I work to create a space that de-mechanizes the mind; a space where we can move from one identity to another and realize the full potential of becoming; a space where we emerge from our daily masks and shake loose the numbing fear of isolation; a space where we can reconnect the body and the imagination and breathe deeply into the trauma trapped in our hips; a space where we rehearse revolution, compromise, rage, tolerance, strength and vulnerability.
Creativity is a fundamental human activity and a powerful resource for individual and community health and care. Arts practitioners of all disciplines, throughout major global crises including the Covid-19 pandemic, climate change, and ongoing forced displacement, offer particular pathways to creativity, adaptability, insight, meaning-making, and revitalization. The World Health Organizations Resource on Arts Practice and the Ethics of Care offers questions to consider in creative projects within communities where care is an identified concern as well as strategies to support arts practitioners in caring for their own health and wellbeing.
Mauricio Tafur Salgado and Dr. Nisha Sajnani are the project leads for this resource guide; Charanya R is the project coordinator; Libby Mislan and Kimberly Scott are the lead researchers, and Den is the web designer. The projects co-authors are: Kunle Adewale (Nigeria), Pachaya Akkapram (Thailand), Hector Aristizabal (Colombia), Ty Defoe (Oneida/Anishinaabe), Ellada Evangelou (Cyprus). Julia Puebla Fortier (UK). Maitri Gopalakrishna (India). Anita Jensen (Sweden). Scotia Monkivitch (Australia). Molly Mullen (Aotearoa New Zealand). Lisa Ndejuru (Rwanda and Canada). Benoit Ngabonzinza (Rwanda). and Dolina Wehipeihana (Aotearoa New Zealand)
www.withcare.art
Developmental workshop at ArtsOnSite. September 10th-27th, 2025
Co-created by Mauricio Salgado, An-lin Dauber, and Chelsea Ainsworth.
Produced by ArtsOnSite and Mauricio Salgado
Directed by Josiah Davis
El Mentiroso and his Cyclops is a 70-minute dance theater descent into the subconscious of a Fool who is desperate to extract the truth from a lie. This is an irreverent - mythological -game show - fever dream about intergenerational trauma and loss of innocence.
“Dissociation is the essence of trauma…the trauma that ‘started out there’ is now played out in the battlefield of our bodies.” - The Body Keeps the Score
This piece was initially commissioned in 2018 by Trinity Rep in Providence as an exploration of Miguel De Cervantes’s Don Quixote. We chose to combine this text with Suzanne Lalonde’s article “Don Quixote’s Quixotic Trauma Therapy: A Reassessment of Cervantes’s Canonical Novel and Trauma Studies” which frames Cervantes’s book as a process for healing trauma. We learned that Quixote’s escapades are the spiral of a fool coping with loss and loneliness by imagining bombastic battles with mountains and monsters. Additionally we were inspired by Bessel van der Kolk’s analysis in The Body Keeps The Score where he argues that the road to healing includes modes of expression and communication beyond the verbal.
In combination with these texts, the piece is an adaptation of Mauricio’s lived experience with sexual abuse and his various approaches to coping with it. In order to do this with care, we utilize healing elements such as repetition, humor, dancing and food. El Mentiroso - our quixotic fool - goes on his embodied journey for healing trauma traveling beyond the verbal to choreographed 80’s dance combinations, farcical chase scenes, and sharing food with the audience all while battling the ever transforming cyclopes.
El Mentiroso is for grown-ups being bullied by childhood trauma- it’s for anyone haunted by harm. Perhaps it winks at you through the mischief of your children; pesters you in your mother’s silence, or befriends you on the toilet in the dark at two in the morning when you think everyone is asleep...
Mauricio is an Associate Arts Professor in the department of Undergraduate Drama where he teaches Introduction to Theatre Studies, Climate Action and Research Theatre and the Cultivating Change Makers Lab. He has also co-taught Approaching Indigenous Theater through the works of Hanay Geiogamah, Tomson Highway, Spiderwoman Theater Company and Larissa Fasthorse. He co-created and co-teaches this course with Emily Preis.
Mauricio currently serves as the Director of Applied Theater where he oversees the Applied Theater Minor and he is the Associate Chair for the department where he focuses on cultivating belonging in the department through restorative practices.
In the Spring of 2023, Mauricio curated the Festival of Voices for the Drama department. The Festival featured new works by the Verbatim Performance Lab; a collaboration between Kirya Traber and Alicia Morales; a workshop of DonkeySaddle Projects’ Yo Te Esperaba: A Crimmigration Story, and a workshop of a new piece by the Arts and Culture Branch of the Poor People’s Campaign about Movement Songbook.
