Miami native embraces role as iconic Noah in ‘The Notebook’ and life on the road

Coral Reef Senior High and UM grad Ken Wulf Clark stars  as Middle Noah with Alysha Deslorieux as Allie in the national Broadway tour of “The Notebook” coming to the Arsht Center Tuesday, May 5 through Sunday, May 10. (Photo by Roger Mastroianni)

Miami-born actor Ken Wulf Clark has traded the tour bus of the national Broadway company of “The Notebook,” in which he plays middle Noah, for a Subaru Outback.

Speaking in an interview from a stop at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, just before the show’s arrival in Miami at the Adrienne Arsht Center opening Tuesday, May 5 through Sunday, May 10, Wulf Clark is waiting for his wife, Logan, to get back to the hotel room with the car.

She’s six months pregnant with their first baby, a boy, and an actress too, who he met at the University of Miami. The couple has put the entire contents of their New York apartment in storage and are on the road. “I didn’t want her to be in our apartment and some of her work she can do remotely, so it was just like, let’s get a car and let’s do this.”

It’s that take-a-leap-of-faith practicality that’s served him well in his life and career.

As a student at Coral Reef Senior High School, he was into athletics and hadn’t dreamed of theater as a way to make a living. “I was on the football team and lacrosse. I thought maybe I could do something with that. But it became clear that a music scholarship was more likely than anything else and I needed a scholarship.”

Everything shifted when Coral Reef’s choral department staged Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Mikado” and he played the comical character Ko-Ko.

“I think the moment I made an audience laugh on purpose that’s when the chemicals hit my brain and that was it.”

Still, he didn’t take it seriously. “I was considering going into the military,” he says. But he had teachers who kept encouraging him.

“I had some voice teachers who said, ‘You know, this could be a good niche for you with your voice type and your physicality and your presence. This is something you could be successful at.’ And they didn’t really encourage a lot of people to go into music or theater performance.” He took their advice.

For college, he had two Florida schools in mind, Florida State University and University of Miami. “I auditioned at both and UM offered me a better scholarship, and I was very relieved because I didn’t want to have to stop rooting for the ‘Canes,” he says, referring to UM’s football team, which he had been cheering for growing up in Homestead.

“My dad worked for the Florida Marine Patrol for 37 years and South Florida was where his work was.”

He’s excited to come back to Miami and has plans beyond performances at the Arsht. “I’m gonna go play golf at Palmetto Golf Course; that’s where my grandfather taught me to play.”

Wulf Clark currently plays middle Noah in the national Broadway tour of “The Notebook,” the adult version of the character still holding onto a long-ago summer romance with Allie Hamilton.

Made famous on film by Ryan Gosling, Wulf Clark steps into one of romance’s most iconic characters. He describes Noah as someone who “every day reaffirms himself as this immovable object of a person who believes that somewhere out there this woman is still thinking of him the way that he thinks of her.”

The actor had never seen the movie or read the Nicholas Sparks book when he first auditioned, choosing to keep it at arm’s length. “I got a call back and then I got another call back and I was thinking to myself, ‘maybe I just don’t watch it. They like what I’m doing, and I didn’t want to muddy the waters.’”

Once he got the part and started rehearsing, whatever the character became was his “because I had nothing else in my head.” Before the tour began in Cleveland, he told his wife,
It’s time.” He finally watched the film. “It’s beautiful,” he says. His biggest takeaway? “Heck, I’ll watch Rachel McAdams read the phone book.”

With the musical stage adaptation, the story leans more heavily into the couple’s later years, says Wulf Clark, in which older Allie’s dementia shapes the narrative as Noah retells their love story to her while she’s in a care facility.

The Alzheimer’s Association is a community partner in the national Broadway tour of “The Notebook.”

Wulf Clark says audiences often respond personally to that aspect of the show. “We get a lot of feedback from people in the audience who have similar stories.” He says while he hasn’t experienced what it’s like to go through the process with a family member or anyone close to him,” he hopes that the show offers some light. “I hope there is some catharsis from we’re doing because I know it’s painful.”

And that famous rain scene. Wulf Clark gets to play it out as middle Noah. “There’s a rain machine and yes, I get drenched sometimes twice a day,” he says, adding that there’s a small reprieve albeit little. “We call it a screen of rain and sometimes we’re upstage of it, but we still get rained on every day.”

He says he wouldn’t trade his life for anything right now. Touring in the first national Broadway production since its launch last September, the 37-year-old is booked through May 2027.

By then, he’ll be a dad. So, will they still be traveling around in the Subaru?

“My wife’s family is in Sarasota so once we get to Tampa at the end of May, she’ll stay there until the baby comes in July. I have paternity leave, so I’ll head down there.”

By the time the tour winds toward its scheduled end in May 2027 (it will swing through Fort Lauderdale at the Broward Center in 2027 starting Tuesday, March 9 through Sunday, March 14), Clark will have logged as many miles in the Subaru as he has performances as Noah.

After graduation from the University of Miami, Wulf Clark sold his Volvo and moved to Harlem for a shot at a full-time theater career. For this tour, he’s given up the couple’s New York apartment lease and is already planning for the next phase of life on the road.

“As soon as the kid’s old enough to get in the car seat and us not freaking out about it, we’ll all be back on the road.”

WHAT:  “The Notebook”

WHEN: 8 p.m., Tuesday, May 5 through Saturday, May 9. 2 p.m. Saturday,  May 9 and 1 and 7 p.m. Sunday,  May 10. 

WHERE:  Ziff Ballet Opera House at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

COST:  $35.01, $65.52, $89, $147.42, $164.97 (includes fees)

INFORMATION:  (305) 949-6722 and arshtcenter.org

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Legacy and Laughter: Original Show ‘Muerto de Risa’ Tributes Álvarez Guedes

Written in Spanish, sprinkled with Spanglish references, and featuring Cuban actor Ariel Texido in the lead role, “Muerto de Risa El Último Show de Álvarez Guedes” opens  on Thursday, April 30 through Sunday, May 31 in Tropical Park. (Photo by Yusnel Suárez, courtesy of Loud and Live)

The legacy of Cuban comic Guillermo Alvarez Guedes is no laughing matter.

He was a stand-up comic and television and film actor with a rare blend of talents for physical and linguistic humor. He managed to turn “¡ñó!,” an abbreviated version of a four-letter-word Cuban expletive, into his signature flourish without entirely diluting its power or making it sound offensive. He was a skilled storyteller, the voice of home for a wounded exile community, while also making his streetwise cubaneo popular throughout Latin America.

But Guedes, who died at his home in Kendall in July 2013, at the age of 86, was also a writer, a visionary entrepreneur, and the co-founder of Gema, considered one of the most important record labels in Caribbean music. Its catalog includes the work of figures such as Lena Burke, Bebo Valdés, Rolando Laserie, Rafael Cortijo, El Gran Combo de Puerto Rico, and a young, unknown but promising singer and songwriter, Willy Chirino, who recorded his first three albums with the label.

Now “Muerto de Risa El Último Show de Álvarez Guedes,” an immersive theatrical experience, opening at a custom-built space in Tropical Park on Thursday, April 30 to Sunday, May 31, summons the words and spirit of the comic to celebrate his legacy in one last run.

“His impact on preserving Cuban culture, on preserving the exile and immigrant story in a funny, happy, joyful way, and the impact he had on music, is felt to this day,” said Nelson Albareda, co-producer, co-writer and co-director along  with co-writers and co-directors Héctor Medina and Robby Ramos.

