LakeHouseRanchDotPNG is only in its second season, but its bold choices and professional productions are getting plenty of attention. Founded by Urrutia, Indy Sulliero, and Gabriel Perez, the company is a hotbed of talent coming out of Florida International University. The three met there while pursuing their bachelor's in fine arts in theater.
Once they launched LakehouseRanchDotPNG, their fellow FIU alumni soon joined them to showcase emerging playwrights in an area not known as a cultural epicenter: the deep Kendall suburbs.
Urrutia and Sulliero came up with the idea and name for the company at the height of the pandemic when they visited Urrutia's aunt in the southwest Florida community of Lakewood Ranch. The title of a Google image of the town inspired the company's name.
"Because everything was stopped, the idea of putting on our own work had come up," he says, "and from there, we decided we needed a third person on board with us." Perez came to mind.They launched with three shows, including two by resident playwrights Erin Proctor and Mackenize Raine Kirkman.
"We kind of want to do the work that we don't see anybody else really doing," he says, "We're filling in the hole of the weird," he says of the company's role. Urrutia is active in Miami's theater scene, and it's a community he says he loves. Previously, he's worked as assistant director at GableStage and with William Hector's Knight Foundation-funded immersive play G7 at the Kampong in Coconut Grove.
The 25-year-old got a taste for the absurd after reading the classic Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot in high school. He then became a fan of off-Broadway avant-garde director Ivo van Hove. His mentor, FIU professor Michael Yawney, helped deepen his interest in experimental and absurdist theater.
Urrutia and his Gen Z colleagues have grown up not only with the outrageousness of the internet but in a time when apocalyptic themes abound. Absurdism is a fittingly creative way to reflect the helplessness and hope those influences can trigger.
"We've gone into this idea that the end is at any moment, so why not continue to live it to the fullest?" he observes. Absurdity, he says, "lends itself to choosing how you're going to handle things. Allowing yourself to have control regardless of the outcome."
The company currently rents black-box theater space from Artistic Vibes. While LakehouseRanchDotPNG hopes to one day have its own space, it doesn't have to be in the Kendall. "We have this saying that one day we're going to have a lobby [in our own building], and it's going to be awesome. Trust me, the way that I imagine this lobby will look is beautiful," he says with a sense of whimsical mischief."We've gone into this idea that the end is at any moment, so why not continue to live it to the fullest?"
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LakeHouseRanchDotPNG has gathered absurdist and experimental scripts by putting a call out for submissions through social media and other social networks, receiving more than 200. Some are used for full productions, while others are chosen for the company's DotPDF series. For the series, it provides pay-what-you-can audiences with live stage readings. "We're introducing playwrights to the city who might never send their work down this way," Urrutia adds.
The company has even taken its work on the road. Urrutia performed his one-person production at the Fringe festivals in Atlanta and Edinburgh, Scotland. Lo siento, mi español es tremendo mal is set at his grandmother's fictional funeral. (Urrutia's actual grandmother is alive and loves the play.) The show is "about what defines community and what defines culture," he says. "People who may not come from Miami were able to connect with it through their own cultures."
The company launched its second season with Erin Proctor's Plague Play, a commentary on Zionism, in August. "I love working with LakeHouse to develop my work because they work closely enough with me, the playwright, and make me an integral part of the production process," Proctor says. "They always make sure that the playwright always has a voice in how they want their work to be produced."
"The most important thing is we're playwright-focused," Urrutia agrees. "If there's no trust in them, then why are we doing it?"
Following XOXOLOLA, which wraps up October 1, LakeHouseRanchDotPNG will return with Rabbit (November 11-19), marking the South Florida debut for off-Broadway playwright Riley Elton McCarthy. "They do really interesting things with horror that I've fallen in love with," Urrutia says of McCarthy. According to Urrutia, the playwright describes the production as "if you imagine the kids on the playground who would pretend to be cats, this would be them but if they were also gay cannibals."
LakehouseRanchDotPNG. At Artistic Vibes, 8846 SW 129th Ter., Suite B, Miami; lakehouseranchdotpng.com.
