The Los Angeles-based Latino Theater Company has awarded grants totaling $9 million to boost the national profile of Latinx theater companies across the United States, including Puerto Rico, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Grants were awarded through the National Latinx Theater Initiative, which was strategized and created with the aid of a three-year, $5 million award from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and inspired by The Black Seed, a program that provides financial support for Black theaters across the country. Grants were awarded to 52 Latinx theaters with operational budgets of more than $250,000 that have offered programming for at least 15 years, and recipients include Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center in San Antonio, which received $80,000 over two years to support efforts to renovate the theater in its nine-building campus and Teatro Breve in Puerto Rico, which received $150,000 over two years to bring its original plays and programming beyond Puerto Rico and into the rest of the U.S.

Additional funders include the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Joyce, California Community, and Ford foundations.

“The reflection that you’re going to see onstage is the mirror. You’re not going to find that on TV. You’re not gonna find it on film. Yes, we’re breaking through. Yes, we have films here and there. Yes, we have more brown faces on TV, but it’s not enough,” said Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center theater arts director Jorge Piña. “What you have in theater, it’s the real deal. You’re going to hear our stories.”

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