Albareda compares Guedes’ place in Latin comedy to that of Celia Cruz’s in Latin music.

“The same way that Celia opened the way for Gloria and for Shakira, Alvarez Guedes opened up Latin Comedy for today’s comedians whether it be Fluffy (Gabriel Iglesias), Paul Rodriguez, Marcelo Hernandez, or George Harris,” says Albareda. “I think of Guedes as the father of Latin comedy.”

Even academia took note of the reach of his work. In “Diversión: Play and Popular Culture in Cuban America,” Yale scholar Albert Laguna examines the place of Guedes’s stand-up comedy in Cuban life in the United States.

And yet, notes Albareda, Guedes, who left Cuba in exile in 1960, “never got a proper tribute recognition on his legacy while he was alive,” adding that he’s been working on the show for close to eight years.

Written in Spanish, sprinkled with Spanglish references, and featuring Cuban actor Ariel Texido in the lead role, “Muerto de Risa” sets Guedes coming from the heavens to Miami to put on one last show. For it, the production has buildt a custom space in Westchester’s Tropical Park. “Think Cirque du Soleil,” says Albareda. It’s outfitted with  a bar, a cabaret performing space, and a patio.

“We thought it was fitting to do this show in Westchester, because it was a key Cuban neighborhood for a lot of Cubans,” explains Albareda.

“Muerto de Risa” comprises three distinct experiences. A pre-show bar área, a cabaret setting, where the play takes place as well as a show with music and dancers, and then a post-show experience in the form of a patio.

“We want . . . it to be something that people would want to talk about with their children afterward— to connect across generations and have a good time with food and drinks,” says Ramos.

It’s an idea that mirrors what emerges as a ritual of sorts among Guedes’ fans. Ask about him to your Cuban or Cuban American friends, and chances are they will have a story or two of listening to his comedy albums — he recorded more than 30 throughout his career – as part of a family get-together. Albareda remembers his entire family, “30 or 40 people, including grandparents and my parents, cousins, listening on Christmas Eve, after dinner. We would all sit around and listen to it.”

Ramos speaks of knowing “all Guedes’ jokes by heart” after hearing his uncle reciting them at parties and having his parents and grandfather “always listening to Alvarez Guedes’ records and talking about him. He was truly part of my childhood.”

Even in Cuba, long after he was gone, his humor and storytelling brought people together, notes Medina, a Cuban actor, writer, director, and producer who moved to Miami in 2015.

“As a kid, I’d always see groups of people in Cuba listening to the radio in secret,” recalls Medina. “And when I’d ask, I’d find that there were two things they had to listen to very quietly: one was Radio Martí, the other was when they played the cassettes by Guedes. He was funny and said all those swear words but so elegantly — and he also said many things that many of us wanted to say. That was my early experience with Alvarez Guedes.”

Texido reminisces about listening to the cassettes his grandmother owned.

“I don’t know where she got them, but she had about six or seven of his cassettes that I listened to over and over again. For us in Cuba, it was a relief amid all that tension and pressure and repression and everything else. Still, I only came to realize what a big deal he was when I came here.”

But Guedes made a point in not taking things too seriously — including his place in the cultural landscape. Fittingly, “Muerto de Risa” keeps nostalgia at a distance.

“If we choose to make it like a biopic, or to make it nostalgic, I think we’d be failing him,” says Medina. Instead, “Muerto de Risa” stays true to the spirit of its subject, suggests Texido.

Texido says that there’s a moment in the show where Guedes says, “For me, leaving Cuba . . . really hurt me a lot. It made me so angry.”

A silence.

Then the character says, “But I never let the pain — that pain and that hatred — consume me. From then on, joy was my only mission.“

“I believe that when he said that, he wasn’t talking about just his own joy—it was the joy of the people,” says Texido.

WHAT: “Muerto de Risa – El Último Show de Álvarez Guedes”

WHERE: Tropical Park, 7900 SW 40th St., Miami 

WHEN: Opening Thursday, April 30 through Sunday, May 31. Shows Thursday through Sunday. 8 p.m., Thursday and Friday; 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday; 9:30 p.m. Saturday.

COST: $79.99, $119, and $139 

INFORMATION: https://alvarezguedesmiami.com/ 

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Arca Images Premieres Carlos Celdrán Work ‘Variations on an Insignificant Theme’

Actors Laura Ramos and Daniel Romero play She and The Author in the Spanish language drama ” Variations on an Insignificant Theme” (Variaciones para un Tema Insignificante) by Cuban-Spanish dramatist Carlos Celdrán. (Photo by Alexa Kuve, courtesy of Arca Images)

A woman, identified only as She, reflects on a decision she made in the past—one that has affected her entire life. She and another character, known only as The Author, reconstruct the day her life changed forever. That’s the plot of the world premiere of “Variations on an Insignificant Theme” (Variaciones para un Tema Insignificante) by Cuban-Spanish dramatist Carlos Celdrán, resident director at Arca Images.

“It is an examination of conscience, a meditation on mistrust — on fear embedded within our private lives, acting as a mechanism of the power that dominates us,” says Celdrán, who also directs the  Spanish-language play.

He says the idea emerged years ago from an idea he had that would potentially be a monologue.

I wrote a few pages, a first draft,” he says, “about a woman seeking to understand herself and to recognize why she made a certain decision at a specific moment in her life — a decision that would later have a profound impact on her.”

Laura Ramos and Daniel Romero star in the play, which opens Friday, April 24 and runs through Sunday, May 3 at the Westchester Cultural Arts Center.

“It has been a recurring theme in my writing for the theater,” says Celdrán, “the exploration of who we once were, and the subsequent metamorphoses we undergo as individuals — changes that distance us from our former selves and that we later struggle to recognize. The most persistent idea has been to construct a collective biography that explains — that explains to me — why we accepted living through the experiences we have lived.”

In “Variations,” the playwright returns to autofiction, a mix of autobiography and fiction, as a writing strategy— just as he has done in several of his previous works — and explains that, for him, it is a way of “bearing witness, of verifying what I recount—what I want to be accepted as legitimate, rather than merely as fiction. It is a matter of recording, rather than fabulating.”

A diaspora permeated by trauma, pain, the revisiting of memory, and the imperative of reinvention constitutes an integral part of Celdrán’s dramaturgy — a body of work that has been steadily solidifying since he resumed authorship of many of his stage productions over a decade ago.

The vast and diverse landscape of the Cuban exile has been a recurring presence in his most recent productions.  As in “Papier Maché” and “Acceptance Speech” (Discurso de Agradecimiento), the realm of “Greater Cuba” reappears in “Variations.”

Thus, Miami — one of the historical and contemporary hubs around which this “Greater Cuba” gravitates — is inevitably part of a map constantly reinventing and repopulating itself with stories from both the past and the present.

“Living outside of Cuba has profoundly influenced this panoramic vision of Cuban civility,” reflects Celdrán. “I believe it is impossible for our contemporary dramaturgy to exist today without doing so — without viewing us in this light: dispersed, yet united by bonds that transcend the myth of the land itself and its borders. An insular dramaturgy would be utterly exhausted without the perspective of those who left — those who inhabit Cuba through diverse narratives and modes of existence, yet remain united by the same pain, the same trauma.”

In Celdrán’s productions, the meticulous selection of scenic elements stands out. From the music, lighting design, and set design to the costumes and the poster, everything forms part of a visual and sonic realm that transforms Celdrán’s shows into a thought-provoking universe.

