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 CHAZ MENA


Chaz has appeared in many independent films, and major Hollywood Studio
features, A professional actor for over twenty years, he’s appeared in leading
flagship regional theatres throughout the country and on the New York City
stage. Since 2017, along with writer and director Bruno Irizarry, Chaz has
co-produced and co-written with Vanguardia Films in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He's
recently come on board as executive producer on a 3-part series based on an
award-winning historian and best-selling author James Holland's A Pair of Silver
Wings. The titular character's epic, Edward Enderby, begins production in 2023.

Chaz's first, full-length play, Ascended, (developed with Broadway director,
Hannah Ryan) was optioned for a feature film production. Principal photography
in Puerto Rico and Miami begins this winter, 2022. In 2020 and '21, Chaz wrote
his first novel: A Little Ritual Goes a Long Way and a collection of short
stories, Just Folks. Both works are shopping for residencies for space and time
to be finished (hint, hint). Another book forthcoming, a novelized history on
Custer and the Battle of the Little Bighorn, Two Stood, will be published in the
U.K. by Helion & Company, Ltd., late 2023.




Avalon Artists Group represents Chaz in New York and Los Angeles. Please use the
form below to contact him. (He's good at getting back, I hear.)

MY BLOG
(Published & Unpublished Writing, Film & Book Reviews)


MEDITATION ON JANUARY 6, 2021

By Chaz Mena • 21 May, 2021
Trumbull's "Declaration of Independence," Oil on Canvas, 12' X 18'
Read More →


