Modesto Flako Jimenez

Teaches at Abrons Arts Center

Modesto Flako Jimenez is a Dominican-born actor, producer, writer and arts educator raised in Brooklyn, New York. While still in high school, he co-founded Real People Theater, a company best known for reworking plays by combining some of the language of the original texts with street slang and Spanish. Two personal favorites were Milton’s Paradise Lost and Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The company received great acclaim in the worlds of education and theater, and toured North America and Europe. Founder of the Brooklyn Gypsies Collective. Modesto is an Associated member of the Wooster Group in New York City. Vice president of the Brooklyn Poets board of directors. His recent focus has been on his writing, and on addressing the social and political changes affecting the Latin American communities in his neighborhood. He has appeared on broadcast and online radio to discuss politics throughout the Spanish-speaking world, and to share his poems and stories. He’s also appeared on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, TEDxBushwick, Charlie Rose, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, BK Live, NY1, The New Yorker, Los Angeles Times and San Francisco Chronicles. Has shared the stage with Wallace Shawn, Frances McDormand, Kate Valk, Liz Lecompte and Maura Tierney. In 2012 he published a poetry collection addressing gentrification called Oye, Para Mi Querido Brooklyn (Listen, For My Dear Brooklyn). He is currently working on a memoir and one-man show about growing up as an immigrant in Bushwick, Brooklyn.