如今，流行的叙述是，如果您是有色人种，那么您应该为自己的身份感到自豪。您应该吹捧它，庆祝它，要求其他人看到您的全部自我。

但是直到大约一个月前，湾区演员埃德·冈萨雷斯·莫雷诺（Ed Gonzalez Moreno）还不到那儿。在过去的五年中，如果您参加了以他为特色的戏剧，那么您的名字是他的名字：埃德·伯克利（Ed Berkeley）。

埃德·冈萨雷斯·莫雷诺（Ed Gonzalez Moreno）是他的真名，他的姓氏。埃德·伯克利（Ed Berkeley）是他在镜头和舞台上工作的绰号。他没有正式或任何文件将其更改为伯克利，他的家人和朋友称他为他们一直做的事情。

但是截至七月，莫雷诺（Moreno）让“埃德·伯克利（Ed Berkeley）”走了，完全恢复了他的原始名称。您可以看到他在五年来首次使用他的最新项目“退出策略”，该项目于8月30日星期五在Aurora剧院公司开始预览。

Just as a name stands for who you are, Moreno’s journey back to his birth name has represented a much larger evolution. For him, being able to call himself Ed Gonzalez Moreno again means he’s embraced his ethnicity and his identity; it means he’s found his confidence.

莫雷诺,现在26岁,生长在一个艰难Hartfor的一部分d County, Conn. “My mother wouldn’t let me go outside because it was dangerous,” he recalls. TV was his outlet, but he never saw a positive representation of anyone who looked like him. The roles for men of color were always “Thug No. 2” or “Drug Dealer No. 5.” The heroes and love interests, by contrast, were always white.

“I always wanted to be a white man,” he says of that time. “I wanted to be something other than what I was, because what I was I felt was inferior.”

莫雷诺（Moreno）识别为波多黎各人和非洲加勒比海地区。在康涅狄格州立大学中央大学学习剧院，“我是班上唯一的有色人种 - 在三个不同的班级中。”出于铸造目的，“只要他们需要一个棕色的人，无论是波多黎各人，黑人还是亚洲人或其他任何东西，我都是首选。我填满了那个盒子” - “其他”框。

The Spanish word莫雷诺，他补充说：“被用来识别一个黑皮肤的人，是混血儿的人。我的名字从字面上的意思是“埃德·黑人”。所以我想，我如何逃脱？我该如何尝试……打破只是成为有色艺术家的模式，只是被暴徒2号？我想成为领导。…我觉得总是有一个子类别，有色艺术家。我只想成为一名艺术家。”

后做一个阅读和一个显示在海湾基于“增大化现实”技术ea as Ed Gonzalez Moreno, he adopted “Ed Berkeley.” He’d been looking for a name that sounded generic, maybe something like a state or a city, and he liked the idea of connecting to Berkeley’s progressive history. He also just thought it sounded cool.

After the first name change, he still got called in for the same sorts of roles. “Something I realized later on, after I changed my name, was I cannot change what I look like,” he says. “I have big lips. I have big nostrils. I’m obviously a person of color. I’m obviously not Caucasian. I’m Puerto Rican. My features cannot be hidden.”

但是，开始逐渐改变的是他的信心。在试镜中，无论他曾担任什么角色，他都会要求阅读领先 - 他会做好准备。“如果您寻求机会，并且不准备利用这个机会，那么您将被留在任何想摆脱的盒子里。”

Moreno is serious about preparation. He hosts a podcast called“演员免费午餐”to give advice to less-experienced artists on the business side of their careers. His conversational voice is one of an athlete in the middle of a very intense cardio workout, even when he’s sitting still. He likes the mantra, “You never have to get ready if you stay ready.” He claims to sleep just six hours a night because he’s eager to get up and start his day.

In performance, Moreno channels that kinetic energy into potential energy. He’s a force that could erupt at any time, but doesn’t, not yet. His gaze clarifies what it looks at, daring, defying his scene partners to declare themselves and their intentions. “Here I am, from beginning to end,” he always seems to say, presenting his whole, unvarnished self. “Now how about you?”

That’s what he sounds like now, but at first, “Ed Berkeley” was his way into that confident person, that person who could ask for additional opportunities at casting calls. “I was never confident in who I was, so literally changing who I was just gave me a boost, and then I kind of started to fit into the mold of what I was aspiring to be.”

但是随着岁月的流逝，他不再需要“埃德·伯克利”（Ed Berkeley），他感到与自己的身份脱节。“人们忘记了我是拉丁裔，那种伤害了我。”尽管这是最初的计划，但他还是很沮丧地承认。最糟糕的是“当我遇到其他拉丁裔时。他们会想，‘不，您不是（拉丁裔）。Your name’s Ed Berkeley.’ I was like, ‘No, my name is actually Ed Moreno, Ed Gonzalez Moreno.’ Then they would question why I would change it, and then I felt embarrassed a lot among my own people as to why I changed it.”

一位波多黎各人在电影《大一年》中与他接近，问他：“你是波里库亚吗？”- 波多黎各人对自己的话语，他们对自己的先例身份。莫雷诺回忆说：“即使您以前从未见过他，也感觉到在家，与您熟悉的人交谈。”但是随后谈话转向了“埃德·伯克利”，莫雷诺意识到他无法解释自己的名字。

His girlfriend challenged him, too, and Moreno started to imagine a Puerto Rican boy like his younger self, a Gonzalez or Moreno or Suarez or Delgado or Matos, one who might watch him perform one day. If Moreno went by Ed Berkeley, that little boy might not know he was watching a fellow Puerto Rican. “If he doesn’t see that, he’s not going to be able to say, ‘I can do that as well.’ ”

By way of a July 9 Facebook announcement, Moreno went back to being Moreno full time, onstage as well as off. He says going by his real name for “Exit Strategy,” where he plays a teacher at a Chicago public school threatened with closure, has felt “so liberating.”

他说：“在看到埃德·伯克利（Ed Berkeley）的（演出）节目总是很酷的情况下，但是现在，在那儿看到我的名字，我觉得我拥有更多的所有权。”“现在，当我母亲看到这个时，她不必像‘谁是埃德·伯克利？’”

“Exit Strategy”:Written by Ike Holter. Directed by Josh Costello. Aug. 30-Sept. 29. $35-$70. Aurora Theatre, 2081 Addison St., Berkeley. 510-843-4822.www.auroratheatre.org

Editor’s note: A previous version of this article wrote Moreno’s name incorrectly in the headline.