An important element of the staging is the music. Bach’s “Cello Suites” provides an unceasing score, interwoven throughout the piece.

With “Variations,” longtime admirers of Celdrán’s extensive body of work and new audiences witness one of the author’s recurring themes—and motifs.

In his own words, he describes it like this: “The ceaseless quest for the past, for memory, and for the secret, collective biography we all share. We are not merely children of the private sphere; we are children of a social project that seized control of our destinies. The theater ought to know this.”

WHAT: World premiere of “Variations on an Insignificant Theme” by Carlos Celdrán (in Spanish with simultaneous audio English translation)

WHEN: 8 p.m., Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday. Opens Friday, April 24 through Sunday, May 3.

WHERE: Westchester Cultural Arts Center, 7930 SW 40th St., Miami

COST: $30, $25 for seniors (ages 65 and older), students with a valid ID.

INFORMATION: (305) 934-5103 and www.arcaimages.org

 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

 

Review: Political Family Rift at the Center of Miami New Drama’s ‘The Zionists’

A prominent Jewish family, fractured by the politics and aftermath of October 7, gathers for a fragile reunion at a luxury Caribbean resort in S. Asher Gelman’s new play, “The Zionists,” having its world premiere at Miami New Drama through May 10. (Photo by Morgan Sophia Photography)

An intense tropical storm in the Caribbean puts a damper on a Jewish family’s vacation, but also forces them to confront their differing political opinions in “The Zionists: A Family Storm” by S. Asher Gelman, now making its world premiere at Miami New Drama in Miami Beach.

It’s November 2024 and the Rosenberg gathering in the Turks and Caicos is a reunion of sorts, with matriarch Ruth determined to bring the family together for Thanksgiving. Her husband, Mitchell, is a happy-go-lucky man who frequently references showtunes and breaks into song. The family is wealthy and each member shares in the family money. The family estate and holdings are managed by son David, whose wife, Maria, is expecting their first child. Daughter Bex is also there with her wife, Dana. Last to arrive is youngest son, Aaron, and his husband, Zephyr.

The action takes places 13 months after the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, in which more than 1,200 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed, and more than 250 others were taken hostage, and that tragedy is the inciting point for the relationship rifts in the Rosenberg family.

Each member of the family has a deep Jewish identity – Bex and Dana were part of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and made their home in Israel for many years. Zephyr teaches at a Jewish day school. David is involved in fundraisers for the IDF. Maria, who converted to Judaism, teaches at Columbia University and is knowledgeable about Israeli history and its political situation.

Mitchell and Ruth are respected members of the Jewish community actively working for peace. And although Aaron says he has deep connections to his Jewish roots, he has founded an organization that funds pro-Palestinian causes, and used his share of the family money to do it.

As the play unfolds, there are flashbacks to key moments in each couple’s lives – Bex and Dana discussing leaving Israel; David confessing a secret to Maria; Zephyr coming to terms with Aaron’s decision to start the foundation; Mitchell and Ruth planning the trip to bring the family together. As Aaron tries to justify his actions, he is confronted by each family member about how the October 7 attacks and his pro-Palestinian position have forever altered their lives.

“The Zionists: A Family Storm” is an explosive play that explores volatile territory. The Sunday matinee audience was vocal in their pro-Israel support, erupting into applause in reaction to several lines in the show.

Gelman expertly navigates the drama, weaving in history and politics, while keeping the story at a personal level, and avoiding rhetoric for its own sake. He drops in little bits of backstory without drowning the audience in exposition. Setting the story on an island threatened by a storm is also a stroke of genius, as it becomes a metaphor for a family under siege, conjuring unsettling images of the Holocaust.

Every element of Miami New Drama’s production of “The Zionists: A Family Storm” is thrillingly executed. The sleek, modern, island villa set by Adam Koch is jaw-dropping in its detail, design, and scope, and includes ingenious changes to represent each couple’s home.

Solomon Weisbard’s lighting design bathes the villa in warmth, but as the storm builds outside and becomes a metaphor for family conflict, the lighting dims and becomes ominous. Andy Cohen and Salomon Lerner designed the sound with such fervor that the storm becomes another character, a representation of the thing in the world that has threatened Jews for centuries. Fight director Lee Soroko stages an action-packed sequence when the Rosenbergs engage in physical altercations.

[RELATED: Feature Story: Inside ‘The Zionists’ ]

Each cast member is excellent and given many moments to shine. Gregg Weiner plays David with the right amount of older brother swagger, protectiveness, and thinly veiled anger. Even when he has no dialogue, William DeMeritt shows the anguish of a man torn between loyalty to his husband and his own convictions. As Mitchell, Avi Hoffman exhibits quiet power as a father heartbroken to see his children at odds. With so much of the drama hinging on whether or not Aaron will set aside his beliefs when confronted by his family’s pain, Coby Getzug plays the black sheep with steadfast stubbornness.

As Dana, Shira Alon delivers an explosive performance as a woman trying to hold onto her family despite tremendous loss. Jamie Ann Romero portrays Maria as a strong female who seems concerned about the world and family her child will grow up in. Dani Stoller plays Bex with the stance of a woman exhausted and drained by the consequences of Aaron’s actions. As Ruth, Joanna Glushak embodies a mother fiercely trying to keep the peace within her family.

“The Zionists: A Family Storm” is well-written and, at its core, deals with a subject that will always be timely – a family in crisis. It is the rare world premiere that feels complete and fully formed, ready to go forth into the world.

Note: The Colony Theatre has installed a metal detector and extra security, including bag searches, for this show. Allow time to get through the line. Also, as the audience left the theater after Sunday’s matinee, protesters from an organization called Jewish Voice for Peace handed out leaflets disguised as Playbills that contained information sympathetic toward Palestinians, sparking some heated confrontations on Lincoln Road.

WHAT: “The Zionists: A Family Storm”

WHERE: Miami New Drama, The Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday. Through May 3.

COST: $40, $70, and $85 Thursday and Friday; $45, $75, and $90 Saturday and Sunday, including fees

INFORMATION: (305) 674-1040 and miaminewdrama.org

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Review: Layon Gray’s ‘Willie Lynch’ Finds A Comfortable Home at M Ensemble

Jarryd Joseph as Peanut in M Ensemble’s production of Layon Gray’s “Searching for Willie Lynch” through Sunday, April 26 at the Sandrell Rivers Theater. (Photo by Seven Fleurimond, Studio Seven Miami)

Three generations of the Foster family inhabit the same home at different points in time in Layon Gray’s “Searching for Willie Lynch” at M Ensemble through Sunday, April 26. Gray wrote, directed and stars in the production, which he has been evolving for more than a decade.

It premiered at the National Black Theatre Festival and has since been reworked through readings in New York and San Francisco, a full production in Pittsburgh and an Off-Off-Broadway run last year. With a mostly local, professional cast, one out-of-town actor has been with the play almost since its inception. Gray, originally from Alexandria, Louisiana, is based in New York City.

The ensemble and the current production are as comfortable at M Ensemble as the overstuffed couch at the center of the play’s set.

Miami has been steadily building a reputation as a place where new work can grow, and this is a solid example.

“Searching for Willie Lynch” follows three generations of the Foster family across different eras, all unfolding in the same Louisiana house in different “moments in time” on a single day: Nov. 4. The day carries weight from family birthdays to presidential elections that can have a lasting impact on the lives of the Fosters.

