Vianca Vega does what all movie theater employees do. She sells popcorn, pours soda and scans tickets.
“People may not know my name,” she says. “But people know me as the Box Office Girl.”
The name is something of a persona for Vega. She goes by it on social media and chronicles her life at the cinema.
Born and raised in Oak Cliff, Vega was building up content for the Box Office Girl before she even thought of it. The 35-year-old has spent her life at the movies, working at Angelika Film Center and Violet Crown Cinema before settling in at the Texas Theatre, where she’s worked for 11 years.
In February 2021, she created her own eight-page movie news zine made of printer paper called the Marquee Times. The issues featured upcoming news about the Texas Theatre, along with photos and stories from her life at the movies.
“I just wanted to make it for myself,” Vega says. “What would I want to see? What would I want to read about?”
She’s currently working on the 24th issue of the Marquee Times. Outside the Texas Theatre, it can be found at other Oak Cliff retailers like The Wild Detectives and Top 10 Records.
The Marquee Times wasn’t just for her. Vega recalls theater patrons voicing their disappointment if there wasn’t a new issue ready for them.
“Anytime that I would skip a month,” she says. “It was so mind-boggling.”
She used her platform to create Cinema con Nosotros, a curated Spanish film screening series taking place at the Texas Theatre that translates to “cinema for us”.
“I always want to be able to see myself represented on the big screen,” she says. “I want to create something for folks like myself, like people of color, to see themselves on screen.”
The four-part series, which occurred during Hispanic Heritage Month in September 2022, showed iconic Spanish films Y Tu Mama Tambien, El Laberinto Del Fauno, Mi Familia and El Norte.
Cinema con Nosotros continues to host one-off screening nights at the theater, the most recent falling on Jan. 21.
“Film has done so much for me,” Vega says. “And the theater itself has just improved my life greatly.”
