Playwright Ricardo A. Bracho collaborated with Brava! for Women in the Arts (BRAVA), and artists Cherrie Moraga and Roberto Gutiérrez Varea to develop and produce his first play, The Sweetest Hangover (& other stds). It premiered in April 1997 at the Brava! Theater Center, which was just opening in San Francisco.
The collaborators created a full-length, multi-character dramatic work based on the lives of gay and lesbian youth of color in San Francisco. The play was well received and held over. San Francisco Chronicle theater critic Rob Hurwitt wrote, “The crowd…greeted the world premiere of Ricardo A. Bracho’s The Sweetest Hangover (& other stds) as if it were a celebration of a community that rarely gets to see itself depicted in any genre.”
Bracho had been a member of and Assistant Director for BRAVA’s DramaDIVAS, an arts intervention program, led by playwright Cherrie Moraga and serving lesbian and gay youth of color. She continued to mentor Bracho during the writing of the piece, as did Brava’s founder Ellen Gavin and playwright Brian Freeman.
Founded in 1986, at the time of this project Brava! specialized in the creation of original work by women of color. Its commissioning program, incubator project, and theatre education programs all sought to nurture artists of color.
Playwright Ricardo A. Bracho was born in Mexico City and raised in Culver City, California. For five years he was Assistant Director of DramaDIVAS, a writing group for performance group for young lesbian and gay people of color. Among many professional activities in the arts, he taught creative writing classes for Latino gay and bisexual men and was co-editor of In Your Face, a journal by and about men of color.