Chicana actor Minerva García referenced “the challenging circumstances of the poverty” of her childhood as she began the narrative for how being a theater geek” in middle school and high school were the first steps to a life onstage and in television and movies.
She grew up in El Trece neighborhood, attended L.J. Christen, and graduated from Martin High School.
“Our middle school teacher, Mike López, built our skills and confidence as we prepared for UIL competitions. When I was at Laredo Junior College in Upward Bound college prep classes, Carlos Morton, who taught drama there, cast some of us as chorus members in a Laredo Little Theater production and later in García Lorca’s Blood Wedding and Medea. Back at Martin High, my senior year drama teacher, Mrs. Karen Hewell, directed us in Horton Foote’s A Trip to Bountiful, which won regionals in UIL competition and for which I was named Best Actress,” she recalled.
On a drama scholarship at UT-Austin, García completed a Bachelor of Fine Arts in theater. Being in the audience of a UT production of Noel Coward’s Design for Living, fomented her choice to become an actor. “It was witty and funny, inspiring and glamorous. Thereafter, the stage would be my first love,” she said, adding “Theater is the actor’s medium, Your instrument is your body and your voice.”
After graduation from UT in 1991, García was one of twelve young actors selected nationally for the summer stock company of the Williamstown Theatre Festival in the Berkshires. “Watching Olympia Dukakis and Frank Langella work was like being in one of the best acting schools,” she recalled.
She moved to San Francisco and completed an MFA in drama at the American Conservatory Theater (ACT). “I was cast right away in Nilo Cruz’s play, Night Train to Bolina, my first professional production. It played at the Magic Theater where Sam Shepherd began his career,” she noted.
She relocated to Los Angeles, where her first big break in film came via director Mike Nichols, who gave García her first union job in What Planet Are You From? and with it, the opportunity to work alongside Annette Bening, John Goodman, and Gary Shandling. “I have worked steadily and with some truly great people, but nothing compares to the first time you work with heavy hitters,” she recalled.
She has been cast in film in Real Women Have Curves and Beautiful Boy. Her television credits include The Big Bang Theory, Georgie and Mandy’s First Marriage, This is Us, Dexter, Euphoria, Flaked, NCIS, NCIS-LA, and Criminal Minds.
Los Angeles, she said, made her “happy to be among Chicano intellectuals in art, film, theater, and music. I hit the ground running, auditioning for commercials in Spanish, a very competitive market that is a way to get a foot in the door.”
She continued, “I love L.A. This is my home. Aside from being a professional actor, I am a grant writer for the Frida Kahlo Theater, where I have acted, directed, and taught acting classes. I have portrayed the lead role of Frida for nine seasons.”
García describes herself as a “journeyman” actor. “We are not the highly paid stars, but we are an important part of telling the stories in film, television, and theater. Supporting actors bring sharp relief and shadows and shades to a story. Entertainment professionals need to be flexible and find diverse avenues of income. We stay in our field, but do other jobs to get through the fallow times,” she said.
“Hollywood has a long way to go to see Latinos in our complete humanity. There is not a lot of work for Latinas of a certain age, for how we are seen or seen not at all. I usually audition for roles that are maids, nannies, and workers — those are important real work jobs that merit dignified representations. When they can only be seen in subservient roles, that’s when there is an issue of stereotyping. Sometimes that is the only work available to us, and it is a hard choice when you’ve not booked anything in a while. Older Latinas audition for parts as abuelas. I see racism and ageism at times in a casting notice such as this one for a narco TV show: ‘Mexican woman – late 40s, squat, half-troll,’” she said.
“I’m a feminist who wants to produce theater and film about women for women. I support the work of Latinas and all women of color. I’ve completed a script that centers on the journey of two women navigating divorce. It’s a comedy that I wrote for myself. I’m figuring out the financing, so that I can shoot it and be the leading role to prove to myself that I can carry the entire project. I have done this in theater, but want to challenge myself to do it in another medium,” García concluded.
