Giancarlo Rodaz leads an immersive ‘Little Mermaid’ and Area Stage Co. into the future

(Josslyn Shaw plays the adventurous, lovelorn Ariel in Disney’s “The Little Mermaid,” an immersive Area Stage production inside the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater opening in previews Wednesday, Aug. 9. (Photo courtesy of Giancarlo Rodaz)

As South Florida’s scorching summer rolls on and even a dip in the ocean leaves us feeling hot hot hot, Miami’s Area Stage Company has devised a refreshing escape.

Following last summer’s acclaim for Area Stage’s Carbonell Award-winning “Beauty and the Beast,” newly named artistic director Giancarlo Rodaz has turned to another beloved Disney title in his ongoing exploration of immersive theater: “The Little Mermaid.”

The imaginative plunge under the sea gets its debut inside the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht on Wednesday, Aug. 9. It runs through Sunday, Aug. 27.

“I’ve just been enjoying immersive theater as its own medium,” says Rodaz, 27, who has done nearly every job at the company founded by his parents, John Rodaz and Maria Banda-Rodaz, in 1989.  “I like mixing things up and breaking all the rules.”

To that end, Rodaz reached out directly to Disney’s head of theatrical licensing, seeking permission to do the version of the script that ran on Broadway from 2007 to 2009.  Some changes were made when the show debuted in the Netherlands in 2012, and the second version is the one produced by regional theaters such as Fort Lauderdale’s Slow Burn Theatre Company, which will present its own “Little Mermaid” at the Broward Center beginning Friday, Dec. 15 and running through the month of December.

After a week of waiting, Rodaz got the go-ahead to produce the original Broadway version, which features music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Glenn Slater, and a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Doug Wright.

Truth be told, in 1989 the animated version of “The Little Mermaid” launched a new era in Disney musicals, its success igniting an era dubbed “the Disney Renaissance” with such subsequent animated musical hits as “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast,” “Aladdin,” “Frozen” – well, it’s a long list.

Based on the disturbingly dark 1837 fairy tale by Hans Christian Andersen, the Disney movie was written (and made sunnier) by John Musker and Ron Clements (for Broadway the two got a “based on” credit, along with Andersen), and it won Oscars for Menken’s score and the song “Under the Sea.”

The movie’s success led to a prequel, a sequel, a television series, the Broadway show, numerous productions in countries around the world and cities all over the United States, two celebrity-filled live-in-concert events at the Hollywood Bowl, a live television special and this year’s live action movie starring Halle Bailey as Ariel and Melissa McCarthy as the villainously scheming Ursula.

Not to mention all the books, toys, theme park tie-ins with an actress playing Ariel, Mermaid merchandise and Halloween costumes.  For more than three decades now, things have gone swimmingly for Disney’s “The Little Mermaid.”

Rodaz is thrilled to be exploring and presenting a version of the story he finds to be “so close to the original movie.”

He adds: “We are digging into the show as if it’s a brand-new musical.  That has carried over into rehearsals.  We’re getting rid of all the ideas used to portray the mermaids underwater – the costume pieces with tails, the wigs with hair in the air.  This is a ‘Romeo and Juliet’ story that gets the audience really hooked.”

Should you have somehow avoided any exposure to “The Little Mermaid,” these are the story’s basics.

Ariel (played in the Area production by Josslyn Shaw) is a spirited, curious teen mermaid and youngest daughter of the undersea ruler King Triton (Frank Montoto).  Obsessed with exploring the human world above, she encounters the dashing Prince Eric (Henry Thrasher) and saves his life when he’s washed overboard in a storm.  Just like Romeo and Juliet, the two fall in love.

The impediments to their romance are many: King Triton loathes humans.  Neither Ariel nor Eric could survive in the other’s world – unless she could somehow become human, which she’s determined to do.  The devious sea witch Ursula (Jonathan Chisolm) offers to transform her for three days, changing her tail into legs but taking away her beautiful voice, holding it in a magical nautilus shell and leaving Ariel mute. As for details and the resolution?  Audiences should experience those firsthand.