At first, the way Gray has structured his two-hour play (there’s a ten minute intermission between the two-act play) between eras – 1930, 1965, 2008 – may seem disorienting. Characters from different times inhabit the same space without clear separation, and it isn’t immediately obvious how the timelines connect. But that’s where the magic becomes clearer. The smart, intentional device Gray employs allows the connections to unfold, and what seems unclear early on comes together in a way that establishes the generations. For those in the audience, it’s like being let in on a family secret.

The timelines also overlap and echo each other. Moments in one era respond to something that happened decades earlier, even if the characters themselves aren’t aware of it. Over time, patterns emerge within each family, and conflicts and choices often lead to the same consequences for family members despite their years apart.

Then there’s the house that’s central to the story, where memories of generations weave in and out, where ghosts live within the walls, and the home itself is meant to move the storytelling forward.

Time periods don’t just shift in and out — they exist together, with characters from different eras moving through the same rooms as if time isn’t fully separated. It’s a difficult device to pull off, but Gray’s direction and the tight-knit ensemble make it believable.

The set design by Mitchell Ost, along with details like family photos and small African statues (set dressing by Patricia E. Williams), helps ground the story while allowing the timelines to intersect. A worn, overstuffed couch and chair are at the center, with an antique radio nearby. A modest chandelier hangs over the living room. The décor has obviously remained largely unchanged over decades. A kitchen upstage right is visible, with a small stove and refrigerator, and the director has made good use, too, of that space.

Projections of constant rain hanging high on the back walls reinforce stormy times. Enhanced by Aidan Cole’s thunderclaps, along with music underscoring key monologues, the sound design helps bring everything together.

In one opening scene, a character turns on the radio to a song by the Temptations, “I Want a Love I Can See.” Music plays a role in the play and especially in a segment where Phibe (Andrea Garcia) and Charlene (Sheena O. Murray) gloriously sing together, each from different eras, the African-American spiritual “Wade in the Water.”

Garcia plays Rahman’s wife in the 1930 storyline. Jean Hyppolite (an actor who has proven he can play any role) is a man whose life is unraveling after a homicidal scuffle on the street, and police are closing in on him.

The 1965 section centers on Basil, played by Gray, alongside Murray, who has a knack for shifting effortlessly between humor and seriousness that commands attention. Their storyline, with Charlene obviously in the last stages of her pregnancy, creates a domestic urgency that’s shaped by anticipation of a baby boy on the way but also adds to their financial strain.

In the 2008 storyline, Peanut (Jarryd Joseph) is part of the family, having been befriended by Cricket Foster (Roderick Randle) when both were in elementary school. As single dad Mo, Daniels returns to a role he originated in earlier productions, bringing a solid, deeply rooted, lived-in performance. He’s also appeared in Gray’s Off-Broadway play “Black Angels Over Tuskegee.”

This trio of characters live in the most current of the time periods, unfolding on the day of the presidential election that will bring Barack Obama to victory; it’s a historical marker that brings home the Fosters’ hopes for their future. Here, Mo’s financial struggles come into focus as his failure to keep up payments leads to a possible loss of the house, bringing in Melvin Huffnagle as real estate tycoon Davis Harlan, who is buying the home. An unusual and surprising revelation shifts the villainous character in a more sympathetic direction.

Roderick Randle has one of the most difficult tasks as Cricket, delivering a long monologue that explains the family’s ancestry. With strong control of the words and emotional clarity, he finds a way to navigate its shifting tone — from brutal history to intimate family memory — with a grounded presence that keeps the story coherent and compelling.

One directing note was Gray having the monologue entirely delivered to the audience, which seemed a bit awkward as he never turns to Peanut, who is intently listening on the couch. A bit of acknowledgment of the person in the room may help add nuance to the monologue, with the reaction of the second character to the incredible story.

Costume design by Shirley Richardson and Dunia Pacheco shapes the production’s sense of time and character. The earlier generations appear in earthy green tones and period silhouettes that evoke their respective eras. One character wears a newsboy-style cap, grounding the 1930s setting in working-class detail. The 1965 sequence brings Basil in a vintage sweater and trousers that reflect a more contained domestic life, while the 2008 storyline dresses Mo in workwear tied to his job at a sugar cane factory, emphasizing labor and economic pressure across generations.

Gray’s ability to manage the demands of writing, directing, and performing in the same production is evident throughout. It’s difficult to navigate the triple role, but it’s evident that it helps that, as the playwright, he understands how to direct the actors and deliver the story to hold together the structure that constantly shifts across time periods. He helps his ensemble understand how to maintain clarity and emotional continuity across the ensemble.

Beyond the family drama, the play also expands into something mythic — that they are all connected not only across generations, but through a deeper ancestral line tied to an African king (Chat Atkins plays both early ancestors, Peter and the King).

This layer, along with Gray’s historical reference to the Willie Lynch legacy — a letter, not verified as historical fact, that suggests enslaved Africans were divided and controlled through psychological methods— explores the ideas of division and how inherited trauma both from experiences inside the family and from cultural conflict throughout history has shaped three generations of a Black family.

With a strong ensemble and the ease of M Ensemble’s production, this may be where Gray’s play has found its groove, pushing it into the broader recognition he’s been searching for. M Ensemble, long a champion of exceptional Black theater, has a winner with “Searching for Willie Lynch.”

WHAT: “Searching for Willie Lynch” by Layon Gray

WHERE: M Ensemble at the Sandrell Rivers Theater, 6103 NW 7th Ave., Miami.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday. Through April 26.

COST: $40.25 (includes a $4.25 fee).

INFORMATION: 305-705-3210 or themensemble.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

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.

“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.

“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.

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.

“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.

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.

 

Inside ‘The Zionists’ And The Voices Shaping Miami New Drama’s Bold New Premiere

Miami New Drama presents “The Zionists: A Family Storm,” a world premiere by S. Asher Gelman through Sunday, May 3 at the Colony Theatre, Lincoln Road, Miami Beach. (Photo by Morgan Sophia Photography, courtesy Miami New Drama)

At a moment when difficult conversations are often avoided, Miami New Drama’s latest premiere, “The Zionists: A Family Storm,” is leaning into one.

Three people at the center of the new play by S. Asher Gelman came to it from different perspectives. The playwright was driven to get his story out. The artistic director saw something urgent in bringing it to the stage. And the actor at its center found a role that feels unusually close to the moment.

Gelman believes that learning to tolerate discomfort is now a radical act. “Being able to learn how to be uncomfortable and sit in discomfort is a skill we’ve lost,” Gelman says.

“The Zionists” follows a well-to-do Jewish family who are on a reunion at a luxury Caribbean resort. Outside a hurricane is brewing while inside tensions are rising over different points of view.

“This play forces its characters to be very uncomfortable and still stay in the room and still engage with each other. And I just want to bring us back to that. I want to bring us back to discourse,” Gelman says.

For Miami New Drama’s artistic director Michel Hausmann, the play is in keeping with the company’s focus on developing new work while also taking on difficult material. Where, as he says, “most theaters stay away from the third rail,” Miami New Drama runs toward it. The company didn’t simply pick up the play once it was finished. Hausmann says they stepped in “right after conception,” after general manager Evan Bernandin brought Gelman’s script to his attention while Hausmann was developing another play, “Birthright.”

In March of 2025, Gelman’s company Midnight Theatricals, along with Bernandin’s production company, presented a private industry New York City presentation with Chloe Treat, who is directing the MiND production.

