Comedian, actor, producer, playwright, and advocate John Leguizamo has appeared in more than a hundred films while also telling a distinctly Latino story in documentaries, one-man shows, and now full-scale dramas.

Senior arts correspondent Jeffrey Brown met him recently at the arena stage in Washington to talk about his latest work on

stage, his larger goals, and his response to the recent election.

It's for our arts and culture series, Canvas.

I just don't understand how everybody gets to fail up but us.

In the new play, The Other Americans said in Queens, New York in the late 90s, 59-year-old

Nelson Castro, born in Colombia, raised in the U.S., is struggling.

His laundromat business is on the brink of failure.

His family is reeling in the aftermath of a shocking attack on his son.

He's dreaming, hustling, grinding, doing everything you can you're supposed to do to get

that American dream, and yet falls short of it all the time.

The man who plays the role and wrote the play, John Leguizamo, aiming to set a distinctly Latino

story within the American theater tradition of family and work dramas

that includes Arthur Miller's death of a salesman and August Wilson's fences.

I had the whole American canon in my mind.

How do you create an American classic was my, sort of my goal. That's a big goal.

I dream big, just like Nelson.

Yeah?

Just like all Latin people dream big, and then hopefully we hit the mark someday.

So this was personal for you?

Oh yeah, of course. It's very personal.

In many, many ways.

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