Always a Logger: Alison De La Cruz ’92
There are few hats Alison De La Cruz ’92 does not wear. Over the last two-plus decades in Los Angeles, she has worked as a producer, teacher, organizer, actor, and dramaturg. “I’m about service and community,” De La Cruz says. “I’m swimming in five lanes at a time, but they’re always about connecting people, providing spaces for us to tell our stories, and finding ways for us to come up together.”
This ethos in De La Cruz’s work has been present since they started organizing in LA at the age of 16. (De La Cruz uses all the pronouns: she, he, they—and DeLa.) That ethos translated well to Puget Sound, which DeLa chose to attend because “I care about being in a community that cares about each other, that cares about intellectual and artistic rigor.” As the first president of the campus Asian American student group, De La Cruz gained leadership skills they still use in their artistic and organizing careers today: “I’m still doing what I was doing at Puget Sound. I’m trying to make the place where we live better.”
An essential piece of that betterment for De La Cruz is improving representation in art and media. As a gender-queer, bigger-bodied woman of color, De La Cruz says there are very few spaces where they see themselves depicted. At the center of the work is always the prioritization of “the insights, feedback, and desires of women
of color.” Take the Star Trek-themed podcast DeLa started in January 2021, its 39 episodes hosted entirely by queer women of color: Its very existence creates a space for Trekkies who usually don’t see themselves reflected in the fandom. And onstage, De La Cruz is in the process of creating a queer mythology show about four Asian American and Pacific Islander butches.
Says De La Cruz, “Instead of getting sad about [the lack of representation], I’m going to do what I have been doing: keep creating new opportunities.”