 Loca La Boca’s
Crazy Mouth Roars
By Robert Waddell, March 7, 2010
After a few minutes speaking with actor Rachel Strauss, seeing her flailing hands, a mile-a-minute conversation style, upbeat disposition one soon realizes that the thespian, marketer and Brooklyn College professor is a human Red Bull who deserves her nickname Loca La Boca.
Strauss can be heard every Thursday from 7-9 pm on Urban Latino Radio with her co-host Juan Bago. By day, Strauss, a Brooklyn native, and graduate of Brooklyn College, works as a marketer for People En Español. On weekends she teaches marketing at her alma mater.
Last June, Strauss stole the show as Suzy in the play “Please Hold” where she portrayed a tele- marketer, which was part of the Ultimate Latina Theatre Festival at the Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She calls herself an actor who’s not an actor. Now she’s auditioning for “The Crazy Mexican,” another ULTF production. Last summer, Strauss was also a red carpet interviewer for the New York International Latino Theatre Festival.
“Acting is my passion but not necessarily paying the bills with all of the acting gigs I’m getting,” said Strauss who starred in HBO Latino’s “Habla Ya!” and “The Bigger the Hoop” by Linda Nieves-Powell. “It’s one of three careers. I feel like a coin collector doing what I do for fun.”
Two years ago she served as a full-time commentator on MTV’s FNMTV video show. She’s young, perky and full of dynamic gee-whiz energy. She’s one of New York Latino’s aspiring actresses with much poise and a crackling sense of humor.
“Rachel brings an innocence and spunk to the role of Suzy,” said the playwright of “Please Hold” Jenny Saldana. “I can't even imagine anyone else doing the part. I'm crazy about her and am glad I'm working with her again.”
“Please Hold” explores the lives of telephone sex operators and advertising marketers.
“I knew Rachel before she began acting and when she was working at Latina magazine,” said playwright Linda Nieves-Powell. “I found her to be passionate, intelligent and incredibly resourceful. She's an incredible people connector too.”
It wasn't until Saldana cast Strauss in “Please Hold” and Nieves-Powell came to a rehearsal that she witnessed Strauss’s talent and ability to connect to an audience, she said.
 “She's excellent and I see her doing great things. Rachel is a doer. She's not a whiner, she does. I love that about her,” said Nieves-Powell.
A few years ago when Strauss first saw “Yo Soy Latina” with its myriad of strong Latina characters, including a Jewish-Latina, Strauss become determined that she would one day perform in Nieves-Powell’s powerful play. This spring Strauss gets her wish. She will perform at colleges nationwide in the touring company of “Yo Soy Latina.”
Growing up in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn to a Jewish father and a Dominican mother, Strauss calls herself a “Jew-mininican.”
“Everyone gets their calling and everyone knows what to do what in their life,” said Strauss. “I was so focused on my career as a marketer. I had my passion, it was always there.”
After graduating with a marketing degree from Brooklyn College, in the back of Strauss’s mind the desire to act was still there, probably from the time in school when she played Anita in “West Side Story.”
“Once you have it in you it’s a shame if you just let it sit there. One day I woke up and said ‘I’m not gonna just let it sit there,” said Strauss determined to get into acting. Soon she was cast in “Habla Ya” on HBO.
Strauss is one of those young Latinas with a desire to make it as an actress. She’s, to be sure, pounding the pavement for work but she’s positive and continues her personal evolution as an actor.
As a Jewish Dominican, Strauss said, “I have the best of both worlds. There’s a lot of similarities with both cultures….They both believe that each generation has to do better than the preceding one….The two cultures clash but it’s made me the most open minded person….(Both cultures) are very proud.”
This story was developed through the Education Beat Writing Fellowship at the New York Community Alliance. |
