Meet Antonio Lasanta | Writer, Actor & Filmmaker

We had the good fortune of connecting with Antonio Lasanta and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Antonio, what led you to pursuing a creative path professionally?
Well, to begin with I never really had the brain for maths or other STEM fields. My thoughts always felt kind of amorphous and frenetic, which kind of made numbers and mathematical concepts hard to crystalize. I always hoped it would make sense, but my mind tends to shut down whenever confronted with things like formulas. So pursuing those fields was out of the question for me, pretty early on. It just wasn’t going to happen, unfortunately.

No, I was always really drawn to art and music and visuals. I grew up in a very humanities-focused household and family. My dad plays a lot of instruments, my grandmother was a poet, and my late uncle was a visual artist, he did paintings, ceramics, and sculpture. And, also, I come from a lineage of teachers and professors, so literacy was always the forefront of my education. I spent a lot of time reading and writing as a kid; I used to make these little comic books all the time. I’d get sheets of printer paper and staple them together and measure out the size of all the panels with one of those floppy-rulers and make up all my own characters – superheroes and wizards and stuff. I think I was always trying to create, to live in the imaginary, in the theater of the mind. I was a very shy kid and I think I felt most comfortable in those fantastical places I made up.

When I joined my high school’s theater program around 15 and began acting, that was definitely one of those moments where everything started to align for me. It was kismet, a sort of synthesis of all the world building and creativity I’d been holding close to the chest for most of my adolescence. It felt like a vehicle to express those feelings, that inner world, all that energy I’d been storing up. And acting felt (and still feels) like a way of engaging with the world and people around me that forced me to really learn how to give and to listen. I’m sure a lot of other performers can relate! That’s not something you sort of just give up very easily, so it became the thing I pursued in college and became a vessel for all my other ideas.

So, all that to say, I think there’s always been some kind of creative energy that’s been waiting to burst out at all moments. It feels impossible to contain within myself most days, and even in the hardest moments when I’ve felt like quitting (there’s a lot of those moments) I always find myself coming back to those original feelings I had as a kid, making those comic books and writing those little stories, and I’m reminded that there’s really nothing else I want to be doing besides creating.

Alright, so let’s move onto what keeps you busy professionally?
I’m a multi-disciplinary artist, working through written word, live performance, and film. That’s really just a fancy way of saying I like to write and perform on stage and on camera. I’m Black & Puerto Rican and from the South, and I try to bring all of those perspectives (whether diverging or converging) into my work. I do a lot of different things – I’ve performed in theater, directed theater, performed on camera, been behind it. I’ve been a professional anime dub voice actor for six years, I’ve written screenplays, stage-plays, poetry. I did a lot of modeling for a while. I do creative direction for a marketing agency during the day. My journey definitely still feels in its infancy (I mean, I plan to keep living for a long time!) but I feel like a common theme is that I’ve kind of just been going wherever the creative spirit takes me. A lot of the projects I’ve worked on, I’ve worked on with my friends, with loved ones, with collaborators whose values and passion were aligned with mine. I truly believe that what you put out comes back to you, and I really love helping other people bring their ideas to life. I’ve been blessed that people extend the same generosity and community to me when I bring ideas to the table. I enjoy the isolated art of ideation and creation sometimes but, to me, nothing beats collaboration.

Currently, I’m working on a short film called Cloud Maker, which I’m co-directing with an extremely talented playwright and actor named ricardo enrique. ricardo wrote the screenplay for the film and generously asked me to direct with them, which I’m really excited about. It’s about a mother and daughter who confront the stark realities of air inequity and industrial pollution in Houston, how it effects their relationship with each other. It’s about grief, loss, resilience, love. We’re shooting in a few weeks, here in Houston, and we’ve got an amazing team top to bottom. Everyone is incredibly passionate, hardworking, and overflowing with talent. I think it’s gonna be beautiful, so keep an eye out because we’re definitely going to have a screening in Houston before we try the festival circuit.

I will say, only recently have I begun to dive into directing – some theater and some film – which is why I often call myself a director-in-training. I had a friend ask me why I didn’t just say “director”, and I do have an answer that feels right for me (though it might sound a little posh). It’s not a lack of confidence, I just still feel like a student. I think I always will, which I take pride in, and don’t think there’s any shame in admitting that. I think it’s up to me to decide when I emotionally and physically feel like I can take those experiential training-floaties off, and right now is not the time. Maybe I’ll take them off tomorrow, or in a year, or ten years. Maybe someone with a lot of wisdom will convince me it’s silly to not call myself a director flat out. I don’t know. It’s not really about the label for me at the end of the day, it’s mostly about the process and whether or not I’m giving it my all and following through on the promises I made to my collaborators. My main goal is to keep learning, to keep being a student, and I think the more I experience and create, the more I’ll feel comfortable treading water.

