Life & Work with Dominic Patacsil

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dominic Patacsil.

Hi Dominic, we’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
It was the last dress rehearsal for “Journey of the Skeletons”, a Dia de los Muertos themed play I directed at Garfield in 2018. A simple story about a family searching for pan de muerto for their ofrenda while their dead father journeyed through Mictlan to reunite with them.

For the end of the show, I asked my students, friends, community, everybody to send photos of their departed loved ones. This dress rehearsal was the first time we saw those pictures, people we missed, right on the stage. Amor Eterno played in the background. All of us, our community, sat there, and we saw ourselves on stage. After all of our performances, our audience cried together and saw the people they loved, not only their dearly departed but their own children and grandchildren. For me, this was a beginning- I sat in the audience and felt the community together. Ever since, that’s what theater does at Garfield High School, we bring the community together, and they see themselves represented.

A year later, I directed “Stand and Deliver”. There’s a play version! To work at Garfield is to hear the story of Jaime Escalante everywhere. For research, I raided the archives of our school library, old newspapers, yearbooks, and anything from that era. Much of that became part of the scenic design for the show. Stand and Deliver is a classic, and according to Edward James Olmos, when you count all of the teachers that have shown this movie in their classrooms, all over the country, it’s the most viewed movie of all time.

Our “Stand and Deliver” audience was mainly Garfield alumni and many of their stories were in the movie. My actors got to meet the people they played. How awesome is that? I stood back, and I watched my theater kids meet their real-life characters. Actors from the film attended our show and we had a special visit by Dr. Henry Gradillas, who was the principal of Garfield during the Jaime Escalante years. What a community gathering. I’ll never forget all of the connections and reunions made in our auditorium during that weekend. Theater is powerful.

Right now, I’m up to my ears in directing “Little Shop of Horrors”. Actually, who isn’t doing this show nowadays? I’ve seen it pop up everywhere! It’s awesome. Our version is the same as the other productions, but you’d better believe that our Skid Row is going to look familiar. Seymour, Audrey, and Mushnik are all the same, but they’re going to feel like people my community will know. And when my theater kids graduate, they’ll know that they did something magical.

Alright, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
There’s a stairwell in our auditorium where an old student of mine would sit and cry and ground himself. Brilliant kid, great singer, amazing actor. And he suffered from severe anxiety. It was triggered a lot. That was his stairwell. There is so much emotional trauma in our teenagers, and there’s a lot of drama in drama club too.

This stairwell is baptized with the tears of many of my theater kids. They break down, they feel the feels, they cry, and I walk them over to the stairwell, and I tell them the story about how it’s magical and how it will help them find their way through the cloud they’re in. And they sit for a while by themselves, and somehow, they’re always ready for their cue.

One of my greatest joys is watching my students, after a show, jump into the audience and get hugs and respect, and feel the pride from their parents. But after a few years, I noticed they don’t all have parents, and sometimes, no one in their family comes to see them. Doing a play means hundreds of hours of work. It’s your life for a few months. And for them not to have someone in the audience breaks my heart. So I sit there, proud of them. I’m the drama dad.

And I’m a real dad too! When I first started this theater program at Garfield, my daughter was only three years old. The last bell rang, I rushed to daycare, picked her up, and rushed back to campus to start rehearsals. I’m a dad and a director at the same time. I’ve been lucky to watch my daughter grow up alongside the theater program at Garfield. But being a dad is hard! And directing theater is hard! One day, I handed my daughter to Madeline, who played Mrs. Potts in our production of “Beauty and the Beast”. “Here you go, Potts, Chip now has a little teacup sister.” And it’s been like that ever since. My daughter has been in most of my plays.

I’m so proud of all of my students and I love them all very much. To answer the question- the path has always been tough. Helping these kids find that special part of themselves is a challenge that happens every single day.

Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
When I was 15, I gave a speech in my English class- What do you want to be when you grow up? I wanted to be a drama teacher when I grew up and that’s what I am- a drama teacher. I’ve done this for eight years now, and I’ve directed 15 shows.

Being a kid that was never good at sports and never was able to get straight-A’s is hard, but it’s worse when you’re the oldest kid in your family and all of your younger siblings are good at sports and got straight-A’s. Theater saved me, over and over again, from the time I was 8, and I got kicked off of my 3rd-grade football team, to the time I was 18 and entering USC to study Theatre Arts. I gave my parents something to be proud of.

And when I started at Garfield, the iconic auditorium on campus had just burned down, it was a pile of rocks and ashes. The theater teachers had retired and moved on. Garfield High School had no theater program. It killed me. Generations of kids went from 9th to 12th grade without the opportunity that I got.

I have a theater background and I’d never taught it before. Back in 2008, there was no credential in California to teach theater. To be authorized to teach theater classes, you had to obtain an English credential. So I was an English teacher. No one knew I could teach theater. I didn’t know either.

Eight years later, I have kids that work in theater all over the place. They study it in college, they apply their skills to their families and careers, and, once in a while, they come back and they tell me about their adventures in theater.

I lost count of how many times my students tell me, “Oh – I wasn’t going to come to school today, but I had rehearsal.” I love that so much. Theater keeps kids in school, it gives them a place to belong.

Sometimes I feel like I’m closer to the end of this road for myself. Maybe Little Shop of Horrors will be the last show I direct? I think about leaving campus earlier, not when it’s dark. But then it happens, every Fall this happens- A freshman walks into my room to audition, and they’re figuring out their identity, and they’re awesome- and I have to keep this space open for them, at least for a few more years.

I guess theater isn’t really my art. It’s my students- they’re my works of art.

Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
When did Ghostbusters 2 come out? 1989? I was eleven and obsessed with that movie and the soundtrack. So of course, I made costumes and proton packs out of shoeboxes and put on a play for my whole family based on the movie. But the play was basically the entire length of the soundtrack, both sides. Me and my sisters got through maybe three songs before my family had enough.

I’m 8, I’m 12, I’m 15, heck this is me now- and I’m walking past a field of kids playing sports, and their football, soccer ball, frisbee, whatever lands close to me. They yell out, “Hey! Throw it back!” And I freeze. Is that a universal experience? I can’t throw the ball back, or if I do, I’d throw it. And it would go a few feet, and then I’d have to run up to where it landed. And throw it again. Repeat as necessary. I’m not good at sports.

In 2020, I got diagnosed with ADHD, and my therapist told me that it made a lot of sense. I was the quiet ADHD kid. The one who never got diagnosed because I was so quiet. And I was always daydreaming and wandering off. Theater was such a perfect outlet for me.

Pricing:

• Little Shop of Horrors, May 11-20 at Garfield High School
• General Admission $10
• Students and Children $5

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @ghsdramapresents

Image Credits
Hugo Gomez