Humans of ESVS: EMILY MESA
It wasn't until high school that I really started taking voice lessons and “actually singing”. Even after that it wasn't until right before my senior year I actually started considering if I could do this as a career, asking myself “what if I could do this for the rest of my life, or as a career?" I also Love dancing! I started off with ballet, then hip hop, modern, interpretive, everything really and I also love acting as well.
Besides performing I love to draw and paint. I never really considered myself an artist or anything, but I like to doodle and stuff and then I started doing watercolor as a way of stress relief in high school. Last semester I took this class where I would sit and draw for 3 hours every week. There, I realized that I can draw, I was drawing people, their faces and then started doing self portraits and still life portraits, They were actually not bad!! I don't do that as much as I would like to but I like doing it because it's a way of stress relief for me and it's very meditative, sitting there very in tune with very small details.
I am extremely vocal about my heritage and very proud of being Latina. I think being Latina and also my language and family all tend to influence my work. When I am writing anything, if I'm going to write slam poetry that's what I want to speak on, Those are the issues I want to talk about. I always think that theater has a big role in social change so that’s the work that I want to do. Stuff that is for POC that are covering issues like that. I know that I’m not afforded the same opportunities as a white person simply because I’m Latina. So that has always pushed me to do more, to do better and really work hard. There’s a ferocity in my work because I tend to feel like my spot is on the line and I think a lot of POC tend to have that feeling because there are a lot of insecurities just from being POC or simply “being”, in this country.
I started writing poetry at the beginning of high school as a means of just letting out my emotions, I was very depressed and so it was a way to cope with that.
I started writing slam poetry when I was getting out of my depression and starting to realize that I can be proud of who I am and be very vocal about who I am, so I think it's a very powerful tool. My senior year I was I was in a class where we were writing a lot of a lot of spoken word and I would always write about my culture or about issues that were going on about immigration or the wall being built or Trump being elected. I write about issues that I think are really important and that I think need to be heard. I just like performing it for people, as a way to open up their minds to new ideas.
"I guess I can only be proud of being an immigrant in America, if I am European".
From Slam Poem, Sh*t-Hole Countries by Emily Mesa
Besides performing I love to draw and paint. I never really considered myself an artist or anything, but I like to doodle and stuff and then I started doing watercolor as a way of stress relief in high school. Last semester I took this class where I would sit and draw for 3 hours every week. There, I realized that I can draw, I was drawing people, their faces and then started doing self portraits and still life portraits, They were actually not bad!! I don't do that as much as I would like to but I like doing it because it's a way of stress relief for me and it's very meditative, sitting there very in tune with very small details.
I am extremely vocal about my heritage and very proud of being Latina. I think being Latina and also my language and family all tend to influence my work. When I am writing anything, if I'm going to write slam poetry that's what I want to speak on, Those are the issues I want to talk about. I always think that theater has a big role in social change so that’s the work that I want to do. Stuff that is for POC that are covering issues like that. I know that I’m not afforded the same opportunities as a white person simply because I’m Latina. So that has always pushed me to do more, to do better and really work hard. There’s a ferocity in my work because I tend to feel like my spot is on the line and I think a lot of POC tend to have that feeling because there are a lot of insecurities just from being POC or simply “being”, in this country.
I started writing poetry at the beginning of high school as a means of just letting out my emotions, I was very depressed and so it was a way to cope with that.
I started writing slam poetry when I was getting out of my depression and starting to realize that I can be proud of who I am and be very vocal about who I am, so I think it's a very powerful tool. My senior year I was I was in a class where we were writing a lot of a lot of spoken word and I would always write about my culture or about issues that were going on about immigration or the wall being built or Trump being elected. I write about issues that I think are really important and that I think need to be heard. I just like performing it for people, as a way to open up their minds to new ideas.
"I guess I can only be proud of being an immigrant in America, if I am European".
From Slam Poem, Sh*t-Hole Countries by Emily Mesa