And I do feel the same way about acting sometimes; though, I do have far more years of money and time and sweat behind that. I was classically trained in college, meaning I studied acting full-time and learned a myriad of mental, physical, and process-driven techniques to polish said craft for performing classical texts like Shakespeare and Greek theater. Training like that is not easy, it requires passion and discipline and perseverance. You get kicked in the ass a lot by the work, but also by your own brain. There’s a lot of standing in the mirror and having to tell yourself that you can do it. The friendships you make in school with your cohort, your peers (whom you’re spending upwards of 12-14 hours a day with) can become life long artistic collaborators to lean on. Those are important connections. I’m proud of making it through that training. I’m proud of everyone who makes it through conservatory, through grad programs, through classical training. It can be traumatizing, as any theater student could tell you. It can also be spiritual and transformative. Everyone has a different journey. You, hopefully, come out of it knowing a lot more about yourself or what you want, and then you spend the rest of your life trying to factor it all in to the art you create. Trying to decide what is the marble block and what is the sculpture underneath. There’s a lot of perfectionism and critique you can adopt from school, but I think utilized in the right ways, it makes the most open-minded artists even better, even more detail oriented and vulnerable.

Let’s say your best friend was visiting the area and you wanted to show them the best time ever. Where would you take them? Give us a little itinerary – say it was a week long trip, where would you eat, drink, visit, hang out, etc.
I’ll list a couple of my favorite spots. For food, I would say Burger Bodega, Tacos Laguna off W. Alabama, the Abu Omar off Almeda, and the Tiger Noodle House in Rice Village (which has saved me and my friends on egregiously late nights more than once). You could also walk into most Vietnamese restaurants in the city and get a good meal.

Of course, if you want something a little more expensive there’s always Rakkan (a ramen joint in the Heights), Nancy’s Hustle, or Perseid.

If you’re just wanting to grab a drink in the evening and hang, Houston has some really great places: 93′ Til, Anvil, Light Years, Poison Girl, Refuge (which is a coffee shop on the first floor and a cocktail bar on the second).

I unfortunately take incredible amounts of physical damage upon absorbing any caffeine (makes me jittery), so I do not drink coffee, but I have written almost all of my most recent work at Campesino Coffee House or Pavon Coffee Den. There’s also an adorable tea room off Bissonnet called McHugh Tea, where you can get a full tea service.

And in my personal opinion, Houston has the best collection of museums and exhibits a city could offer. The gem exhibit at the Museum of Natural Science will have my undying love and loyalty forever, while the MFAH, Project Row Houses, Moody Center for the Arts, and CAM consistently exhibit some of the most talented artists from Houston and around the world.

Oh, and H-E-B. I mean. If you’re not from Texas, go to H-E-B. Trust me.

Shoutout is all about shouting out others who you feel deserve additional recognition and exposure. Who would you like to shoutout?
I would be nowhere today without my family and friends. My parents have never doubted or downplayed any of my successes, failures, or pivots in my career, and I feel incredibly privileged and lucky to have that kind of support in my life. My dad is incredibly generous and always willing to entertain my shenanigans, and my mother is one of the wisest people I know. Sometimes as an artist, it’s really hard to see the forest for the trees. It’s really easy to get lost in everything that’s going on in your mind. Artistic careers and journeys can be very isolating, singular, and specific at times – there’s no rule book, no real blueprints, and a lot of it boils down to meeting the moment. So in those liminal, transitional periods where work is dry or I’m feeling creatively blocked, it’s nice to be able to spend time with my parents or my loved ones to feel rejuvenated and communally nourished. Support systems are everything, especially in this strange, hostile post-2020 world where it can feel particularly tense and intimidating to put yourself out there.

Wait, am I allowed to give shoutouts? I know this is called Shoutout, so I’m just gonna give my own shoutouts, end-of-novel “Acknowledgments” style, if that’s okay. I want to shoutout my loved ones who hold me down practically every single day: Hannah, Anna María, Tricia, Philip, Chris, Chase, True, Kaci, Kitty, Sam, Catalina, Ahlam, Alex, Ellen, Robyn, Evian. It takes a village for real, I think I would’ve given up many times without these people rooting for me and supporting me when I most needed.

And also shoutout to everyone at 86 Luck (Kell, Erin, Andrea, Aph, Trinh, Cayden), to all of my artistic collaborators over the years, the people who have influenced me, mentored me, opened my mind, or literally just give me a chance – the next chapters of this journey would not be possible without y’all.

Instagram: antoniolasanta

Image Credits
Lexa Jeanette
Sydney Kithcart
Erin Bernardo
Stages Houston