New Miami theater brings stage productions to an unlikely area

Southwestern Miami isn’t generally the first place people think of when looking for professional theater productions. True Mirage Theater has been trying for years to change that. 

“There is no theater that produces professional work or offers the community affordable rates to rent in the area,” says Hernandez-Gil, who co-founded the theater with her husband in 2018. “Everything around our area — even the county-funded performing arts centers — has a lot of red tape and high fees.” 

For most of their company’s existence, they relied on rented stages wherever they could find them. The couple made it work, stretching their budgets and relying on artists who believed in what they were building. But there was always an impermanence hanging over their heads; an element of uncertainty.

The company’s track record of supporting emerging local artists earned broader attention in 2024 when “Hoo Hah!,” a comedic absurdist play by local playwright Armando Santana, received a Carbonell nomination for Outstanding New Work, Play or Musical. It was Santana’s first production by a theater company, and he was honored alongside other nominees, including some of the largest companies in South Florida, such as Miami New Drama. 

This month, the company inaugurates its first major production in this new chapter: “My Name Is Rachel Corrie,” running June 12 to 21. Asked about the decision to launch the new space with this production, Gil says, “This is a play we have been wanting to do for a while. At its heart, it is about a girl who wanted to make the world a better place and laid down her life standing up for what she believed was right.” Constructed from Corrie’s own journals, emails, and writings, the play traces her journey from a teenager in Olympia, Washington, to her final months in Gaza, where she was killed by an armored bulldozer in 2003 at age 23. 

Directed by Gil and starring Celia Voges in her professional debut, the production is also a concrete demonstration of another pillar of the theater company’s work. Mini Mirage is its youth training program, a pipeline that has fed directly into True Mirage’s productions since the beginning. Voges, a New World School of the Arts graduate and Boston University acting student, trained with Mini Mirage, on top of private lessons. Six of the seven full-length productions the company has mounted have featured a Mini Mirage student making their professional debut.

Still, Hernandez-Gil, who has directed Voges since middle school, is clear about the casting process: There is no pipeline that bypasses the audition room. “The only way our students step on the True Mirage stage is the same way it would be for any other actor,” she says. 

The space is already attracting outside collaborations, with Miami Acting Company set to present ‘Extremities’ there from June 26 to 28. For the founders, the vision moving ahead into the coming years is straightforward: stable funding, more staff, and developing original work that travels beyond Miami.

“Having our own space changes the picture of what our trajectory can be like,“ Gil says.

True Mirage Theater. 8780 SW 133rd St, Miami; 786-484-4711; truemiragetheater.com.