Setting the Stage for Diversity

Theater students like Victoria Martins hope to bring more Latinx representation to the theater world. Photo by Cynthia Price.

Standing up on the stage for the first time with the crowd looking on, the lights in her eyes and a large blonde wig bestowed upon her head, a then 5-year-old Victoria Martins was playing Sally in “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown,” and officially beginning her journey as an actor.

Martins began taking an interest in acting from the age of four. She started gaining roles with a small sister-owned acting agency and went on to perform throughout elementary, middle and high school in various school plays. Now, at 20 years old, Martins is a leading actress in Cal State Long Beach’s theater and performing arts department.

“This is what we’re doing for the rest of our lives, no matter how hard it is, no matter how zero dollars we have, we’re doing this,” said Martins.

While Martins hopes her passion will one day turn into her full-time career, statistics around Latinx representation in film and T.V. reveal that roles for people who look like her are limited in mainstream media. Despite the data, the next generation of up-and-coming actors from underrepresented backgrounds like Martins continue to try and prove that their stories deserve to be told on the world’s largest screens and stages.

“In a more professional world, things that the whole world is consuming, [there is] definitely under-representation, in everything, not just people of color, [but also] of queer people, of everything,” said Martins, a member of both the Latinx and queer communities.

According to the UCLA Hollywood Diversity report, only 46.2% of roles are cast to non-white actors. A November 2023 study from the USC Annenberg School of Communication and Journalism found that across 1,600 different movies released between the years 2007 and 2022, only 5.5% of the over 62,000 speaking roles were given to a Latinx actor.

“It will take a lot of hard work, that’s a given,” said Jazmine Cordero, 20, a first-generation Salvadoran-American theater student at CSULB. “[While] I feel I don’t have to work harder [just] because I’m Latina, I feel I’ll have a harder time representing my culture on stage because not a lot of stories focus on it.”

Cordero explained that though there are roles for Latinx actors within the industry, the majority surround the stereotypical storyline of the Latinx community being poor or undocumented immigrants, rather than the more accurate and diverse stories that exist.

With a dream of staying in live theater and performing on Broadway, Martins ensures that she takes every opportunity given to her in CSULB’s diverse program, a program “proud of [the] range of POC and LGBTQ+ alumni who have starred in television, film and on Broadway as well as in major regional theaters” after attending CSULB, according to Ezra LeBank, chair of the theater arts department.

“At Long Beach, we’ve been so lucky to do shows that tell different stories,” said Martins. “A different part of my being has been represented in every show that I’ve done.”

Above all, Martins takes inspiration from Latinx and other minority celebrities, like Eva Noblezada and Jinkx Monsoon, who are helping to tell the stories through theater and performance of all people regardless of gender, sexuality, age and race.

“I never really saw people like me [growing up], but now I do... there are so many stories in the world, which is the point of theater, to tell people’s stories,” Martins said.