Monica Palacios


Monica Palacios is a Chicana playwright, solo performer, director, and self-proclaimed "international hip chick." She attended Chico State University and transferred to San Francisco State University, at which she earned a BA in Cinema with a concentration in screenwriting. She has been producing theatre works for over three decades. In her specifically Chicana, queer, feminist, and lesbian performances, Palacios emphasizes activism and community organizing. She combines aspects of race, culture, and sexuality in her performances, and she was one of the first openly lesbian/queer stand up comics in 1982 in San Francisco. She has created several one-woman shows, plays, and screenplays. Her poems, plays, and anthologies are taught in universities and examined in scholarly settings, usually in the fields of LGBTQ Studies, Chicano Studies, and Feminist Studies. Palacios works with students of a wide range of ages and has served as a writer, director, and dramaturge for over 400 student theatre works.

Themes/Influences

The majority of Palacios' writing is about her interpretations of her experiences throughout life as a queer, Chicana woman. She draws inspiration from her family and others close to her. As one of the first comedians in this genre, she often discusses the intersection of queer and Latina identities that develop a liminal identity for people who are marginalized for more than one aspect of their existence.
Her work is known for being unapologetically queer, despite the homophobia that had permeated Latinx communities since long before she began performing. Palacios acknowledges that she often takes uncomfortable topics and makes them more palatable to herself and her audiences with physical comedy, but not without challenges and some pushback. She continues to produce works like , where discussion of sex is intentionally ubiquitous. This is evident in the forward of the play, in which she declares, "...we are sexual beings until we die, or until your partner removes the vibrator from your hands—whichever comes first."
In her performances, Palacios restructures white and heteronormative narratives by using several modes of storytelling. One way by which she does this is adapting popular, and heterosexual, songs to include queer people in the narratives and uproot their heteronormativity. For example, she ends her show Queer Chicano Soul: Thirty Years of Fierce Performance, My Quinceañera Times Two, with a series of song snippets titled the "Vagina Medley." All lyrics were changed to accommodate the addition of the word, such as "I left my vagina in San Francisco," in which "vagina" replaces "heart" in Tony Bennett's I Left My Heart in San Francisco. This performance is made up of a variety of segments of autobiographical narratives, vignettes, segments of standup and mime. This format is reminiscent of traditional that traveled to working-class Latinx people to engage them in theatre and political discourse. Thus, the backdrop of Los Angeles, a city claimed to be of "Chicanos and Mexicanos" that Palacios has called "complex and brilliant inspiration" for her art, provides a place where she can teach and perform for diverse audiences. Like Queer Chicano Soul, the majority of her shows are grounded in her identity as a Chicana woman, as they switch between English and Spanish and have cultural references throughout.
Palacios also draws inspiration from Latinx writers , Irene Fornes, Migdalia Cruz, Marga Gomez, and several others.

Activism

From 1992-2000, Palacios was the director of She organized cultural events in Los Angeles County which combined art and activism. The goal of these events was to inspire and promote queer, Latino artists in her community, and the majority of her works are developed to empower them.
Palacios has won awards for her contributions to the queer and Latinx communities. She is a co-founding member of Culture Clash, whose satirical sketches, plays, and screenplays all feature race-based, political, and social commentary.
In 2016, Palacios performed her short play Say Their Names in the international theatre effort "After Orlando" in response to the Orlando shooting at Pulse Nightclub. That same year, she did a presentation about her career titled "Queer Chicana Lesbian Activism Through Theatre & Comedy" at the University of New Mexico. In 2014, she was a panelist at a World AIDs day panel called "Queer Latinidad: Histories of AIDS Consciousness from Los Angeles" at Pitzer College. Palacios does much of her activist work in universities. For example, she performed during Gay and Lesbian awareness month at UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, and MIT in 1994.
Palacios helped develop and has her own blog on , an online platform where lesbians and allies can discuss similar experiences and find community in these shared moments.

Written Works

In over three decades, Palacios has written numerous plays, standup sets, poems, and articles. She began her solo work in 1982 and has dozens of performances.

One Woman Shows (Select)

Palacios has been a lecturer at UCLA and UC Santa Barbara. She has taught several classes in the Chicano/a department at other universities as well, such as UC Riverside, Loyola Marymount University, The Claremont Colleges and The American Academy of Dramatic Arts. Her classes and guest lectures focus on the intersections of race, queerness, performance, and comedy.

Honors & Awards (Select)