applying.”

Making OSF more welcoming

Under Bill Rauch’s leadership, OSF was also starting to pay closer attention to the concerns of people of color who said the atmosphere at OSF made them feel unwelcome and unsafe. “I felt the culture and certain behaviors and language needed to change,” Barrera says. “In my interview to become charge scenic artist, I said, ‘I want to change behaviors and I’ll call out inappropriate language and make it into a place that feels welcoming and safe for others.’ That’s a first step in achieving diversity.”

Part of that process was giving more opportunities to women in the shop, creating awarenesss as well as developing inclusivity. And Barrera stresses that others in the department are also involved. “Assistant Charge Artist Mikah Berky has added to the success of OSF’s ED&I efforts by leading into practice the values of the Festival that encompass ED&I  initiatives. Scenic Artist Amanda Haverick also contributes to ED&I through advocacy, participation and awareness. Prop Scenic Painter Pat (Pappy) Bonney has been an asset in the shop by modeling his own ED&I journey and mentoring our FAIR Assistants and Interns with his years of experience.”

The process, he says, “is time-consuming but it’s very rewarding. I feel even now, as positions open up, being purposeful about how we fill those positions and what type of language we provide in our interview process to attract those people that will help keep our environment safe and inclusive and make sure that diversity can thrive.”

Daniel Perez

Working through the FAIR program, Barrera started reaching out to young artists. He found Daniel Perez, a young graffiti artist, through Latino Producers Action Network (LPAN). 

Perez has been at OSF for almost a year in two stints. This season, he worked on Disney’s Beauty and the Beast and UniSon and painted a large floor with psychedelic swirls of green and blue for the annual Scene Shop party. Perez started doing graffiti when he was a little kid in Highland Park, California. He didn’t know that was considered art until someone told him. “I guess it was just a natural thing for me, and after a while I grew a passion for it,” he says. “My mentors were leaders from the graffiti era. When I was 14 years old, I was doing my thing with big guys, hanging around with bad people, but one of my mentors really opened my eyes and told me that I had to get out of that mentality and actually do something for my life.”

Perez found another mentor, Fabian Debora, an artist who started his own art academy. (His artwork graces the cover of OSF's 2017 Illuminations.)  

“I would come to the studio every day after work, and I guess he saw that I was hungry and eager to grow,” says Perez. “Fabian’s been a very big help and inspiration. He’s taught me a lot about my work and he connected me to Gabriel. The opportunity to work here came up, and I guess nobody else wanted to go just because it’s Oregon, you know? But when I was younger, I was taught that sometimes you just gotta jump when opportunity comes. It was probably one of the best decisions I made.”

Perez says Barrera is teaching him more than about airbrushes and painting sets. “He’s teaching me leadership skills, about stuff I might need in the real world. I think one of the biggest things OSF has taught me about my society and my surroundings is the equity, diversity and inclusion. So when I go back home, everything I was taught about diversity and inclusion I can teach people down in LA. It can open doors for other people.”

José Rivera

Another scenic painter under Barrera’s wing, José Rivera, grew up in the Rogue Valley. Like Perez and Barrera, he became involved in art as a child. At Phoenix High School, Rivera encountered a supportive art teacher, Jessica Rollins. “She was a big, big influence and supporter of what I did,” Rivera says. “The goals I set were partly because of her.”

When he was an art mentor for a volunteer program in Medford called LifeArt, Rivera took a tour of the old production building in Ashland. He was impressed with the sets being painted there. Eager to get involved, he heard about the FAIR program. “I got into contact with Sharifa [Johka, former FAIR experience manager]. The due dates were already past. Luckily she said that she would give me a shot, and they got me in right away.”

Rivera’s first show was Two Trains Running in 2013, and Barrera and some of the other crew showed him the ropes. “I was able to pick it up pretty fast, which was cool.”

When his FAIR job was up, Rivera got work as a scenic painter at Utah Shakespeare Festival. Next season, he will be back at OSF. At the time of this writing, he was working on a painting for OSF’s Latinx Play Project, a three-day celebration of Latinx art and culture that took place in April. “We got assigned a play and mine was The Refugee Hotel, says Rivera. “So I read the script, then I illustrated it in a different way that talked about how the hotel sometimes seemed as a monster with a beating heart.”

Barrera’s reputation grows

Barrera’s work in diversity and inclusion is catching the eye of the national theatre world. In July 2016, Barrera won a Continuing Leadership grant from Theatre Communications Group (TCG), a national support group for regional theatres. Through the support of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the grants of up to $5,000 support nine mid-career and veteran theatre professionals at TCG member theatres for learning opportunities to advance their leadership skills. Grants are awarded to the applicants’ home theatres on behalf of the theatre practitioners.

Barrera attended a curated series of conferences, convenings and organizations to observe a variety of approaches to diversity and inclusion. He’s taught scenic painting workshops for underrepresented populations, mentored young artists and recruited culturally diverse candidates for FAIR. His experiences include attending the Latino/a Theatre Commons convening, the United States Institute for Theatre Technology conference and connecting with the Latino Producers Action Network and Compton YouthBuild in Los Angeles.

He was also selected to take part in the Shannon Leadership Institute in St. Paul, Minnesota, along with Johka. Part of the Amherst Wilder Foundation, the year-long program is designed to help participants develop and live core values.

Barrera says the Production Building will gradually diversify as OSF continues to create an atmosphere of inclusivity. How would he know he made a difference? “When I can see it,” he says quietly. “When I walk into an environment and I’m not the only one and I don’t see the only one of anyone. So no one feels like they’re the only one. That’s when I know that the environment has changed for the better.”

Assisting the next generation of theatre practitioners

OSF’s FAIR Program is a professional-development program that provides participants with an advanced fellowship, assistantship, internship or resident opportunity to learn best practices across all administration, artistic, design and production disciplines within a Tony Award–winning theatre environment. Next application deadline is July 1, 2018.