Hausmann says he read the script, loved it, and committed early to producing it, helping to shepherd its development over roughly a year and a half.

He compares it to the two intense television cable hits “White Lotus” and “Succession” mixed into one. But although the play is a satire-tinged, high-stakes family drama, he emphasizes that at its core, it’s about something deeper: how families stay together when their beliefs are worlds apart.

Actor Avi Hoffmann, who plays the patriarch, has spent a lifetime immersed in Jewish stories. He’s lived in Israel, performed on stages across the world, and devoted a career to giving voices to characters wrestling with faith, identity, and history. But even for him, “The Zionists” feels different.

“We are living in a world right now that is upside down. The United States is in the news every single day, all day, for everything that’s happening in the world, and here comes a play called ‘The Zionists,’ which actually isn’t afraid to open up a discussion about it all.”

The emotional engine of “The Zionists” is rooted in Gelman’s experience as an Israeli who grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, lived in Tel Aviv from 2006 to 2016, and was living in New York when the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 occurred. That’s when Palestinian terrorist group Hamas launched a coordinated attack on Israel.

“As an Israeli who was living in New York, October 7 really shook me—not just the attack, but also the way the world received it,” Gelman says. “My peers, particularly my collaborators and even friendly partners in the arts, just almost rushed to contextualize and explain and excuse why this happened to my people. And it felt really lonely. I lost many friends.”

That sense of fracture extended into his family.

“There were also tensions that brewed within my own family. And then it became clear that I was like, ‘Oh, this is, this is—I need a home for all of this, this frustration and this pain,’ and I threw it into a play.”

For Gelman, who shifted to playwriting after a career as an actor and choreographer, playwriting is a way for him to put “different truths in the mouths of different characters.”

“Live theater truly becomes like the last bastion when it comes to being able to sit in a room and experience a thing, and not have the ability to press pause or go into your device or get distracted. The audience is there and present.”

Hoffmann believes that “The Zionists” does something rare in today’s polarized climate: it allows every side to see itself represented.

“The beauty of this show is that every side of this conversation is well and honestly and fairly represented… There are characters that will reinforce your thoughts on the subject, but you’re going to have to hear what the other side has to say.”

At the heart of the story, Hoffmann says, is the father trying to hold his family together.

“It’s basically the story of a very wealthy, incredibly wealthy Jewish family who has given millions, tens of millions of dollars to Israel and Zionist causes. There are three children, each having a massive trust fund, which they control,” Hoffmann says.

The rupture comes when one of the younger siblings quietly redirects funds to support the pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia University.

The patriarch attempts to repair the damage in dramatic fashion by renting a giant villa in Turks and Caicos.

“There’s a hurricane and we get to fight it out, physically, emotionally, spiritually. My job as the father is to desperately try to keep the family together even if we disagree. You can disagree with your brother or sister… but you can still be a family.”

For Gelman, the title itself carries an intentional irony. “I do think that the play is called ‘The Zionists’ because of the irony of it all,” he says. “The play itself asks us not to reduce people to a single position, but that is what is going on. So, the idea is, ‘Oh, these are actually fully fledged humans. They’re not just a single position.’”

“The Zionists” was born in a moment of crisis.

“Look, he basically wrote this in response to October 7,” Hoffmann says. Since then, the world has become even more charged. “It’s more relevant now than it was even two months ago.”

In Miami, Hausmann says part of his theater’s success with new plays is knowing and meeting his audience where they are.

“We know exactly who we are. We represent our community. We know who our audience is, and we are a fair representation of our community.”

That clarity is part of why he believes “The Zionists” will resonate so strongly in Miami and why it’s already gaining momentum beyond it.

Already, Barrington Stage Company in the Berkshires in Massachusetts is going to be producing the play.

“We are transferring our production, and they open it in June. It is built to travel, so hopefully it’ll find a space in New York.”

It is the second production of Miami New Drama’s Y6K Project, launched in partnership with Wasserman Projects to amplify Jewish narratives and address the rise in antisemitism.

In June, another play from Miami New Drama’s Y6K Project is premiering in New York. Jonathan Spector’s “Birthright” opens June 5 at MCC Theater off Broadway.

That is the radical promise of “The Zionists” for Hausmann—that it refuses to offer simple answers or handy slogans. Instead, it locks a family in a room while a hurricane batters the world outside.

“I don’t think that this is a play that’s going to try to change your mind, but it’s a play about listening to one another and how families remain together when what certain members of the family believe might be in complete opposition to what others feel is completely sacred.”

WHAT: “The Zionists: A Family Storm”

WHERE: Miami New Drama, The Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday through Saturday; 3 p.m. Sunday. Through May 3.

COST: $40, $70, and $85 Thursday and Friday; $45, $75, and $90 Saturday and Sunday, including fees

INFORMATION: 305-674-1040 and miaminewdrama.org

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.

 

In Overtown, On the B Side Poetry Slam Creates Space for Expression

“On the B Side” returns to Red Rooster in Overtown on Sunday, April 12 with its signature poetry slam. (Photo courtesy of Ingrid Bazin/On the B Side)

In Historic Overtown, poetry won’t be scattered across the city. It will take a more direct form: a microphone, a room, and the willingness to speak.

On Sunday, April 12, “On the B Side” returns to Red Rooster with its signature poetry slam, drawing writers from across the region for an evening of live performance. The evening is part of National Poetry Month, but this specific event has been building for more than two decades.

Founded in 2001 by cultural curator Ingrid “Ingrid B” Bazin, “On the B Side” has become one of South Florida’s longest-running spoken-word platforms, a place where poets return not just to perform, but to connect.

“It is my passion,” Bazin said. “I thoroughly enjoy doing the events, so it serves me as well as serving the poets and the community. And I just, I don’t stop. I’ve never stopped.”

For Arnetta “Taboo” Bullard, a Miami-born spoken word artist who has been part of the scene for more than 20 years, that consistency is exactly what keeps her coming back.

“It’s like a family setting,” she said. “Everybody is accepted there. It’s a comfortable space. We laugh a lot. It’s just a good time to break away from everything.”

But once she steps on stage, the tone shifts.

“It’s like going to the altar,” she said. “You’re able to just let everything out. I can bear parts of my soul that I wouldn’t talk about in a regular setting.”

That sense of release is central to how “On the B Side” functions. Unlike more formal readings, the slam format creates a space where emotion, performance and audience response unfold in real time.

“It’s freeing,” Taboo said. “You’re able to go up there and just bare your soul. It’s therapeutic. Poetry literally saved my life.”

She began writing at 12, after a close friend was murdered, a moment that shaped not only her voice, but her understanding of what poetry could do.

“Writing was how I got through it,” she said. “It became my way of expressing myself.”

Today, her work often explores grief, healing and resilience, themes that resonate deeply with audiences, sometimes in ways she doesn’t fully anticipate.

“I have a poem that’s probably the hardest one for me to perform,” she said. “It’s about how I would feel if I lost one of my children.”

Each time she performs it, she still cries.

“But people come up to me after and say, ‘That’s exactly how I feel.’ They thank me for putting it into words.”

Those moments, she said, are what matter.

“Sometimes you go through things and you feel like you’re alone,” she said. “But when you hear your words out loud, you realize you’re not.”

For her, that connection can be more than emotional; it can be urgent.

“If you know that you’re not the only one going through something, maybe you won’t give up,” she said. “Maybe you keep going.”

