Working with Octavio Campos.

Working with Octavio


Octavio Campos, of Miami’s Camposition, is the long standing it-boy in the world of activism, spectacle, and performance.

Each of our personalities is sustained by the cinderblocks and trusses that we have developed over the span of our lives. We use the defense that the way we are is “just the way” we are. No contest, no bend, no give, that is just how we are. I, like a lot of people, have felt that way before. It’s safe, completely guarded. The fortress of our traits and learned behavior. In being safe, there are limited dreams that you just have to accept. Those who don’t jump don’t know if they will be able to grab that questionable branch poking out of the cliff that is before them. Those who fear what isn’t usual will just never know the freedom and the majesty out there. During my training over the past few years, Octavio Campos has allowed me to knock down many of the walls that I had rendered around me. He helped me to speak with my body and how the microscope, when placed on minute moments in time or on simple human emotions, can broadcast epic sagas. How, if you just pay attention to all things and their associations with eachother, you will have ultimate power. You will be the master of all processes because you are aware of the caterpillar stepping on the leaf which fell from The Tree of Life, which is a plentiful and pesky plant.
I worked with Octavio for about 2 years, once or twice a week, work-shopping his production (that appeared at the Carnival/Arsht Center in 2007), BugChasers. It was an uncomfortably invasive look at the underground culture of “Bug-chasing” and “gift-giving”, a culture that proliferates the mindless generalization that all gay men have or will have AIDS in their lifetime. Bug chasers are men who seek out HIV-positive men (or groups of them) so that they can contract the disease as well. They want it so that they won’t have to worry, so that they can belong to a group, so that they can receive the medical/social attention, amongst some other pretty sad reasons. In the workshops, which also included (but was not exclusive to) Rudi Goblen, Theresa Barcelo, Diana Lozano, Natasha Tsakos, Ron Headrick, and Michael Yawney, Octavio utilized me as a very specific element in the group. At the time, I was a fresh-faced sophomore and I was the exact silhouette of the young and naive bug-chasing teen. Octavio did not know me at all before he invited me to these workshops. Through word of mouth (of someone who I was very troublesome to, glad I still got the recommendation) Octavio discovered and developed what would have been another Music Theatre major with one-dimensional training. He got me out of my shell, taught me the value of my own neuroses, my flaws. “SPASTICA!” is what he would scream at my wild core. I’m not one for shoulder stands, so what. “Shoulder-stand buffet”, though is a sexual position that I developed with a once-special-someone and if you’d like the details, please ask me. I will gladly answer. Octi helped me to be a fucking human being, a human being who was so comfortable that he could act like an enchanted pile of aborted fetus while singing show tunes in front of all of his classmates without the slightest ounce of shame.


The intense work that we did over the years of tweaking the Bugchasers project (which, due to school, I was unable to perform in) and in the classes that he taught me in, Octavio propelled me into a professional mindset quickly. Not only did he teach me the ins and outs of onstage exploration, he also introduced me to the real behind the scenes of the performance world. People do go onstage without more than one rehearsal, you do get costumes for the first time, minutes before you go on, coworkers might be completely blitzed, and the costumes tend to be tight, so skip the Quizno’s. I found reality in his surreal work. I think that most schools in the country should really focus on getting their students, whether it be in accounting or in toe-painting, professional experience before they get their degree. I think it should be promoted so that students don’t feel dumped off when school ends. The stepping stones to professional comfort and understanding that I gained in working with Octavio made me the person and the artist I am today. I am not just an actor or a singer, now. I am a force or an energy that will be known, however possible. I will not settle into the student mentality and allow limitations on my life. I will go into the world as wall-less as possible, ready to survive. Thank you to all of my teachers and thank you to Octavio Campos.

Check out Octavio's site: www.camposition.org