Brian Quijada is a Salvadoran-American actor, playwright, musician, and a solo performer, known for his multimedia theatrical works involving topics on immigration, humanity, identity, and American experience incorporated with Latinx childhood.
[5] In an interview with Stage & Candor, Quijada said that he thinks his parents named him and his brother Brian and Marvin to give them "easier lives in the States.
He spent a year in Chicago after graduation and then moved to New York City, where he currently resides, to pursue a career as an actor, playwright, musician, and a solo performer.
[8] Quijada uses digital looping with the technology of iPhones and iPads, fusing this technique with multi-instrumentalism in his play Where Did We Sit On The Bus?
He has named artists like Reggie Watts, John Leguizamo, Lin-Manuel Miranda, old silent comedians, and Cantinflas as some of his biggest influences.
[9] He was later introduced to playwriting by Chay Yew, the artistic director of Victory Gardens in Chicago, which led to him starting a workshop and the creation of Where Did We Sit on the Bus?.
[4] His playwrighting involves sounds of his childhood, such as Latin rhythms, hip hop, R&B, and 70's and 80's rock, often made live onstage with looped music, digital finger drumming, spoken word, clowning, and turntablism.
[5] Quijada's first work, Where Did We Sit on the Bus?,[10] derived from his childhood experience in the northern suburbs of Chicago, from a trailer park in Glenview to a house in Highwood.
"[12] Quijada talks about this experience in an interview with Stage & Candor, saying it "flipped [his] mind" and provoked his dissatisfaction with "the way that history is taught in the public school system.
"[4] The play starts with Quijada's question about his potential children's identity and how they will fit in the world with three different backgrounds: Salvadoran, Austrian, and Swiss.
"[15] The story takes place in the future of an alternate universe of America, where a king exists in the United States, and the people are mixed race, except the royal family, who remained white.
When the two's worlds are altered, Pablo has technology he can use to make beats and become a producer, while the Prince questions the presence of poverty and mixed races.
[15] In an interview with Texas Tech School of Theatre and Dance, Quijada says that Strip is "a story about the boundaries of religion and the consequences of losing faith.
[9] These two theatre action initiatives reached out to playwrights across the country to curate a collection of short, 3 to 5 minute works in response to the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando on June 12, 2016.