AN INTERVIEW WITH POET CELIA LISSET ALVAREZ

By Chaz Mena • 15 Mar, 2021
Interviewed by Chaz Mena 15 March, 2021 Celia, you've been a poet for a while,
published in many literary journals around the country. You're a mother of two
beautiful little girls, the editor of Prospectus: A Literary Offering. You’re
keeping house with your husband, Rafael Montes , a renowned professor at St.
Thomas University. HOW DO YOU DO IT? I don’t! I haven’t done the laundry in over
a month! It seems like I do because I’m very good at assessing and prioritizing.
I figure out what the most important thing that needs to get done now is, and I
do it until it’s done. The bad part of that attitude is that I let things that
are not priority no. 1 fall away, like the laundry, for example. But often it’s
more serious things, like my writing and my constant battle with mommy guilt.
But I’m a workaholic. It’s what I’m best at. Is Multiverses your first
book-length collection? How did Finishing Line Press come across your
manuscript? Was yours an unsolicited submission, or had they contacted you? Tell
us. Yes, I had two chapbooks before Multiverses , my first full-length
collection. I was looking for places to send it to when I came across the fact
that Finishing Line was now publishing full-length collections. That was not the
case when The Stones came out. Of course I sent it to them, and they accepted it
right away. The genesis of Multiverses is clear to your reader. Would you feel
comfortable describing to us that moment when you decided - if it was a
conscious choice at all! - to have it become book-length? Were you planning an
arc or a structure from the beginning? I knew I had a lot to say, and that it
had a narrative arc, but I wasn’t thinking about length as I wrote. I wrote
until I finished saying what I wanted to say, and then I looked at the page
count and realized I had gone beyond chapbook length. At that point I was
surprised because it’s very hard for me to write things that go well together,
which is what you look for when you’re trying to write a full-length collection.
My writing is all over the place, so it’s hard for me to publish more than
individual poems in journals. I'm struck by the many epic conventions
implemented: beginning in the middle, a tribute to ancestors, a type of arming
for battle as you and Rafael prepare for the infant's arrival, the inciting loss
as the gods turned their backs to you, the subsequent katabasis (descent into
the Underworld) wherein long-passed relatives file in, rehearsing family
memories helping you in your trials, etc. Think of it as a mini-epic. The events
were epic to me, and I wrote them so. I still don’t believe it’s possible to
capture in words the loss of a child. The gut-wrenching, universe-shaking,
time-bending nature of seeing such a tiny, innocent creature suffer so much only
to die in such a horrific way as my son did. It can’t be spoken of, only
remembered. That’s the epicenter of the book, and from there sprout other losses
and memories so that it seems like there’s a sort of temporal journey taking
place. The past is haunted by the present—the glossy photographs and memories of
parents and grandparents when they were young and full of vigor that you know
now went nowhere. Our parents’ immigrant generation was epic. I still remember
when they used to talk about getting back to their Ithaca, Cuba. They never made
it. What was to be a temporary home became their last resting place. If there is
no pathos in that, I don’t know where there is. Thinking about it makes me
cringe. When I lost my son, I became unhinged. I had to remake someone new from
scratch. The materials I had at hand were memory and desire. The memories
grounded me while the desire to erase that one event in my life and make
everything okay again sent me flying apart. Multiverses comprises pieces that
don’t fit. They are shards of a broken mirror that can’t be glued back together
no matter how hard you try. Pieces are lost, shattered irretrievably . From
there comes the sense of an epic quest at hand, a quest to rebuild my psyche,
perhaps. But it’s a failed quest that’s resolved only in fantasy. Let's talk
about the verse. The meter is dactyl in the beginning, fitting for a lament, as
it begins with a stressed syllable followed by two unstressed: a sudden lashing
out, followed by a limping recovery. The narrator's voice is tripped up as if
wounded, hobbling. It's very evocative and draws great sympathy from your
reader. Later, the voice changes and more disparate tones (meters) play out. You
also change lengths - even using alexandrines! Was this planned? Yes and no. I
was very interested in preserving the breath of the words, of writing as if I
were speaking directly. When I noticed there was a certain pattern or the
possibility for a certain pattern—the dactyl and the alexandrine, as you point
out, the trochee, too—I chose to follow that pattern as long as it didn’t result
in violating my idea of the breath. I didn’t feel that this subject fit with too
much structure; the whole point of the book is that “Things fall apart; the
centre cannot hold; / Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.” That doesn’t jive
well with neat little patterns, so I let anarchy reign when it should. There is
one sonnet, but it’s a nonce sonnet. The word and/or concept of "illusion" in
English and its translation into Spanish crop up. Illusion connotes a mirage or
a quixotic striving for something not there, misinterpreted. But in Spanish, '
ilusión’ evokes hoping for a hidden desire, cherished and kept secret - a
furtive wish for something beyond your means, perhaps. Is this a thread worth
examining in this work? Definitely. In the English sense, illusion has somewhat
of a negative connotation, a foolish belief that often occludes the truth. In
that sense, all the narratives that take place in parallel universes, with the
last poem especially, are illusions, frustrations of the mind that cannot accept
the truth. You and a few other readers have mentioned that I give equal weight
to the parallel universes as I do to the one we really inhabit. I meant to do
that. I wanted the stories of the parallel universes to seem just as truthful as
the truth. It was very satisfying emotionally, which is where the Spanish notion
of ilusión comes in. I had ilusiones for my family that were broken. In the
Spanish sense, there are a lot more pathos involved. I tried not to give in to
that pathos (though I’m sure I failed a couple of times) because it would break
the illusion in the English sense. The emotional charge of the real narrative
would set it apart from the parallel narratives, and I did not want this to be a
memoir plus fantasies (though I have used that word to describe the parallel
narratives). I wanted to give credence to the multiverse theory by keeping the
reader in a constant state of flux. OK, 'multiverses': one of the most
satisfying aspects of this work is how you play out its conceit of alternate
existence (s) with such detail. You give integrity and specificity to every life
played out in alternate universes. Nothing is derivative, and all possibilities
are legitimate. May you speak to that? This question is connected to your
previous one. Had I made any of the parallel narratives anything less than
hyper-realistic, the project would have fallen apart. It would have become a
regular narrative, musing on different fantastical possibilities. So I tried
very hard to keep to that notion that a butterfly flaps its wings halfway around
the world and it can change everything. I think I achieved this mostly in the
sequence of poems after they discharge my father from the hospital “healthy.” I
have often berated myself for not having reacted to that situation
differently—to have demanded a diagnosis for his collapse, to have been able to
take him to a cardiologist or even to a witch doctor if necessary instead of
having waited a month to watch him die. Could his death have been avoided by
calling the social worker at the hospital and demanding he not be discharged so
abruptly? By a phone call? I allowed myself to explore these possibilities in
poems that are near identical, yet wholly different. The only poem in which I
let the curtain part to reveal the wizard is the last poem which is so obviously
a fantasy of closure impossible to achieve in the actual memoir. You've begun
reading parts of the poem to audiences (online, for now); what has been the
response so far? Mixed. Some people have commented that the poems moved them. My
favorite comment I have received is from a woman who said she felt “met.” She is
a caretaker and could relate to the poems where my father loses his mind. No one
has accused me of being aloof, but the implication of some comments (such as
“you are very brave to be able to write about these things so unflinchingly”) is
that I perhaps don’t feel the weight of the emotions that’s because of the
events I narrate. I think it might be difficult for some readers to realize the
almost clinical detachment I had to create in order to write about this. I
wanted the truth to be spoken, recorded, not glossed over in any way. To think
of it cinematically, I wanted the camera to pan in and focus on the hardest
events. Why I wanted that is difficult to explain. I think it has something to
do with the way we grieve in this culture, how we are expected to show our
strength by moving past disaster as quickly as possible. Like the old Nike
slogan, “Acknowledge, move on.” That can be very helpful in minor situations,
but I think catastrophic events are more suited to the mourning we used to
do—covering mirrors, stopping clocks, wearing black for a full year. It was an
acknowledgement that something horrible had happened. In Multiverses I don’t
hesitate in including even the most gruesome details, because they happened, and
I wanted them to be acknowledged. The narrator is so Miamian - Cuban. You bring
in place names and ethnic food, contextualizing the poem so specifically. How
did that help you tell this story (ies)? Multiverses was the first time I didn’t
write with a white American audience in mind. I was writing these poems for
myself, so I didn’t feel the need to explain baffling details such as my parents
living with us, or to smatter the poems with Spanish words and then translate
them. I did that only once, I think, when I called my father ‘un vividor’ and I
couldn’t find the right word in English to express the same idea. Otherwise, I
just wrote in English words that were spoken in Spanish. When my father, for
example, confuses the words plane and bird, he is confusing avión and pájaro.
But what would have been the point of emphasizing that? I wasn’t writing about
being Cuban, I was writing about being human. So the references of my life just
worked themselves into the book. I felt the Cuban influence more strongly when
writing about my granduncle Arturito, who to the day he died loved tangos and
reminisced about being young, which meant being in Cuba. Incorporating those
details helped me pin him down as an individual, and not just some generic
grandfather figure. What's next Celia, what are you working on between making
meals, going through scores of submissions for Prospectus , and being
interviewed? Has quarantining hindered or helped your writing? I hate to say it,
but the pandemic has really helped my writing! I wrote the entirety of
Multiverses at the beginning of the pandemic. I also started sending some older
poems out again, and so far have found eight of them new homes. Now what I’m
doing is assessing. I took a long hiatus from writing (four years) while I was
teaching high school, so I’m reacquainting myself with my work and trying to see
what’s there that has potential. I have a bunch of really good pop-culture
poems, but that has so been done already (and by better poets than I) that I
don’t know whether pursuing that theme is worth the time. I think I might just
want to write all new poems, like I did with Multiverses . It was very
liberating, not having to write to a “theme.” The problem is running Prospectus
, which is time-consuming. I might just have to concentrate on being an editor
for a little while. PREORDER SHIPS MAY 7, 2021 Multiverses by Celia Lisset
Alvarez $19.99, Full-length, paper RESERVE YOUR COPY TODAY Celia Lisset Alvarez
, born in Spain to Cuban parents fleeing Fidel Castro’s regime, immigrated to
Miami in 1974, where she has been living since. She received an MFA in Creative
Writing from the University of Miami, and proceeded to publish two chapbooks of
poetry, Shapeshifting (Spire Press, 2006) and The Stones (Finishing Line Press,
2006). Her stories and poems have appeared in numerous journals and anthologies.
Multiverses (Finishing Line Press, 2021) is her first full-length collection.
She is currently the editor of Prospectus: A Literary Offering , and lives with
her husband Rafael, daughters Lucy and Sara, and her mother, Sonia.
Read More →


