September 24, 2025

Meet DIRECT ADDRESS commissioned artist MARIO VEGA

For the past few months, Cornerstone has been working on DIRECT ADDRESS, a project that asks how theater can create a space for gathering, discourse, and dreaming at a time when we really need it in Los Angeles.

We’re excited to introduce you to the commissioned artists we’re collaborating with on DIRECT ADDRESS. Over the next few weeks we’ll be sending out emails that go a bit deeper into each artist’s life and practice and offer some info on what they’re planning to make for public spaces, and for the Ford Amphitheater when DIRECT ADDRESS premieres for one night only on October 24th at 8:00 PM.

This week, we are excited to introduce you to Mario Vega!

You are a playwright. Could you talk more about that?

I write. I think it’s fun to create a story and then bring people together to tell it. I like writing stories about the Mexican-American experience, the immigrant experience, things that are funny, things that are silly. I write things that are very cartoonish and cartoony. You know, the things that I write are more in the realm of Looney Tunes than Shakespeare.

From our time working together, I’ve noticed your plays have political commentary beneath the surface. Is that something you do in all of your plays?

Yeah, I mean (he deepens his voice) “I think all theatre is political”… I like talking about the world, I like making political humor and poking fun at those in power. Even pieces that aren’t specifically political – if it’s a play about people struggling, that’s political. We struggle because of the way the world is and there’s politics in every world of every story. I think if you’re gonna have the ability to be on a stage, you should be saying something important, something that resonates with the human experience.

Who is Mario Vega? Talk to us about yourself. Who are you? Where are you from?

I’m just gonna say words other people use to describe me, like “stud”, “heartbreaker”… “galán”… (laughs) don’t put this in the interview! I think Mario Vega is just someone who is trying to understand things and trying to get by day by day. I’m trying to exist and have fun every day to the best of my ability… while hustling and struggling. 

What keeps you up at night?

I fall asleep dreaming of what I have to do the next day. And that’s exciting.

What are you currently reading, watching, listening to? Is there anything interesting that you’ve been dedicating your time to?

I’ve been listening to The Peligrosos. I have projects that have me studying sad Spanish music, essentially. A lot of like 80’s and 90’s Mexican music. I’ve been studying it – it’s so beautiful and so simple, so poetic in a way that you can’t match in English! So it’s like – how are they telling this story? I’m reading a lot of my friend’s plays. And the thing that I’ve been watching? King of the Hill, it’s so human and so silly. 

In the context of Direct Address, the ask was to make something that speaks to the current need of making art in public spaces. How was the process of coming up with what you wanted to do?

When Cornerstone reached out to me, I was thinking about disrupting public space and in my head, it had to be based in Los Angeles. 

But even though… if I’m writing a show, and I’m in a city, I probably want to write about that city, or that community, or those people. And I think almost all my plays take place in Southern California.

And then I thought – okay, music disrupts space so this will be a musical. And then I was thinking about paleteros, and then paleteros ringing the bell, and when that disrupts space and draws attention to them… that’s already theatrical in a sense. And I hit up my friend and collaborator, Eliza Vedar to write the music. 

How long have you and Eliza been working together?

10 years. We met in high school. We both attended San Diego State, where we used to write full length musicals every year and then perform them in the Spring. 

We commissioned you around April of this year. Between then and now, something major, the ICE raids and protests, happened in LA. I know that it informed a new direction for your piece. Can you talk more about how that was?

I first conceived Paletero Days as a father-daughter story, and her leaving for school. I’ve always been fascinated with northern migration – you know, Latinos that go to Mexico, then San Diego, then LA, then Stockton. The idea of moving north is really interesting to me. 

There were already migration elements in the story as I was conceiving it, and then we had the ICE raids, and then, you know, these things of paleteros being taken off the streets and kidnapped by ICE. And so then it’s like – oh, we can’t do a piece about that without acknowledging how difficult it is. So now it’s really a play about a daughter who has to leave for school but does not want to leave her dad behind because he is in danger. And it reflects what’s happening right now. Then, as a part of the making of this script, Cornerstone and I were planning to interview paleteros in LA, but by the time we were able to start doing that, we couldn’t find paleteros anywhere, and the kids weren’t out in the parks, which was surprising, and to me, very depressing. 

Any projects coming up? Anything exciting for you?

(Clears throat) Well y’know, I have some things in the books I can’t really talk about yet… (laughs). But no, we are working on this musical about a playwright that works at a Yardhouse.

What’s your handle? How can we keep up with you?

On Instagram @mariovegajr_ … Everybody who gets this e-newsletter will be added to my close friends story (laughs).

Are you writing anything right now?

We’re working on a Latino fantasy musical called Daydreamer. I’m working on a play called Our Lady of the San Diego Convention Center, which is about migrant girls being held at the San Diego Convention Center. And I’m waiting for inspiration to grab me by the hand and take me somewhere. 

DIRECT ADDRESS is theater as discourse. It is a celebration of the First Amendment and an experiment in making art out of the present tense. DIRECT ADDRESS is an appeal to your imagination and a gathering in the heart of the storm.

Cornerstone Theater Company has commissioned a group of local artists to make works for public spaces throughout Los Angeles County—works that directly address the state of things as they are right now and attempt poetic interventions on behalf of a just future. These short works will be performed across Los Angeles leading to their complete one-night presentation at The Ford on October 24th. DIRECT ADDRESS is inspired by the history of American activism and public performance—from Frederick Douglass to ACT UP and beyond. It’s an invitation to reimagine how we exercise our first amendment rights. Commissioned artists include Ana María Álvarez, Agnes Borinsky, Daniel Alexander Jones, Fahad Siadat & HEX, Mario Vega, Members of the Cornerstone Ensemble, and more.