“Every Disney protagonist feels like a dreamer,” says Rodaz. “Everyone feels like an outsider, misunderstood, not seen in a way.  That’s the magic that’s inherent in Disney.”

To prep his cast for a show requiring most of the actors to navigate an underwater world, Rodaz invited the performers to his family’s home to go swimming as a start to building a vocabulary of movement.

Everyone did except for Chisolm, who notes, “I can’t swim.”

The show’s romantic leads are young performers in the early stages of building their post-university careers.

“It’s really cool to be doing the original Broadway script. And who doesn’t want to work in Florida?” says Shaw, who says she loves singing Ariel’s “Part of Your World” most. “Giancarlo gave us time to have a discovery process.  Everyone was willing to dive in. He created a safe, fun environment.”

Thrasher, a 2018 theater winner in the Miami-based National YoungArts Foundation competition, has sung Eric’s “Her Voice” for years and says the prince’s expression of love for Ariel often brings him to the verge of tears.  He also is moved by the quartet “If Only,” sung by Ariel, Triton, Eric and Ariel’s protector/sidekick Sebastian (Aaron Hagos).

“I love Alan Menken’s work, and this is one of my favorite scores.  It has such a variety of styles – it’s truly gorgeous,” says the actor.

Chisolm, who uses the pronouns they/them, says, “I’m 31, and I have loved the ‘Little Mermaid’ movie for 20 years.  Ursula is the one I always respond to.  (She was) banished for killing and maiming people.  It’s high melodrama and very operatic storytelling.”

In the animated original, Ursula’s look and affect were inspired in large part by Divine, the curvaceous and uncensored character played by Harris Glenn Milstead in famous/infamous John Waters movies.  Ursula, Chisolm says, “is definitely a woman.  But as a non-binary and queer person myself, I have a strong sense of obligation to the way I play her.”

Unlike Area Stage newcomers Shaw, Thrasher and Chisolm, Hagos and Montoto have appeared in a number of the company’s productions.  Montoto was in the immersive versions of “Annie” and “Beauty and the Beast,” and both actors admire  Rodaz’s approach to well-known musicals.

“It’s surreal to take a story everyone knows and do it a new way,” says Hagos.

Adds Montoto of his frequent director: “He always provides new challenges . . . He loves to bounce ideas off everybody.”

Disney’s “The Little Mermaid” will be Rodaz’s first as Area Stage’s second artistic director.  Banda-Rodaz estimates the production’s cost as “in the neighborhood of $400,000;” creating theater at the Arsht Center is always costlier than producing at the company’s space in South Miami’s Shops at Sunset Place, home to Area Stage’s extensive conservatory program.

“I feel so proud to see the company continue under Giancarlo’s stewardship. He has been preparing for the role all his life,” says Banda-Rodaz, who is creating the “Little Mermaid” costumes along with Sofia Ortega. “Productions like ‘Annie’ and ‘Beauty and the Beast’ gave John the impetus to hand over the position, and we cannot wait to see what new artistic challenges Giancarlo will conquer.”

Founding artistic director John Rodaz says of his son, “Giancarlo has been steeped in the world of performing arts since he was a child, and his journey has been nothing short of remarkable. From his early days performing on our stage to working behind the scenes and eventually directing his own productions, his commitment to artistic excellence and storytelling has shone through.  I have watched him grow as an artist and a leader, and I have faith in his ability to take Area Stage Company to even greater heights.”

Giancarlo Rodaz – called “John-John” by close friends, colleagues and family – remembers his journey vividly.

“I started by sweeping the theater and cleaning up after shows. It’s been inch by inch, moving forward,” he says. “When my dad started Area Stage, the focus was on Harold Pinter and David Mamet and so on.  When we moved to Riviera Plaza (the site has become the future home of a two-story Publix on South Dixie Highway across from the University of Miami), we switched the focus to education.   Now I want to find equilibrium between the mainstage and conservatory programs, so they can feed off each other.”

