Our Team
Tony Garcia
Executive Artistic Director
With a formidable sense of humor and extensive knowledge of Chicano history, Denver native Anthony J. Garcia inspires and serves his community through his work as an award-winning playwright, musician, composer, educator, social activist, mentor, and nonprofit leader. He has been able to bring conversations about gentrification of neighborhoods, racial inequity, immigration, impacts of war, and even the trials of love to light through Su Teatro’s varied programming. Tony has touched and transformed countless lives around the country, but it’s in Denver where his passion, stories, and civic contributions have made an enduring impression on the community.
As a kid, Tony grew up surrounded by the Chicano movement and was influenced by its tenets around social and political justice and cultural identity. Raised in Denver’s Westside neighborhood, Tony was one of hundreds of Chicanos who were involuntarily displaced to make in order to build for the Auraria campus. He saw first-hand the effects of how social and economic oversight of a community could result in extreme hardship. Tony was shaped by this change but found strength in his identity and voice. His play The Westside Oratorio details the experience of 7 generations from that community beginning with the discovery of gold in Mexican Diggings at the base of Ruby Hill in 1858 predating Denver’s existence to the displacement in 1970.
Tony received his B.A. in theater from the University of Colorado at Denver. In 1972, Tony joined the student-organized theatre group Su Teatro as a guitar player; he soon became the primary playwright, director and creative force behind the company. Over the years, Su Teatro has survived to become the third oldest Chicano theatre in the country. It was in 1989 that he became Su Teatro’s Executive Artistic Director. In addition to running the theatre, spearheading its development and subsequent move to Santa Fe Drive, he has expanded the American theatre canon by contributing more than 40 new plays and original works for the stage. He has inspired a new generation of Latino artists and leaders in the process. Through Tony’s commitment to cultural equity and a desire to “broaden the mainstream “, he has worked to influence arts policy creating opportunities for the Latino arts sector and offering an opportunity for the Chicano and Latino community share their stories, history and experience.
The sphere of Tony’s influence is both vast and deep. He’s served as a faculty member in the Department of Chicano/a Studies at Metro State College for over 25 years and is a board member of the National Association of Latino Art and Culture and a former board member of the Western States Arts Federation. His numerous distinctions include being named Denver Post’s Theater person of the Year in 2010, an artist in residence at the Island Institute in Sitka, AK in 2009, the recipient of the University of California Irvine’s Chicano Literary Award for Playwriting in 1989 and was awarded the United States Artist Rockefeller Fellowship in Theater Arts. In 2011, Tony was also named a Bonfils-Stanton Livingston Fellow.
Tony’s commitment to Denver and Colorado is as strong today as it was nearly 50 years ago. He continues to advocate for equitable representation of cultural work and organizations, mentor young artists, contribute to civic change, and shine a light on Colorado’s Chicano community.
Tony Garcia
Executive Artistic Director
Tanya Mote
Associate Director
Tanya Mote is the Associate Director at Su Teatro Cultural and Performing Arts Center where she has practiced for 23 years to become a better grassroots fundraiser and an all-around organizational development and social movement geek. She received her Bachelors degree from the University of Denver. Tanya has a Masters in International Studies from the University of Denver – Graduate School of International Studies and received her PhD in the same program in August 2009. Her areas of study were comparative politics, Latin America and human rights
Through her long career at Su Teatro, Tanya has guided Su Teatro’s fundraising efforts, and infused the principals of grassroots fundraising into all that they do. She has represented the organization nationally and locally with the National Performance Network, Doris Duke Charitable Fund, Mellon Foundation, Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training, and many others. Tanya is a graduate of the NALAC Leadership Institute, the National Arts Administrator’s Mentorship Program, and participated in the first NALAC Arts Advocacy Institute in Washington DC
She facilitates for the Colorado Creative Industries Change Leader Institute and she is the Lead Instructor for the University of Denver -University College Arts Management program. She enjoys hosting informal spaces for independent artists and cultural organizers to come together to develop skills and to support one another and she collaborates nationally with fellow organizers through opportunities with the Allied Media Conference, the Wealth Reclamation Academy of Practitioners (WRAP), and Leveraging a Network for Equity (LANE). She serves on the board of Directors for D3 Arts, Denver, CO; Art2Action, Tampa, FLA; and Working Narratives, Wilmington, NC.
