Labor of Love: A Sin Muros Play Comes to Life

It all started seven years ago, when matthew paul olmos transformed a love story inspired by his mother’s life into a play. In 2024, Stages selected his script for the Sin Muros Latinx Theater Festival, an annual week-long new play development program that uplifts Latinx voices through workshops, public readings, and community activations. Now, as Sin Muros enters its ninth year, that drive thru monterey becomes the first play from the Festival to receive a full production. This milestone reflects a labor of love poured into developing a new work for audiences to embrace.

“We receive a lot of full-length play submissions to read and take rigorous notes for,” said Cesar Jaquez, the Sin Muros Festival Coordinator. When he came across that drive thru monterey, “I remember stopping and thinking ‘this is really good, let me read it again.’” When I read it the second time, I felt these characters were palpable—you can hear, see, and touch them.” The Sin Muros Committee agreed with the caliber of matthew paul olmos’ writing and selected the work for the 2024 Festival.

Next, the Committee identified a director to further develop the play in collaboration with the playwright and actors during the Festival. Cesar recalls the selection of Brenda Palestina because “she has a really great understanding of these characters, what they want, and how to get those wants. She is a force.” Brenda was overjoyed to be part of a story that included the “realism of two people falling in love” juxtaposed with “the magical bits that remind us that this is a play.” She also appreciated that drive thru monterey’s “refreshing way of telling a Latino story without getting fully into devastating politics, but also not ignoring their influences on us.”

Throughout the week of the Festival, Brenda worked with matthew, Sage Cantu (Assistant Director), and the cast to bring the script to life. With minimal production elements involved, workshops allow artists to focus on reading the script aloud, providing feedback, and refining the characters and stories. “It’s really a huge moment of discovery—watching the process and learning about my own play. I started to understand the characters in a deeper way than I did before,” expressed matthew regarding his experience at the Festival. The public reading had an immense impact on audiences, including Stages leadership. Cesar shared that “whenever Kenn [former Stages Artistic Director] would get really excited about a show, he would come up to you with the biggest grin, grab your arms, and basically scream ‘this is the show that you guys need to fight for and champion.’” After viewing that drive thru monterey, Cesar remembered Kenn approaching him with this same excitement exclaiming “‘you need to tell Derek about the show.’”

A few months later, Derek Charles Livingston joined Stages as its new Artistic Director. As promised, one of the first plays the staff shared with him was that drive thru monterey. Derek recalled “the play, they all told me, was the hit of our recent Sin Muros Latinx Play Festival. Upon reading it, I knew why. The ease of dialogue, complexity of the characters, and the dynamic plotting reveals a playwright who is a mature artist with a mastery of the art form.”

Derek’s decision to fully produce this play resonated especially with those involved with the Festival. When matthew found out the news, he realized that “it will be a surreal experience as a writer and son to see my mom watching this play about her life.” Selected by Derek and matthew to make her mainstage directorial debut at Stages, Brenda is “honored to be a part of a team of powerful Latino and female artists to tell a story that feels very tender, dear, and real.” After eight years of being part of the Festival, Cesar said “it means the world” to see a Sin Muros play reach this stage of development.

Once the play was selected for the 2025–26 Season, the process continued through another workshop, casting, production meetings, re-writes, and rehearsals. As a playwright, matthew “writes stage directions as prompts or invitations for my collaborators to use their imagination and creativity to develop a new version of the art that exists onstage in three dimensions.” As the script, cast, creative teams, and designs come together, Brenda has the important role of “balancing two worlds of the magical and realism and making them be friends.”

While all productions take a village to translate stories from the page to the stage—new plays require this support tenfold. As Artistic Director, Derek serves as an advocate for the play and audience throughout the journey, reminding playwrights “you already got the gig.” He emphasizes this “because a lot of voices—actual voices, not just the ones in the playwright’s head—are about to enter the process.” As audiences watch the premiere of that drive thru monterey, they receive a seven-year labor of love to cherish for a lifetime.