“I” is for Imagination: Jose Solís and the BIPOC Critics Lab

Flash back, if you will, to the summer of 2020. Do you remember where you were? Do you remember who you were? Do you remember what you were eating, what you were reading, what tools you used to stave off boredom–and grief? Did you post a black square (then delete it)? Send a few surreptitious Juneteenth Venmo payments? Or were you, like, me on the other side of the screen, receiving random, but not so random, springs of cash? Revisiting those everlasting and terrifying days now, it appears that that time has taken on an entirely surreal quality. Nothing felt real except death. We were lost in a web of the virus’s making, of global upheaval, and anti-black violence. In those circumstances, many of us had no idea what to do, politically or within our own small spheres of influence. But for critic Jose Solís, 2020 was a galvanizing year, and that summer, a moment of startling clarity. Enter the BIPOC Critics Lab, a 10-week program aiming to democratize training and access to professionals in the field.

“[The Lab] came from a place of profound frustration, anger, and powerlessness back in 2020 when we were in the midst of the pandemic lockdown and all the opportunities for freelance critics had basically vanished,” Solís tells me over Zoom. However, even though the Lab seemed to materialize fast, the idea had been circulating for some time. Solís admired New York Film Festival’s Critics Academy and was curious about what it would mean to have programming specifically geared towards critics of color. Armed with notes and a syllabus, he did what any 2020s writer would do: head to Twitter (now “X”, but who’s counting?). In a series of events that border on magic, the theater community responded with interest, money, and most importantly, existential support from multiple corners, including Paula Vogel. 

On the Vogel Effect, Solís says, “Paula gave me the wings that I needed to just go for it.” He ultimately selected seven writers after putting out a call for applicants, which caught the attention of performance scholar Miriam Felton-Dansky, who started a GoFundMe page to support the nascent Lab. A month into the pilot program, Solís received an email from the Kennedy Center, which he admits he “thought was a prank at first.” But when he got on the phone, he quickly realized their commitment to his work was serious. Since then, other institutions have hosted the Lab, including the Public Theater.

Moving into questions of personal stakes and pedagogical philosophy, there were many things I learned in our conversation. Like, Solís’s own path to criticism, which I would say is based in love and attention as love’s heftiest currency. Growing up in Honduras, he would keep notebooks full of his thoughts on movies, plays, and television shows. Solís tells me the Oscars were like “Christmas.” But meeting his heroes many years later was more complicated than the reverence and joy he’d found engaging with culture. The relentless years of freelancing or constant nights in darkened theater had made them jaded, a position that is in complete contrast with Solís’s perspective on criticism. On this point, he explains:

When you experience something in the arts that’s so beautiful, it’s literally like that thing that you get when you fall in love—like something ignites in your chest. And that warmth… I think it’s love. I think it’s just pure love. That feeling of love and warmth is what I’ve wanted to preserve in my writing. I wanted to remind myself, “Oh remember when you watched this or you listened to this album or you experienced this musical on stage and it made you feel this?” I want to transmit that to people. Because I think, especially since I’ve been doing this for almost 30 years, we need to be reminded of beauty and love and compassion more than ever right now.

Solís’s love for writing and the arts is even present in the titling of the Lab itself, which is why it’s not called a bootcamp or workshop. It is, instead, a place for writers of color to learn, experiment, play, and remember why they started writing in the first place. To this end, Solís has continued hopes and dreams for what the Lab could be, including work that unhooks from the virtual space and manifests in publications, podcasts, and multimedia work like collages and video essays. The pitches coming from these writers are “incredible” he says. They simply need a platform that matches the multi-disciplinary world that we live in. 

Criticism as a medium encourages us to think more deeply about what moves us and why. Criticism as an art form, home to the Susan Sontags, Greg Tates, Hilton Als, and Mary McCarthys of the world, has taught me again and again how to share what moves me. But a single grim fact remains: most legacy publications skew white and elitist, erring on the side of disappointment, not joy. What Solís proposes with his lab is medicinal in scope, not just because it can rescue artists from lack of archival attention; it also rescues BIPOC critics from the inattention we may also feel–as artists and as human beings. By giving critics of color room to grow, these critics feel empowered to retroactively (or simply ‘actively’!) uplift many artists we should know, but don’t. People whose work paved the way for culture as we know it, but whose names reverberate in quiet corners and abandoned galleries. And, perhaps in prioritizing joy, criticism can move from functioning as an arsenal of over-intellectualized essays to a shower of love letters, made all the more beautiful by their candor and unique perspective.

And on that note, what better way to end than with Solís’s own words:

I want everyone to see how creative, how intelligent, how imaginative they are. I don’t want to teach people how to be, or how to do criticism like me, because that would be impossible. We all see life through our own lens. But, I want everyone in the Lab, from the instructors to the critics to the alumni, to see how valuable they are, how important their voice is and how special it is.✦

Extended Play is a project of The Civilians. To learn more about The Civilians and to access exclusive discounts to shows, visit us and join our email list at TheCivilians.org.