Coconut Grove Theatre Festival Gives Playwrights Stage For New Work

Last year’s Coconut Grove Theatre Festival featured David Kwiat and Kyran Wright on stage for “A Shiva for Joseph Day Two.” This year, the four-day festival returns to the Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove.  (Photo by Donny Randle)

In its second year, the Coconut Grove Theatre Festival (CGTF) returns to the stage of the Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove in an effort to carve out a more permanent space for itself.

The four-day festival runs from Thursday, April 16 through Sunday, April 19 and features eight new plays.

Staged as a series of play readings, it’s a simple setup:  music stands with actors reading and performing. This allows for both versatility and for more plays to be read.

Playwright Mysia Anderson White readies for rehearsals. (Photo by Amelia Furlong)

“What’s fun about the format,” says William Hector, the creator of the theater festival, “is that there’s so much room for creativity.” As part of the festival, some readings will feature projections while another will have a live band on stage.

For playwright Edward G. Excalibur, he says he feels like CGTF has “been going on for decades.”

Based in Los Angeles and a screenwriter by day, Excalibur is a born and bred Miami kid with a foundation in theater. His latest play, “638: An Uncommonly Comical Review of an Accidental Assassination Attempt of Fidel Castro,” will have its Miami debut as part of the play-reading theater festival on Sunday, April 19.

Excalibur began writing “638” a few years ago during the writer’s strike in California. “I hadn’t written a play in a while, and for some reason, it was kind of calling me.” A Puerto Rican himself, he worked with his Cuban American wife to conceptualize and write the satirical story about Cuba’s late dictator.

Many plays about Cubans tend to focus on generational trauma or hardships, comments Excalibur. With “638,” he aims to dispel those tropes and show the Cuban people as more jovial and lighthearted. Inspired by classic comedies like Mel Brooks’ “The Producers” (and its play-within-a-play, “Springtime for Hitler”) as well as a little “Weekend at Bernie’s,” Excalibur’s play will have audiences laughing with its characters — not at them.

Playwright Edward Excalibur presents “638: An Uncommonly Comical Review of an Accidental Assassination Attempt of Fidel Castro” on Sunday, April 19. (Photo courtesy of the playwright)

“It takes place in 1963 Havana, Cuba at the height of the Castro regime,” explains Excalibur. “A father, who was contacted by the CIA to take down Castro, is trying to marry off his daughter to a high-ranking member of Castro’s army. At the engagement party, Castro shows up and inadvertently gets killed. But obviously, they don’t want his body to be found at the party so there’s a little switch-a-roo that happens.”

Told primarily through a narrator and a cast size of 10, the play alludes to the 638 assassination attempts on Castro’s life. It’s part slapstick humor, part reflective on today’s society.

The Puerto Rican writer admits he’s been working to get the play shown in Miami for a while. “I’m so happy to share it with a more appropriate audience and I’m looking forward to hearing the reactions. Hopefully it’s just received with open hearts and laughter,” says Excalibur.

Playwright Mysia Anderson White dives deep into the lives of the M Ensemble for her latest play. (Photo courtesy of the playwright)

Another wholly unique Miami story premiering at the Coconut Grove Theater Fest is Mysia Anderson White’s “Shadows and Light: The M Ensemble Story,” on Saturday, April 18. Raised in Miami Gardens, Anderson White currently resides in San Diego. Although theater is the name of her game, she’s trained as a researcher in theater and performance arts studies. Naturally, her play about Miami’s Black theater group involved loads and loads of research.

“I was really curious about expressions of theater, and really genealogies of theater arts, particularly for Black Miami,” says Anderson White. As she embarked on her research, she was led to M Ensemble, the oldest continuously operating African American theater company in Florida. She spent months interviewing members of the troupe and the result is a feature play that blends both fact and fiction to weave together the stories of these theater people.

Anderson White had a slight advantage in her research for “Shadows and Light.” As she recounts, after sending countless emails and getting no reply, she flew home to Miami to introduce herself in person to the ensemble. Turns out, they were holding auditions that day and, an actor herself, she decided to audition. Anderson White ended up getting a part in M Ensemble’s 2024 production of “The Girls of Summer” by Leon Gray.

Vanessa Garcia, author and playwright, speaks on a panel about her
participation in the 2025 CGTF. (Photo by Marra Finkelstein)

“I didn’t expect to get cast, I was just there to show my face and make that connection,” says Anderson White. “But I really believe that theater is a collaborative experience, and you need all the different points of view to really take the work to the next level.”

Hector shares the same sentiment. For him, theater is all about collaboration and connectivity, which he says is the primary reason he started CGTF in the first place.

“I wanted to give a space for Miami writers and directors to share their work,” shares Hector. “Whereas I’m the kind of person who will find a way to stage my own play reading, it shouldn’t be the obligation of a writer to stage their own work. There should exist theater festivals that bring their work to life.”

Hector says he learned from his inaugural event that there was an appetite for bilingual plays, so this year audiences can expect more Spanglish. And there was also a desire for children’s theater. Saturday, April 18, will be dedicated to children’s theaters with a CGTF Children’s Matinee performance featuring two 30-minute plays by Vanessa Garcia and Brandon Urrutia.

Director Katerin Crespo-Montano has a virtual meeting with her playwright, Edward Excalibur. (Photo by Genevieve Block Apaza)

For Hector, performing only blocks away from where the Coconut Grove Playhouse welcomed so many premieres and big dreams, he has one of his own.

“One dream,” he shares, “is that we could have a main stage show taking place somewhere like the Women’s Club and then a one-person show happening simultaneously at an old storefront in the Grove, and maybe mini, 10-minute plays popping around these different places. This way, it sort of takes over the whole community in a good, friendly way.”

WHAT: Coconut Grove Theatre Festival

WHERE: Woman’s Club of Coconut Grove, 2985 S. Bayshore Drive, Coconut Grove.

WHEN: Performances 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday, and Sunday; 2, 5, and 8 p.m. Saturday, and 4 p.m. Sunday, April 16 through 19. 

COST: $15-$25.

INFORMATION:cgtfest.com.

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit media source for the arts featuring fresh and original stories by writers dedicated to theater, dance, visual arts, film, music and more. Don’t miss a story at www.artburstmiami.com.