Tanya Mote
Associate Director
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Micaela Garcia de Benavidez
Managing Director/CAEI Director
Mica graduated from Claremont McKenna College, earning her BA in International Relations and her Masters in Nonprofit Management at Regis University as a Colorado Trust Fellow. She was a Mellon Foundation LATC Fellow at the National Latino Theater Festival, working with El Teatro Campesino. Mica is a graduate of the Circle of Latina Leadership program, and NALAC Leadership and Advanced Institute. She is a past member of the Denver Center for International Studies Foundation Board of Directors, chairing the Scholarship Committee. She has served on grant panels for the Network of Ensemble Theaters, Colorado Creative Industries, National Performance Network and the National Endowment for the Arts.
She grew up at Su Teatro, returning in College as an intern and started full time after graduating. As the Director of Su Teatro’s Cultural Arts Education Institute since 2007, she has guided the education program through long term relationships with multiple schools and organizational partners, the creation of the award winning youth theater company El Teatro VolARTE. Under her leadership El Teatro VolARTE participated in the 2018 American High School Theater Festival at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, garnering the group the TrueWest Award and the Mayor’s Award for Excellence in the Arts- Global Award. She has received Arts Education training and consulting from arts partners in Denver, Philadelphia, San Francisco, New Orleans and San Antonio.
Mica manages the main stage acting company She has directed Papi, Me and Cesar Chavez, Francisca y la Muerte, The Cancer Monologues, and Dancing with the Spirits for the Su Teatro touring company. She has worked to have the company perform throughout the state and in Kansas, Wyoming, New Mexico, California, and Illinois
Mica has been Managing Director since 2018. She received the 2007 Lalo Delgado Commitment to Education award and the 2018 True West Award.
Micaela Garcia de Benavidez
Managing Director/ CAEI Director
Arnold King
Technical Director
Arnold King has been involved in the local theatre scene for the past 20 years in over 100 productions, and has been serving as Su Teatro’s Technical Director for the past 8 years. Throughout his career, he has served primarily as a lighting designer for Maya Productions and Curious New Voices and in a production capacity for Shadow Theatre Company, Firehouse Theater Company, The Avenue Theatre and the Aurora Fox. In addition to working with Su Teatro, Arnold is one of the co-founders of The SOURCE Theatre Company- an ensemble of theatrical artists who create original works from an organic inner space to convey genuine depth and greater meaning.
Arnold King
Technical Director
Steve Nash
Facilities Manager
Stephen Nash is the Facility Manager, handles all the Set Design, manages Collaborations (rentals) and supports as a Stage Technician. In 1988, soon after moving to Denver, Stephen and his wife Vicki met Su Teatro while working against the English Only amendment. In the fall of 1989, Stephen was asked to help with the technical side of the then newly acquired Elyria School, which was Su Teatro’s home for over 20 years. Stephen soon became the technical director and worked on many Su Teatro productions including Ludlow: El Grito de las Minas and La Carpa Aztlan presents: I Don’t Speak English Only. Playing a key role, in national touring including a two-week tour throughout California.
After a hiatus, so that he could devote time to police accountability with Denver Copwatch and working to end the illegal surveillance of citizens as a plaintiff in the Spy Files case, Stephen returned to Su Teatro eight years ago. Many local artists may know him from his stint managing the Crossroads Theater in Five Points. Since returning, he has worked to keep the new building (Denver Civic Theatre) up – with a new HVAC system this year as well as designing and building sets for Su Teatro productions including his favorite sets Bless Me Ultima and The River Bride. He has also joined Su Teatro on tour in Kansas, and Southern Colorado. He spends as much time as he can camping, hiking, fishing and general outdoor activity with his wife Vicki.