Following “The Little Mermaid,” Rodaz plans to produce an immersive version of “The Addams Family Musical” in the Arsht’s Carnival Studio Theater Feb. 7-25.  And though he’s the one in charge, he’s glad his parents aren’t going anywhere.

“I’m lucky to have them around, guiding and advising me,” he says.

WHAT: Disney’s “The Little Mermaid”

WHERE: Area Stage Company production in the Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

WHEN: Previews 7:30 p.m. Aug. 9-10, opens 7:30 p.m. Aug. 11; regular performances 7:30 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, 1 p.m. Saturday-Sunday, through Aug. 27

COST:  $110 VIP (with immersive seating), $83.50 general admission, $52 students 3-22 (must show student ID), $31 lap seating (day of show only at box office)

INFORMATION: 305-949-6722 or arshtcenter.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 artburstmiami.com.

Review: ‘Defending the Cavewoman’ makes aspirational debut at Actors’ Playhouse

The taking of wedding vows is one of the many topics with a sardonic tone in “Defending the Cavewoman” getting its U.S. premiere at Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables through Aug. 6. (Photo courtesy of Alberto Romeu)

Since time immemorial – way, way back when cavemen went out hunting and cavewomen did the gathering, or so we’re told – the differences between men and women have inspired a certain kind of theatrical fare.

John Gray’s monster best seller “Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus” was adapted by Eric Coble into a solo show. Rob Becker’s one-person “Defending the Caveman” took its laughs and gender observations to Broadway.  The musical “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” by Joe DiPietro and Jimmy Roberts had an Off-Broadway run of more than 5,000 performances and has been done all over the country – Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables has produced that show four times.

Now the company is aiming to add to the genre with “Defending the Cavewoman,” a solo show starring Carbonell Award winner Lindsey Corey.

Running in the Balcony Theatre at the Miracle through Sunday, Aug. 6, the 2000 comedy by South African playwright Emma Peirson has had a little work done (theatrical Botox?) for its United States premiere, with the hope that this piece might become another much-produced success like the ones referenced above.

At this point, it’s not clear how aspirations for the show might play out (the producers who licensed it to Actors’ Playhouse are Theater Mogul and GFour Productions).

Theater fans who like their entertainment light and relatable go for shows like “Defending the Cavewoman” because men and women often do see things differently.  We are all individuals, of course, and behavior isn’t clearly tied to gender or hormones.

But that hunter-gatherer stuff seems pretty hardwired.

“Defending the Cavewoman,” which was created by Peirson and Vanessa Frost, runs a brisk 85 minutes, with the script incorporating myriad influences.  Nature documentaries, bombastic Oprah Winfrey-style TV, scenes of 10th anniversary domestic discord and the rhythms of standup comedy are all folded into “Cavewoman,” though they don’t always coexist smoothly, despite the imaginative efforts of director David Arisco, the design team and the abundantly impressive, irresistible Corey.

The play’s prologue flips the script on the Adam and Eve story.  God (voiced Oprah-style by Kareema Khouri who, along with Carlos Alayeto and Laura Turnbull, supplies brief interludes of recorded lines) creates Eve first, only to leave her feeling lonely in the lush Garden of Eden.

She asks for a companion and God complies, but as it turns out, this sequence is a setup for the play’s first big woman-to-man shot.  Revealing that here would be a spoiler, and spoilers are bad.

Then “Defending the Cavewoman” gets down to contemporary business.

Corey, who flips into and out of more than a dozen characters, chiefly plays Evelyn, a wife and mother who the day before celebrated her 10th anniversary with her husband Chris. The special day, she notes, was marked by one crisis after another as she frenetically tried to rally her troops – Chris and the kids – to get the house ready for a celebratory family brunch.

Among the crises:  She forgot to order food from the caterers (yes, she says defensively, she can cook – well, maybe that’s not quite true).

The family dog with an amusing name (not spoiling that one either) has to be rushed to the hunky fantasy-stirring vet after vomiting all over Evelyn, who can’t change her curve-hugging leopard print party dress because the zipper is immovably stuck.