That exchange between vulnerability and recognition is what Bazin has spent more than two decades cultivating.

“It really is a family affair,” Bazin said. “I’m the auntie on the poetry scene.”

At “On the B Side,” that family spans generations, backgrounds and experiences, but shares a common understanding of the space.

“There’s a rule,” Taboo said. “Respect the mic.”

That means no interruptions, no judgment, just listening.

Even when the work is uncomfortable.

“People might not agree with what you’re saying,” she said. “But they’re still going to hear you.”

Held in Historic Overtown, a neighborhood long tied to Miami’s cultural and musical history, the event carries an added sense of continuity.

“It is a landmark,” Bazin said. “When we’re there, we’re kind of standing on sacred ground.”

Again this year, that ground will once again fill with voices, some seasoned, others new, each stepping forward with something to say.

For Taboo, the goal is simple.

“I want people to leave knowing they’re not alone,” she said. “That whatever they’re going through, it doesn’t last forever.”

She paused, then added: “You can go through something and still come out on the other side. You don’t have to look like what you’ve been through.”

WHAT: “The B Side Slam,” a live spoken-word competition featuring South Florida poets, presented by On The B Side. 

WHEN: 5 to 9 p.m. Sunday, April 12

WHERE: Red Rooster Overtown, 920 NW 2nd Ave., Miami

COST: $20

INFORMATION: getonthebside.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.

Made In Miami: ‘Forge,’ ‘Poetry City,’ and ‘An Instrumental Start’ at the 2026 Miami Film Festival

Oscar Fuentes, The Biscayne Poet, is featured in Aaron Glickman’s “Poetry City” getting its premiere at the 43rd Annual Miami Film Festival. The film screens on at 5:30 p.m., Saturday, April 18 at the Koubek Center. (Photo courtesy of the Miami Film Festival)

Three distinct Miami stories, each revealing the city through its people and culture, are part of this year’s Miami Film Festival. The 43rd Annual Miami Film Festival — taking place Thursday, April 9 through Sunday, 19, 2026 — will screen over 160 films from around the world, including features, documentaries, and shorts, at seven key venues in Miami-Dade County.

While two are documentaries featuring notable Miamians and the third a feature-film caper about art, they share a common thread: these are Miami stories.

From the neighborhoods and skyline shots that make Jing Ai Ng’s art-themed caper “Forge” glisten, to the city’s literary landscape explored in Aaron Glickman’s “Poetry City,” and Brian Bayerl and Mike Huter’s three-year journey across America for “An Instrumental Start – A Model for the Nation,” the filmmakers make clear that these works could only have been set here.

Bayerl and Huter’s film features interviews with well-known figures nationwide. It returns to Liberty City to tell the story of Marshall L. Davis Sr. and the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center.

In each case, the city becomes a character, shaping the story as much as the people in it.

“I wanted the city to feel alive, like every street and skyline shot was part of the story itself,” says Ng, whose experience growing up between Miami and Malaysia formed the basis for her film.

“It’s home and where many of my formative childhood memories were made.”

While so many Miami movies focus on the Latin American story, Ng centered on a segment of the population that is less represented. “The Asian population in Miami is less than 2 percent. Growing up, it was a bit jarring to go from Asia to a place where, especially as my first reference to America, was Miami.”

“Forge” (noon, Saturday, April 18, Bill Cosford Cinema), which made its debut at 2025’s South by Southwest, is a fiction film about a brother and sister who have an underground operation selling forged paintings. With sister Coco a gifted painter and her brother, Raymond, a master counterfeiter, the two end up in the middle of a scheme with a down-on-his-luck millionaire.

Miami’s art scene, “exploding” ever since Art Basel Miami Beach, has influenced Ng’s themes in the film.

“It’s not that the quality of anything has changed. Every winter, so many people come into town, exposing us to maybe the cutting edge of the art world at all times. It goes back to the eternal debate of what is art and how do we value art. That fits completely with the themes of ‘Forge.’ How do you tell if something is worth a million dollars or if it isn’t? I remember the year at Art Basel when there was an ATM machine and another year a banana.”

In her film, Ng has a Chinese cook making dumplings refer to the infamous Basel banana.

Now based in Los Angeles, Ng, 32, wanted the scenes authentic for her first feature film. Everything was done on location — at the Perez Art Museum Miami, the city’s most famous dance club, Club Space, Coral Gables and Brickell, plus the personal and notable Tropical Chinese Restaurant on Bird Road.

“I think part of what came to be with ‘Forge’ is that my family was always on the eternal search in Miami for Chinese food, and especially growing up in the ’90s, it was Tropical Chinese. It was part of my childhood, us going there almost every weekend.”

Gregory (who co-owns the restaurant with sister Mei Yu), let her film there and use the restaurant’s name.

“It’s a small part of Miami life and underrepresented. For me, watching a lot of Asian American film set in Los Angeles or New York or on the coast, it’s not something I can actually relate to.”

Filming in Miami had its challenges. The city is more accustomed to commercial shoots and larger productions. “Because of that, you get priced out of locations, so we were constantly playing the game of trying to do the most with what we had. But we had such support. The silver lining of filming in Miami is that you have a really passionate community around you that is going to help you get your movie made.”

While the movie is making its Florida premiere at the festival, it will be opening in major theaters in May. Utopia’s Circle Collective has acquired the North American rights for the film, something Ng couldn’t be happier about. It will be released in Miami theaters on May 30, she confides.

She is already working on her second feature, which is shooting in Asia. Not willing to reveal too much because it is in development, she does share that it is “a coming-of-age story set in Malaysia and England.”

For Glickman, it was about putting the city’s literary arts front and center. “They tend to get overshadowed by the visual arts, so I’m proud that we were able to highlight something that doesn’t get the same attention.”

The journey of “Poetry City” began with Oscar Fuentes, known as The Biscayne Poet. “I’ve known Oscar since about 2015, maybe even longer.” Glickman remembers Fuentes and his typewriter at Wood Tavern in Wynwood. That was where he would start what’s become one of his signatures — people would give him one word, and he would write a poem for them, gifting it to them as their own.

“He would be in the middle of the place and people all around him. I would just be observing. I always thought he was a unique person.”

A decade later, he ran into Fuentes at the main branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library System, where he manages the library’s public art collection.

Glickman was between film projects, having just finished “Miami Schmatta,” which premiered at the Miami Jewish Film Festival last year and later aired on South Florida PBS about the history of Miami’s Garment District.

“I ran into Oscar and we chatted for a while, and I said to him, ‘We should do a documentary on you.’ At that time it was going to focus on Oscar, but then he brought on Nicole Tallman.” Tallman is the official Poetry Ambassador and this year’s poet laureate for Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.

“It started to take on a different tone and we started to figure out some strategies.”

The result is “Poetry City,” (5:30 p.m., Saturday, April 18, Koubek Center) an ode to Miami’s poetry scene, featuring interviews, readings, and performances by several of Miami’s poets. They include Caridad Moro-Gronlier, the 2024–25 Miami-Dade County Poet Laureate; Richard Blanco, the county’s first Poet Laureate and Presidential Inaugural Poet; Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books and co-founder of the Miami Book Fair; Campbell McGrath, a Pulitzer Prize finalist and MacArthur Fellow; and performance and spoken word artists Arsimmer McCoy and Darius Daughtry.

The film also captures a community-wide photoshoot of poets with Miami photographer Manny Hernandez. In one scene, people who have known Fuentes throughout the years gather at the library to read their poems.

