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My connection to the arts has lasted my entire life, but that bond has always brought inequality and discrimination along with creativity and joy. As someone who’s grown up in New York City, I’ve felt the pang of disparity in the arts firsthand for as long as I can remember. Audiences praise Broadway shows as being “real New York theater”, but my experience of those stages is one of commercialism, racism, inequality, and exclusion.

 

The arts are supposed to be the place where everyone feels welcome and every story is valued, but after years of feeling like “the outsider” in rehearsal and audition rooms, I knew I had to be the change I so desperately wanted to see. 

I was moved to found Co-Op Productions as a creative home base for future generations of BIMPOC artists. I want to give them a space that celebrates them in all their glory and to provide a foundation from which they can be supported and blossom.

 

No more being “grateful just to be in the room”; the time for unabashedly owning our voices onstage, on screen, and in all artistic content is here.

 

It’s now.

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- Alyssa V Gomez