Playwright, Poet, Performance Artist, Professor, Paul S. Flores is Here!

This is episode #11 of Artful Thought, recorded live at the University of San Francisco's KUSF studio, which aired on Saturday, July 27th, 2019. I'm beyond stoked to talk with Paul S. Flores. His roles as a prolific poet, playwright, performance artist, youth arts educator, and USF theater professor continue to inspire and illuminate.

Paul’s Future & Ongoing Projects: 

On top of teaching his popular Hip Hop Theater course here at USF, this fall he will also be teaching in SF State’s Theater Department, and two creative writing classes in the Prison Arts Project at Solano, Vacaville State Prison. His portfolio of outreach includes co-founding Youth Speaks, Brave New Voices: National Teen Poetry Slam (now on HBO), founder of Latino Men & Boys Program, former programming director at La Peña Cultural Center  and currently the Paseo Artístico Coordinator at Acción Latina. As a performing artist, he has gone on tour with his creative works and collaborations all over the U.S. as well as internationally, including Cuba, Mexico, El Salvador— and most recently presented at 2019 Latinx Theatre Commons in Miami, Florida. His play, We Have Iré begins touring in December.

Creative Works

• Along the Border Lies (2001 novel) 
• “Brown Dreams” (spoken word appearing on HBO’s Def Poetry, contestant on seasons 3 and 4) 
• “Gravity's Volume” (spoken word) 
• plays include…
• PLACAS: The Most Dangerous Tattoo 
• YOU'RE GONNA CRY (SF Weekly's Best Politically Active Hip-Hop Performance Artist) 
• REPRESENTA! 
• We Have Iré: True Stories about Afro-Cuban Immigrant Artists in the US — his most recent docu-theatre production which received a 2019 Creative Capital Award 

Future & Ongoing Acción Latina Events

•  El Tecolote’s  “Unsettled in the Mission” -- Adriana Camarena (editor/writer)

• Paseo Artístico’s “COUNT ME IN/CUENTA CONMIGO CENSUS 2020”

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Episode Overview

He told me he knew at 9 years old that he was going to be a writer, but “I didn’t understand the trajectory of a writer could take a lot of different roads.”

And a lot of different roads he took, and takes, based on this conversation I had with Paul S. Flores. 

He starts with his memories of growing up between Tijuana and San Diego, and how he would cross the two countries freely, as the border used to be a flimsy, short, wire fence. He watched this change with Clinton’s ‘94 Operation Gatekeeper, that ordered militarized patrol, tanks, razor wire, and other intense weaponry and tactics. He moved from Chula Vista to San Francisco in ‘95, and would start writing and base one of the first narco novels, Along the Border Lies, about the transformation of the border community through interwoven perspectives of young Mexican American characters experiencing split  identities. He talks about his book’s intention to advocate for open borders, serving as criticism of the 90s U.S. government’s propaganda about the war on drugs conflated with immigration, as border security development only created (and creates) more violence and death.

But before putting all of this on page and to publication in 2001, he was on track to becoming a professional athlete. From 19-21 years old, Paul would be reading on the bus that drove through the Appalachian mountains with the baseball team- he always had a novel in his hand. Teammates were perplexed, “Didn’t you sign to play professional baseball so you didn’t have to read?” He recounts the anti-intellectual teasing, as they’d nicknamed him “The Professor.”

He ended up signing with the Chicago Cubs, where part of his contract included that the team paid for his tuition at UC San Diego. He’d complete whole quarters at school on the off-season, then return for spring training. He loved college, where he felt inspired by teachers and classmates in especially philosophy and writing classes, saying “The world started opening up for me...Even while I was playing for the Cubs, I knew that my real destiny was to write.”

Despite his family’s heartbreak, who were die-hard Cubs fans (especially his mother), Paul decided to walk away from Major League Baseball and pursue his path in the Arts.

He encountered frustration with the MFA program at Unin the mid 90s, with discouraging experiences in workshops where people would give critiques along the lines of “don’t write in Spanish, this is an English MFA.” As a result, in ‘96 he and a couple other Latino MFA Writers formed Los Delicados, which combined music, theatre and poetry. They would put on full, “not traditional” musical plays, in 90 minute performances that incorporated crowd participation poems aimed to motivate Latino folks to be proud of their identity and heritage. They earned fame within the California Latino scene, and would tour across the country, including Texas and the Midwest (stopping at Chicago frequently). He fondly characterizes the group as “very rebellious and drunk most of the time”-- which what 20-something isn’t? But few can say they channel their inner inebriated rebel towards forming a revolutionary, spoken word, interactive theater and music troupe. 

Criticism of SF’s shift to a tech innovation city

Los Delicados went on to release a CD, “Word Descarga,” prompted by the beginning of gentrification and increased evictions of the Mission District in response to the ‘96 to ‘99 Dot-Com-Boom. In a particularly defining moment of cultural conflict, Paul describes watching a developer destroy a three story mural to put up a loft. He reflects, “The concept of what art is has become totally commercialized inside of our neighborhood” and that Los Delicados and followers were resisting directly against these events with their participatory poetry. 

He maintains that “evolution of gentrification continues -- responses to it come at different waves at different momentum.” He says that SF has been experiencing “runaway capitalism”, which invites tech companies to be as innovative as possible. This has allowed tech barons to utilize a massive volume of the city’s resources and spaces, all while lacking accountability in the detrimental socioeconomic disparities  inflicted upon various communities of long-term SF residents.

“We have to remind people of the culture that SF is, instead of the money that you can make. I didn't come here for money, I came here for a community of artists.” Which led to his veneration of the SF Arts Commission- an organization with an equity based model to distribute public funds to artists from marginalized communities. 

He elaborates on how art can intervene in all of these historical and current problems, 

“I’m really into the party while you rebel thing… I feel like revolution should be fun and attractive as much as it is intellectually disciplined and organized. I don’t feel like we can forget to love and celebrate while we’re fighting for justice.... In SF, the way art usually gets made is in community with people. You’re often talking about the intersection of social problems and art. Art is not supposed to solve the social problem, but art should inspire you to want to do something about it.”