Glickman’s brother also participated in the film. “My brother had a key role — Alec Jerome Kreisberg. He did the animation, shot some of the film, and handled all the drone work.”

For Glickman, the close-knit group of poets and the spotlight on the literary arts scene were the catalysts that propelled the documentary. “The whole experience was organic; it just grew.”

The community that Marshall Davis Sr. built didn’t hesitate when Bayerl reached out to notable names who said that Davis’ visionary arts program — which grew into one of the most innovative arts education models in the United States — was a primary driver in their success.

“People were happy to do it. No one said no,” said Bayerl, co-director of “An Instrumental Start – A Model for the Nation,” (8 p.m., Friday, April 10, Olympia Theater). He recalls Davis phoning Oscar-winning “Moonlight” creator Tarell Alvin McCraney. “And he picks up the phone and says, ‘Hi, Mr. Davis. Yeah, no problem.’”

“If you watch his film and listen to his story about meeting Mr. Davis, it’s the same story. It’s this kid running from bullies — and then he gets saved by Mahershala Ali. In real life, Tarell ran into the Cultural Arts Center and that’s when he met Mr. Davis, and he said it changed his life.”

In the film, McCraney says, “I’ve always thought of that moment as the time people who didn’t know me gave me the tools to save my life. When I came back to say, ‘I want to make this film that is about Miami and about some tough issues,’ it was only African Heritage that said this is important. Your voice is important.”

Savion Glover appears in the film — he’s best friends with Marshall Davis Jr., Bayerl points out. “There’s a great scene where Savion, who mentors at the center, is teaching kids, and it’s a really fun piece in the film.” Along with countless other appearances, including actress Phylicia Rashad and former director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, Robert Battle.

The film makes its premiere at the Miami Film Festival.

“Marshall’s story is at the center, but it also reflects the heartbeat of the city’s arts — how personal ambition and community intersect. It brings home the point that one person’s creativity can resonate across a wider cultural landscape,” says Bayerl.

Together, “Poetry City,” “Forge,” and “An Instrumental Start” reveal a Miami shaped by the people who move through it. The city emerges not just as a backdrop, but as a force in the stories it tells.

Other Don’t Miss Made In Miami Films

“The Mecca: Legends of Traz Powell Stadium” (documentary feature): The story of the legendary Traz Powell Stadium and its deep roots in the Miami community directed by Nicanson Guerrier. From the big plays on the field, to the historic segregation-era coach that it’s named after, the stadium is a vital part of South Florida culture. The film brings together a roster of NFL players from South Florida, including Teddy Bridgewater, Lavonte David, Kenny Phillips, Sean Spence and Nat Moore.  It also features local icons Luther “Uncle Luke” Campbell and Rick Ross, record-breaking coaches and many community members whose lives have been shaped by the place that has produced more NFL players than any other venue in the country. 12:30 p.m., Sunday, April 12, Olympia Theater.

“When Men Dance” (documentary feature): Filmed in Miami and featuring a mix of local and international dancers, finds director Abbas A. Motlagh following young men for whom dance is more than expression — it’s a lifeline. Against a backdrop of racism, isolation, financial strain, and rising anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-immigrant sentiment, the film pairs urgency with lush cinematography. 6:15 p.m., Sunday, April 12, Bill Cosford Cinema.

“Rope/Tide” (feature:)  Made by University of Miami students and shot by professor Ed Talavera, this offbeat, avant-garde film follows an artist and his muse who bind themselves together, turning their relationship into an ongoing test of intimacy and endurance. 2:45 p.m., Saturday, April 18, Bill Cosford Cinema.

Three winners of the Miami Film Festival Louies Awards from 2025 will premiere their films at the festival:

“Dual Citizen” (documentary feature): Director Rachelle Salnave films her journey to obtain Haitian citizenship and the emotional legacy it carries for her father. 7:30 p.m., Tuesday, April 14, Little Haiti Cultural Complex, 212 NE 59^th Terrace, Miami.

The two films below are screening as part of Welcome to Miami: Florida Doc Shorts at 9 p.m., Thursday, April 16 at The Bill Cosford Cinema.

“Under the Mango Tree”:  Director Symone Titania Major’s documentary traces the rise and fall of a once‑prosperous African American agricultural community in Goulds.

“The Floor Remembers”:  Director Jayme Kaye Gershen’s short documentary revisits a historic Miami roller rink, where skaters return to a neon‑lit floor that holds the memories of a city in constant reinvention.

WHAT: 43rd Annual Miami Film Festival presented by Miami Dade College

WHEN: Thursday, April 9 through Sunday, April 19. Click here for complete program guide

WHERE: Silverspot Cinema, 300 SE 3^rd St., Miami; Olympia,Theatre,174 E Flagler St., Miami; Coral Gables Art Cinema, 260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables; The Bil Cosford Cinema, 5030 Brunson Drive, University of Miami, Coral Gables; Koubek Center, 2705 SW 3^rd St., Miami, O Cinema South Beach, 1130 Washington Ave., Miami; Tower Theater, 1508 SW 8^th St., Miami; MDC Wolfson Campus, 300 NE 2^nd Ave., Miami.

COST: $16.50 for general admission; $14.50, Miami Film Society Members Some events are higher costs..

INFORMATION: 305-237-FILM (3456) or miamifilmfestival.com

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts, music and performing arts news. Sign up for our newsletter and never miss a story.

 

 

 

For Nearly Three Decades, Miami Light Project ‘Here and Now’ Keeps Spotlight on Miami Creatives

Nicole Pedraza and Diego León Lang will present original short-form works as part of Miami Light Project’s “Here and Now” at Miami Theater Center, Miami Shores. (Photo by Kevin Alvarez Cordova, courtesy of Miami Light Project)

When Beth Boone became artistic and executive director of Miami Light Project in 1998, she wanted to reimagine a collaborative project that had had been started years earlier entitled “Here and Now.” She wanted to move it forward and create a program that would commission new work and offer ways to nurture emerging artists with a supportive space to create and thrive. “And I thought the name just fit, so I kept ‘Here and Now.’ ”

Now a signature initiative of Miami Light Project, the latest iteration of “Here and Now” features original short-form works by commissioned local artists Clinton T. Harris, Diego Melgar, Nicole Pedraza, Diago León Lang, and Nina Osoria Ahmadi.

Miami Light Project’s “Here and Now” is 8 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 26 to Saturday, Feb. 28 at Miami Theater Center, Miami Shores.

“I knew that I wanted to invest in Miami-based artists the way that nationally recognized artists get invested in their home communities,” says Boone. Over the program’s nearly three decades, she has witnessed the evolution of Miami’s art community. “Over the years and through this program, I feel like I’ve had the benefit and the pleasure of observing the growth of the artist scene in Miami.”

She believes that “Here and Now” has “played a very big part” in the progression “because you give people time, space, some resources, some connections, and some knowledge, and they do remarkable things.”

The program gives artists, selected through a curated commissioning process, space to develop their work and connects them with mentors in the field. Often, the cohorts build strong relationships with one another, too. In this year’s group, many of the artists are collaborating across projects and contributing to each other’s pieces in addition to developing their own 20-minute works.

“I really feel like there’s this whole new generation of Miami artists that are coming of age together,” says Boone. “From going to school together to growing up in similar neighborhoods, they’re deeply connected and very collaborative.”

