Artist statement
Freedom and precision are the two categories that best define my work as a performing artist. Freedom to create on any subject of personal or collective interest. Technical precision when it comes to executing those ideas. Freedom to use the media and styles to reveal them, and curatorial rigor to determine the most adequate tools to show them.
I stand behind my capacity to surprise myself and discover wonders on stage. The stage is a playground. My partners are my playmates. The stage is a lab where everything should be executed with thoroughness.
I live in Miami and Miami lives in me; with all the consequences it implies. Nevertheless, from time to time, my mind flies far away to a place that perhaps no longer exists, to my origins, to the land of my parents, swimming with my cousins in lakes brimming with joy, with our bellyful of candies. My memories, my friends and family members are an inseparable part of my body of work and of me.
I am a blind artist and have hearing loss, but if my brain works, I don’t care whatsoever. Do you?
My instinct tells me that I should include it here though.
José Manuel Domínguez
Performing artist, writer, educator and disability advocate. Bachelor’s degrees in Acting and Theater Direction, Instituto Superior de Artes (ISA), Havana, Cuba, 1996.
Founder of Antiheroes Project, Inc. (2011), non-for-profit organization dedicated to the nurturing of multidisciplinary collaborative theater productions and the inclusion of people with and without disabilities through performance participation, annual workshop series, literary events and community conversations. Under his direction, Antiheroes Project has evolved into one of the artistic community leaders in South Florida, committed to the evolution of Latino Theater.
Dominguez has written over ten original works, some of them conceived in collaboration with a team of performers.
Titles:
• “Ciudad Líquida” – 2023
• “Espejo de agua” – 2023
• “Watch Out, Joe!” – 2021
• “Barrio Babel” – 2019
• “El último río de aguas transparentes” – 2019
• “El viaje sin nombre” – 2019
• “Hijos de la playa” – 2018
• “Luna Fluorescente” – 2016
• “Azul Tirreno” – 2016
• “Nomadis” – 2014
• “Orplide, el eros de la lejanía” – 2013
Recent highlights as individual artist and theater director:
September 2023: National Latinx Theater Initiative Award for Antiheroes Project, alongside a group of other Latinx organizations nation-wide.
June 2022: Toledo, Spain, “Creative Sound and Movement workshop for La Recua Teatro Troupe. Guest artist.
January 2022: NBC-Telemundo. Dominguez is featured as part of the series “Inspirando America” (Inspiring America).
November 2021: The Knight Foundation announces Antiheroes Project as one of the Knight Arts Challenge awardees for “As Miamense as Possible”, a two-year program comprised by an open call for young writers and other ancillary events designed to revitalized Miami’s Hispanic scene after pandemic.
October 2021: Invited to teach and perform at the 20th Anniversary of the Hillsborough Community College, Ybor City, Tampa, Florida.
September 2021: Invited to teach a creative movement and improv workshop for Danza 3 – contemporary dance academy, Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico.
May 2021: Awarded the National Association of Latino Arts and Culture’s Actos de Confianza for individual artists.
March 2021: Miami Light Project Here & Now Festival. Dominguez’s solo performance Watch Out, Joe! is commissioned to be premiered in October 2021.
November 2020: Invited to participate in “Collective Mind/ Cohabitation”, a three-week residency program with the Odin Teatret, Holstebro, Denmark.
January 2019. Dominguez is selected as one of four artists awarded with the En Residencia Program by the MDC’s Koubek Center.
As part of his career as an individual artist, he has collaborated with other groups and local arts leaders, participating in several indie film productions, dance theater works, and visual arts projects. Dominguez is one of the few blind professional theatre directors in the country.