It’s fitting that the final play of Teatro Abanico’s 2002-2003 season is about endings. El Celador del Desierto (The Guardian of the Desert), an original work by Cuban composer and writer Ernesto Garcia, is a meditation about what can happen to man when he loses everything. In a world that…
A regular feature of the International Hispanic Theatre Festival, which is now in its eighteenth year, Miami-Dade Community College’s Prometeo continues to show its aptitude for children’s theater. This year’s original Spanish-language production of Matias y el Aviador, written by Cuban playwright Felix Lizarraga, even surpasses last year’s version of…
Just think: the country’s largest Hispanic theater festival existing in a state that cuts major funding for the arts in one fell swoop. Seven countries, four continents, and multiple languages converging on South Florida for two weeks despite orange-level terror alerts, heightened airport security, and indecipherable visa applications. Indeed it…
A spotlight shines on the darkened stage alternately illuminating five characters: Arlin Jasper, Dodie and Ed MacDonald, Tom Hawkins, and Denny Hedges. Each one utters a piece of a fragmented soliloquy that speaks for an entire town’s shock, grief, and disgust. Welcome to Irving, a.k.a. “Anywhere, U.S.A.,” a one-post office,…
Actor, writer, and director Larry Villanueva calls his play Allá Afuera Hay Fresco “una descarga.” The term descarga, usually reserved for music, refers to a jam session, but Villanueva asserts that in this case there’s no better word to describe what happens on the stage during this explosive one-act: “The…
“What’s the best performance you’ve seen in the last five years?” asked Michelle Heffner Hayes of her creative colleagues at a national conference of arts presenters. The executive director of the Cultural Affairs Department at Miami-Dade Community College was attempting to curate the Cultura del Lobo Performance Series for 2002-2003…
There’s never been a shortage of Cole Porter (1891-1964) tunes on Broadway, off Broadway, and in regional shows around the country, but choreographer Karen Stewart’s Black Door Dance Ensemble may put the most innovative spin on Porter yet: an all-minority cast dancing to Porter’s work en pointe. Black Door Dance…
Lili Renteria believes the stage doesn’t exist just to present theater. The stage exists to present possibilities. Hence the choice of an elegant hand fan as the logo of her brainchild Teatro Abanico, a 200-seat theater and gallery space in Coral Gables. “The fan is not just a visual symbol,”…
Could Dylan Thomas, boisterous Welsh poet and advocate of public readings, have predicted today’s open-mike nights? Siamese twins reciting rhymed quatrains in unison; anemic beat poets accompanied by ferrets and inbred Chinese dogs; the drunk, the infirm, and, of course, the eighteen-year-old who must read the painful rendering of his…
With a dance department that offers training in forms as diverse as tap and vodou, one can expect a performance titled FIU Dance: Celebrates the Classics! to be far from the pas de deux and promenades that fit the accepted definition of classic. Indeed Florida International University’s spring showcase is…
Although a Spanish-language version of playwright Samuel Beckett’s masterpiece Waiting for Godot helped inaugurate Little Havana’s new Latin Quarter Cultural Center, Tony Wagner, artistic director and owner, waited for no one when it came to creating a truly multipurpose arts venue. With a shoestring budget, some grant money, and the…
Two wooden rocking chairs sit on an otherwise barren stage. The actors take their seats — she with her knitting and he with a book, Virgilio Piñera’s El No. In an undetermined place and time (though it is pre-revolutionary Cuba), Emilia (Patricia Azan) and Vicente (Dexter Capiro) pledge their eternal…
When the chocolate on the S’mores has melted and the last round of “Kum Ba Ya” crooned around the fire fades to Lil’ Kim, whose camp is it anyway? Designed to keep the kids inspired and out of others’ hair, summer activities belong to parents. This season one of the…
Prerevolutionary Cuban thinker Felix Varela declared that intellectuals should not cloister themselves in an ivory tower. In fact he claimed their primary obligation is to take on society’s most pertinent issues, to act as an illuminator and guide for the people. In 1998 the first independent library in Cuba was…
In theater, as in life, we expect marriages to fail, lovers to betray, and family members to hurt us, but when friendship takes the center stage, one cannot help but take note. This familiar but unpredictable territory offers much dramatic potential, and GableStage’s current production Chinese Coffee makes the most…
Ancient festivals served as markers for human progress, celebrating the passing of time and the progression of the community. Although seasonal changes, harvests, and rites of passage are not the focus of today’s festivals, these celebrations still provide a forum for assessing a community’s evolution. Søren Kierkegaard wrote, “Life must…
Cigar-chomping, fatigues-wearing Fidel Castro impersonators. Flamboyant flamenco dancers in drag. Political humor geared toward older Cubans, who erupt in laughter at the thought of Fidel’s brother Raul scurrying about in a tutu. Until recently live theater on Eighth Street (with a few exceptions) has included such a hodgepodge of acts…
In dramaturgical terms, a play by a man about men is called theater — from Hamlet to Nixon’s Nixon, male playwrights, actors, and themes are not distinguished as “men’s theater” (and thankfully so). In contrast a play by a woman about women is frequently dubbed “women’s theater,” “touchy-feely,” “man hating,”…
When a historical play has done its work, one can expect to hear one of two exclamations from audience members as they file out: the ever-popular “My, how times have changed!” or the unforgettable “Oh, how history repeats itself!” GableStage’s production of Russell Lees’s Nixon’s Nixon might inspire both utterances…
In Miami the chances of a low-budget theater company finding a permanent home are as good as discovering a ramshackle HUD house in ritzy CocoPlum, but seven-year-old, Spanish-language troupe La Má Teodora has done just that. It opened La Magagna, a 150-seat warehouse space off Bird Road and SW 74th…
Big is sometimes better. For instance South Florida has become home to the largest Hispanic theater festival in the United States, which this year will host thirteen companies from seven other countries (Brazil, Chile, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Slovenia, and Spain). Almost all of the companies have been presenting theater…
Besides obvious political and economic ramifications, the aftermath of September 11 challenged charities, nonprofit organizations, and small arts groups to rise from the ashes. The throng of thespians behind The International Monologue Festival, which debuted last year to acclaim, constitutes one such association. Alberto Sarraín and Lillian Manzor, codirectors of…