One such example of this collaboration is the work of choreographer and dancer Nicole Pedraza and musician Diego Melgar. Pedraza is choreographing her own piece and also dancing in Melgar’s ballet; Melgar is co-composing the score for Pedraza’s dance.

“We’re like a little circus troupe of friends all backing each other up and helping each other out on multiple projects,” says Melgar. “I couldn’t ask for a more amazing group of friends.”

Melgar, a musician by trade, composed a 20-minute ballet titled “Swamp Lily,” starring Pedraza as a young swamp creature. As she explores the world around her, the creature encounters two opposing city spirits, portrayed by Melgar and 2025 “Here and Now “ cohort member Junior Domingos.

“It’s a sort of abstract meditation on life in Miami,” explains Melgar. “There are so many weird tensions you find living here; one moment Miami feels futuristic and the next day downtown is flooded and we’re dealing with these archaic problems.”

The Miami native found his inspiration for “Swamp Lily” from a recent project he premiered at the Miami Beach Bandshell last year. The young artist wants all of his works to bleed into each other, almost like chapters in one larger storybook. “I want my body of work to feel a little bit like it’s all in a shared universe . . .  This piece for ‘Here and Now’ is just one story within this bigger universe that includes concert performances, theater pieces, albums, music videos, and all future pieces.”

For her piece, “Palitroque,” Pedraza worked with longtime partner and visual artist Diago León Lang. “Even though we always inform each other’s work, for this piece specifically, I wanted to apply with both of our names since a lot of the initial idea was his and he’s had such a big say in the development,” says Pedraza.

León Lang helped design the set and worked on projections that will be part of the performance. Pedraza will be one of the four dancers on stage and choreographed the 20-minute work.

“Palitroque” tells a story of memory and nostalgia through the lens of the immigrant experience — particularly an immigrant’s penchant for hoarding objects. Pedraza’s family is from Nicaragua; Lang’s family is from Cuba.

The set will be filled with props and objects that are being contributed by Pedraza and her fellow dancers. It’ll give the appearance of an old, overflowing garage. “In the performance,” explains Pedraza, “we’re basically going through all of these boxes and we’ll have visceral reactions to some of the items . . . the choreography is meant to emote memories in a physical and exaggerative way.”

Pedraza admits that even though she’s been dancing for years, “Palitroque” is her most nuanced work. Thanks to her participation in “Here and Now,” she says she can solely focus on being a creative. “I’m used to producing my own performances and being in charge of everything, from getting the venue to everything technical. It’s nice to just focus on being an artist.”

WHAT: Miami Light Project Presents “Here and Now”

 WHERE: Miami Theater Center, 9806 NE 2nd Ave., Miami Shores.

 WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26, Friday, Feb. 27, and Saturday, Feb. 28

 COST: $33.37, general admission, $22.92, seniors and students

 INFORMATION: (305) 576-4350 or miamilightproject.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.

Review: M Ensemble Revives A Comedy Icon With ‘Jackie Moms Mabley’

M Ensemble Company opens its 2026 season with “Jackie Moms Mabley: Live at the Apollo,” an original show by T.G. Cooper, founder of the company. The show is at the Sandrell Rivers Theatre, Miami, through Sunday, Feb. 22. (Photo by Seven Fleurimond, Studio 7 Miami)

Reviving a legend is risky business, but M Ensemble Company opens its 2026 season by stepping into the spotlight with “Jackie Moms Mabley: Live at the Apollo,” a reenactment of a 1962 comedy show by a classic American figure. The play, written by the late T.G. Cooper, founder of M Ensemble, was first performed in 1995 when M Ensemble performed it in a two-week stint in Miami Shores at the Shores Performing Arts Theatre after a run in North Miami.

Stepping into the role of Mabley is Barbie Lazaro, directed by local actor and FIU professor Melvin Huffnagle.

The company chose this production wisely: it’s a comedy providing laughs in serious times, it’s Black History Month and it profiles an iconic African-American woman.

With roots going back to Black vaudeville, also known as the Chitlin’ Circuit, Jackie “Moms” Mabley was a trailblazing, queer Black woman who inspired comedy legends like Redd Foxx, Joan Rivers, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Wanda Sykes and Whoopi Goldberg.

Her “Moms” character, a toothless, poorly dressed, floppy-hat-wearing, easy-going maternal persona, allowed her to lambast audiences with racy, edgy, intense topics, such as sexuality, race and politics. And she did so with old vaudeville flair, confidence and pitch perfect timing.

She was a pro’s pro and crossed-over to mainstream white America. Mabley once famously said “there’s not a comedian in show business that hasn’t stole material from Moms.”

Lazaro, a relatively new, but on-the-rise comedian, is a Miami Beach resident. She started performing stand-up in 2023 and has played at festivals such as Edinburgh Fringe and the New York City Comedy Festival.

She makes her theatrical debut as Mabley and does so superbly. Lazaro is nuanced, confident, able to improvise well, and truly embodies the swagger of Mabley. She is worth the price of admission, has good comic timing, and delivers plenty of belly laughs.

When this play works, it’s entertaining, risky, brave, shocking and completely nostalgic.

Under Huffnagle’s direction, it’s 1962 inside the Sandrell Rivers Theatre. It is the Apollo Theatre in Harlem.

And Lazaro bringing Mabley’s raunchy style to light. Cooper uses some of Mabley’s original material verbatim and it lands.

“I call myself a lucky ole lady. I got myself a cigarette lighter and a man …and both of them work”

Or crass: “My brother’s wife was so ugly he used to take her to work to keep from kissin’ her goodbye.”

Or race: “I was on my way down to Miami…I mean theyami.”

Nostalgia and homage are wonderful devices to engage an audience and “Jackie Moms Mabley: Live at the Apollo” succeeds at immersing the crowd in the comedian and her surroundings. But
Cooper’s script isn’t so much a biography of Mabley, which would bring some depth to the play, but a transcription of a Mabley performance. Jokes hit, and there’s plenty of material, but it’s not much to work with.

Huffnagle adds a few components to make the show more expansive, such as two opening acts, a piano player and a feature warm-up comedian., which helps to add a variety show element to the night.

Actor Elijah Thomas, a recent graduate of FIU’s theater department, was brought onto the production by Huffnagle. He holds his own playing the master of ceremonies, Mabley’s onstage sidekick, and his role was developed from the original script to provide more improvisation, some of which breaks the nostalgic Fourth Wall but it still isn’t enough to create a well-rounded story.

Working on a shoestring and one of the casualties of so many budget cuts, M Ensemble revives the production as its opening, no doubt, to keep things lean.

There isn’t much of a set , just a piano with the words Moms Mabley painted onto it, a red curtain, and a couple of tables onstage for audience members to sit at as if at a dinner show and three actors.

The talent is there. The history is rich. The venue is great, laughs land often, and it’san enjoyable 90 minutes at the theater. But without a dramatic spine, this revival is a tribute act rather than the full theatrical event it could have been.  It would have been nice to get to know Moms a better beyond her one-liners.

WHAT: “Jackie Moms Mable: Live at the Apollo” by T.G. Cooper

WHERE:  Sandrell Rivers Theatre at Audrey M. Edmonson Transit Village, 6103 NW 7^th Ave., Miami.

WHEN:  8 p.m. Friday and Saturday; 3 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Through Sunday, Feb. 22. 

COST: $36, general admission, $26 students and seniors

INFORMATION: 305-705-3218 or mensemble.org

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.