Exile on Eighth Street

Steve Satterwhite

Alberto Sarrain: Casualty in a political battle of the sort he thought he'd escaped when he left Cuba

Related Content

• Hillary Clinton Parties at Cuban-Themed Bar, Sparks Dumbest Scandal Ever
  April 16, 2012
• Marlins Traffic Disaster: We Raced by Bus, Car, Bike, Kayak, Rickshaw, and Potato Sack (VIDEO)
  April 11, 2012
• Fakes Cops Tie Up Woman, Steal Money in Little Havana Home
  March 30, 2012
• "Photography by Women" at 6th Street Container through April 16
  March 29, 2012
• 46. Aji Amarillo Ceviche at My Ceviche
  April 28, 2012

More About

• Alberto Sarrain
• Pedro Pablo Pena
• Little Havana
• Theatrical Plays
• Theater

Like this Story?

Sign up for the Weekly Newsletter: Our weekly feature stories, movie reviews, calendar picks and more - minus the newsprint and sent directly to your inbox.

Privacy Policy Cancel Continue

Since leaving the Artime, Sarrain and La Má Teodora have been temporarily disoriented. The handful of actors he uses are strictly volunteers. Like Sarrain himself, they all hold down other jobs and so are connected only when they are working on a project. “In truth I don't know what we are going to do next,” Sarrain says, “but no one is afraid, and no one thinks we should stop doing what we are doing.”

The Miami Light Project, another arts group that joined the ACLU lawsuit, offered Sarrain space in its Biscayne Boulevard office, but the director doesn't want to leave Little Havana and the cultural vanguard in which he is a key player. So he is searching for something affordable in the neighborhood. “Part of the role of an artist is to be a social provocateur,” he remarks, “so I'm pleased to be participating in a historic movement in Cuban theater. This art movement in Little Havana has developed because the Cold War has ended. I understand that all the forces of reconciliation have yet to emerge, but one has to begin to understand the individual apart from the government in Cuba. You can't say that when he becomes an exile tomorrow he's good, and today when he's not, he's bad. For exile status to be the measure of good or bad is unacceptable.”