The LA Times recently announced their inaugural LA Vanguardia class, a project celebrating the Latino vanguard transforming our cultural landscape. The 2022 LA Vanguard shares the stories of people who are working to increase Latino representation on the screen, on the stage, and on the page.
Below are the Tisch alumni represented in the 2022 LA Vanguard, representing an amazing array of talent defining the culture of today — and tomorrow. Congratulations to the Tisch alumni included, and click here for the full list.
Instigators
Janicza Bravo '03 (BFA, Drama), filmmaker
Born in New York City to Panamanian parents and having grown up in Panama and the U.S., filmmaker Bravo’s work captures confusing feelings of dislocation mixed with a strong sense of assured self-possession. Her two features to date, “Lemon” and “Zola,” are both playfully provocative, pushing audiences to confront their own cultural assumptions. By turns very funny and laceratingly insightful, Bravo’s work uses humor to slowly turn up the heat, catching viewers off guard when they realize they are in the boiling waters of the contradictions and paradoxes of modern life. “Zola” in particular feels like something of a landmark, an outrageous adaptation of a viral Twitter thread that bristles with electric energy and observational specificity. Bravo also easily transitions to directing for television, working on shows such as “Atlanta,” “Mrs. America” and “In Treatment,” putting her personal stamp on what could just be for-hire work. — M. Olsen
Dailyn Rodriguez '96 (BFA, Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing), showrunner
Rodriguez has been described as a “unicorn.” Best known as one of the showrunners and executive producers for the latter seasons of “Queen of the South,” Rodriguez is an experienced writer who worked her way up through the television ranks — a path notoriously difficult for Latinas and other writers of color, who have historically been overlooked for promotions even after getting staffed. Born to Cuban immigrant parents in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, she grew up in New Jersey before attending New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. Her dream of working in TV led to Rodriguez’s move to Los Angeles for a writing fellowship through Walt Disney Studios, which helped her land her first TV job on “George Lopez.” Rodriguez has been frank about Hollywood’s shortcomings when it comes to Latino representation and the limited (and often stereotypical) tropes and stories that make it to the screen. So even within the framework of a cartel story, Rodriguez helped steer “Queen of the South” — about a Mexican woman who builds her own drug empire — into a nuanced series that explores its characters’ humanity as well as the systemic issues that allow the black market to thrive. Most recently, Rodriguez has joined “The Lincoln Lawyer” Season 2 as co-showrunner and executive producer. — Tracy Brown
Innovators
Melissa Barrera (Drama), actor
Barrera burst onto the U.S. entertainment scene as co-lead Vanessa in the film adaptation of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights” (2021). Before that, she had made literally hundreds of episodes of the telenovelas “Siempre tuya Acapulco,” “Tanto Amor” and others before appearing in Netflix’s first Spanish-language series, “Club de Cuervos.” She has since become the face of the reborn “Scream” franchise and recently turned in a gritty starring turn in Netflix’s survival drama miniseries “Keep Breathing.” She hit the festival circuit as the lead in Benjamin Millepied’s buzzy film version of “Carmen” and produced her next vehicle, the supernatural thriller “Bed Rest.” The Mexican-native singer-dancer-actress even had a Top 10 single in her home country in 2013 (“Mamma María,” as part of the duo Melissa y Sebastian). — M. Ordoña
*We apologize for omissions. Please send edits or additions to tsoa.alumni@nyu.edu.