Hero Theatre and Hero Multimedia Announce Environmental Justice Project, NUESTRO PLANETA

Hero Theatre and Hero Multimedia announced today the launch of Nuestro Planeta, a ten-year-long multimedia new works initiative that focuses on educating Latinx audiences about environmental justice within the Americas. This series of films and plays center on the relationship between Latinx communities and the Earth.

"Through industrialization, migration, and globalization some of our most vulnerable communities now find themselves at the epicenter of the climate crisis, with little memory of their once harmonious connection to nature and no understanding of how to lessen their own human impact," stated a representative of the project.

Nuestro Planeta is the first of a collaboration between Hero Theatre and the newly formed Hero Multimedia. Hero Multimedia's goal is to create and produce more scripted film and television narrative around environmental and social justice issues.

Over the span of ten years, Hero Theatre and Hero Multimedia will focus on specific countries in Latin America, the first being Colombia. "Colombia is the second most biodiverse country on the planet. It's exciting for us to begin with Colombia since we don't see many Colombian stories, especially on the stage," said Hero Theatre producing artistic director and Hero Multimedia co-founder, Elisa Bocanegra. Bocanegra will devise and direct the first endeavor, which will be written by Colombian playwright Diana Burbano.

Hero Theatre recently received a gift from the Hitz Foundation, which will fund research travels to Colombia for the first segment in the project.

The inspiration behind Nuestro Planeta came from Bocanegra's mentorship with Black Lives Matters co-founder, Patrisse Cullors. Bocanegra is currently in the Environmental and Social Justice Arts Practice graduate program, founded by Cullors, at Prescott College.