By Amy Nguyen
In light of the 2020 election, UC Santa Barbara Theater and Dance has virtually staged a play called “Trumpus Caesar” written by professor Carlos Morton. In the play, a modern adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, Morton critiques outgoing president Donald Trump and “power-hungry Republicans.”
It is just the latest of Morton’s more than 100 productions, in which he shares his experiences as a Latino in the United States.
“I bring a Latino perspective [to theater] — how do we fit into the discourse in the United States,” says Morton, who has been a professor on UC campuses for 30 years, having arrived at UCSB from UC Riverside in 2002.
UCSB professor and playwright Carlos Morton.
Morton made his debut in performing arts while at high school in Michigan, where he “got hooked” on theater. “I felt a euphoric rush. I had conquered stage fright on my first try,” he said. After high school, Morton continued acting at the The Second City improvisational comedy club in Chicago and also wrote for the local newspaper the Chicago Seed.
He was inspired at the time by novels such as J.D. Salinger’s Catcher In the Rye, but still felt something was missing in his writings. He moved to El Paso, Texas where he watched a play that showed him what he had been missing out on: his Chicano heritage.
Morton moved from Texas to New York to California, all the while picking up little jobs along the way, from writing for newspapers to working at a bank, “really anything to get by.”
It was not until he met Jorge Huerta at the TENAZ (El Teatro Nacional de Aztlan) Festival in San Jose, California that Morton’s life changed. Huerta was doing his doctorate at UCSB at the time and had founded El Teatro de la Esperanza (Theater of Hope). Huerta went on to teach at UC San Diego and encouraged Morton to pursue his master’s in writing there. Despite his busy schedule, Huerta read over a manuscript by Morton of a one-act play called El Jardin and wanted to make it a reality.
So, at 29 Morton embarked on a master’s degree in writing at UC San Diego. While there, he met others who would support his plays and he met his greatest life supporter, his wife-to-be, Azalea Marin López. In this new environment, Morton published another play, Los Dorados, that was based on the history of San Diego. Following his graduation, Morton joined the San Francisco Mime Troupe as his “first full-time paying gig” but shortly after he was offered teaching positions at UC Berkeley and Cal State Hayward.
Trumpus Caesar, played by Irwin Appel, left, sings about how much Fox News praises him unlike other news channels. The play was written by UCSB Theater professor Carlos Morton.
Morton proceeded to publish more plays and books and then completed a Ph.D. program at the University of Texas, Austin, a huge achievement for the descendant of immigrants. He and his father were both born in Chicago. But his grandfather had immigrated from Mexico and worked for years in a factory. Morton’s father served as a soldier in Japan and Vietnam to make a living for the family, so Morton was the first to pursue higher education.
TIME magazine called the 1980s “The Decade of the Hispanic” and Morton became a hot commodity in the theater world after winning first prize in the New York Shakespeare Festival’s Latino playwriting contest. “For the first time in my life I was able to read, write and rehearse full time, allowing me to rise to another level,” Morton recalled.
Virtual cast members Irwin Appel (Bernie Sanderus), Raul Cardona (Cassius Cruz), Cyrus Roberts (Corey Bookerus), Cecilia Aragon (Portia), Bryant Hernandez (Marcus Pensus) in a scene from Trumpus Caesar, an adaptation of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar by UCSB Theater professor Carlos Morton.
After 12 years at UC Riverside, he moved to Santa Barbara to teach at UCSB and has spent the nearly two decades since then teaching students here about Latino theater while working on plays that integrate stories of globalization and immigration.
“Latinos have become the largest minority in the United States, and their art is beginning to make a significant impact on American Culture,” reads an excerpt from one of Morton’s course introductions. Morton retired in July and still pursues writing and teaching the occasional UCSB course, such as f an introduction to playwriting.
Click here to watch the full length virtual production of Trumpus Caesar, complete with musical numbers and visual backdrops.
Amy Nguyen is a fourth year UC Santa Barbara student, majoring in Psychology and Brain Sciences. She wrote this article for her Writing Program course Journalism for Web and Social Media.