QUARANTINED...

By Chaz Mena • 30 Mar, 2020
All that made me split hairs in argument in debates over which end of the egg
should be cracked, are muted by days which run out of purpose, blanketed over by
a mimed virus. A dumb show. 'Scrambled or fried?' to my daughter who plays with
a doll that has an eye missing. Another is armless for which we compensate. We
hug her over and over. We join hands behind each other’s backs and keep at bay
the dusk of reason and the dawn's caprice. I know that we have been here before,
plagued by suspicion held close to our bosoms, cards kept close to our wheezing
chests, a two-card draw where bets are sheared and yawned. We are at a littoral
standstill, bereft of people whom would wade in slow moving tides - the marsh
behind, the dunes' rise. ‘Taking your shawl?’ I ask my wife and she submits for
once, itself an event. Whips it over her shoulders, evoked Iberian mothers who
at Finisterre looked out at anarchy, an unkind ocean and waited for their lost
men, though foretold of their deaths. Augured. Sure. We pack lunches and eat on
marmalade porches, pour olive oil over salted bread. We eat in silence. We keep
to ourselves in temps de peste , a virus which sends word ahead but comes and
waits on the landing. We hide inside and not answer the door. Seclude. Have I
forgot our deca millennium-old marches? Exoduses up a levant that skirted
untread beaches sylvan sands where predecessors drew in deep breaths, filled
their neolithic lungs with trekked salt spray our short-lived friends risked all
as if called forward, as if summoned up from richer game and recorded sandprints
that veered into being 'forever-ago.' I'll listen to them. They will call me and
I'll answer.
Read More →


READING ROBERT AICKMAN…

By Chaz Mena • 02 Dec, 2019
Tartarus Press has printed a limited edition of Robert Aickman‘s complete works
in ten volumes. I have been reading this author–known as “Britain’s best-kept
secret” in short story literature–for close to a month. His prose is among the
best that […]
Read More →


MY SUDDEN EMAIL TO HAROLD BLOOM:

By Chaz Mena • 10 Oct, 2019
…an impulse after all these years.
Read More →
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BELLABOO PRODUCTIONS, INC.


In partnership with Vanguardia Films & director Bruno Irizarry, BellaBoo
Productions will have produced the 2020 theatrical release of 23 Horas, a
science fiction; (2020) Yerba Buena, a social satire; and (2021) 'Bella, a
romantic comedy. Chaz's play Ascended (developed with Broadway director Hannah
Ryan), will be a feature-length film produced in late 2022 with Vanguardia
Films.


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CONTACT ME!


Chaz Mena is represented by the Avalon Artists Group in New York City and Los
Angeles, CA. 


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