After the brunch and a whole lot of snark from her mother-in-law Hillary, Evelyn realizes the youngest kid has a karate class that afternoon. The family rushes  to the mall to get his gear (Chris’s only assignment while Evelyn gathers many other items), but Daddy gets distracted by the sounds and myriad screens in the electronics section.

And so it goes in “Defending the Cavewoman” and Evelyn’s world.

The play is full of pointed observations twisted for comic effect, such as: Maybe serial killers are really normal people on low-carb diets. Maybe Evelyn can tell Chris (from memory) exactly where his favorite cheese is in the fridge, even though he has “looked” and can’t find it.

Maybe the anniversary dress Chris ordered for Evelyn looked different in the photo because the Amazonian model was wearing a size 0, while Evelyn (with the help of Spanx so tight her internal organs are screaming) is squeezed into a size 8.

Corey, it must be noted, is so slender and fit that the model would likely envy her.  The actor is a deft comedienne, a killer singer, a talent who can make dancing funny.  At this point early in the run, she has fleeting moments in which she smiles but looks just a tad uncomfortable – maybe because the script occasionally still vacillates between theater and standup.

If plays were rated like movies, “Defending the Cavewoman” would probably get an NC-17, not for anything that takes place onstage but for language (the script is loaded with f-bombs) and verbal sexual content (among Evelyn’s anniversary gifts is a special set of balls that embarrassingly chime when she walks).

As with any solo show, it took a village to bring “Defending the Cavewoman” to life.

Arisco helped the actor hone her performance, with additional feedback from stage manager Amanda Corbin.  Jodi Dellaventura created and dressed the set, co-designing projections that vitally enhance the storytelling with Natalie Taveras.  Eric Nelson’s lighting helps transport Corey’s Evelyn and the audience from place to place.

Matt Corey, the star’s husband, uses his perfectly detailed soundscape to further bring Evelyn’s world and memories to life.  Costume designer Ellis Tillman first puts Corey-as-Eve in a riotously colorful floor-length dress that makes her look like Mother Nature, then gets her into the curve-hugging leopard-print dress that (despite dialogue to the contrary) allows her to move so easily she can practically do contortions.

Sporting a dated long, big, curly wig, Corey must deliver certain lines that come off as more mean-spirited than funny – the fault of the script, not the actor.  When Evelyn is imitating Chris, she sounds none too bright, and she’s only too happy to complain about his willingness to wear dirty clothes, his lack of effectiveness when it comes to cleaning, his flaws as an information gatherer when their friends are having marital woes.

Does “Defending the Cavewoman” resonate with an audience of men and women who know only too well the situations Evelyn describes? Yes, and at the end, Evelyn concedes that Chris is “one of the good ones.” But like our ancestors, the script needs to evolve if it is to join that list of hit battle-of-the-sexes shows.

WHAT: “Defending the Cavewoman” by Emma Peirson

WHERE: Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre’s Balcony Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables

WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through Aug. 6

TICKETS: $40 to $125 (seniors 65 and older get 10 percent off weekdays only; students with valid student ID pay $15 for a rush ticket available 15 minutes before a weekday performance)

INFO: 305-444-9293 or actorsplayhouse.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.

Cuban play ‘Hierro’ gets simultaneous translation at Miami-Dade County Auditorium

At left, Caleb Casas as José Martí and Claudia Valdes as Carmen Zayas Bazán in “Hierro” (“Iron”), by Cuban-Spanish playwright Carlos Celdrán, which opens on Thursday, July 27 at the Miami-Dade County Auditorium. (Photo courtesy of Arca Images)

Spanish-language theater, produced locally and by companies outside Miami-Dade County, is not rare in an area where only 27 percent of residents are English-only speakers.

While productions in Spanish have always been part of Miami-Dade’s theater scene — Mario Ernesto Sánchez’s Teatro Avante and the yearly International Hispanic Theatre Festival have long led the way, for example — Alexa Kuve, the executive and producing artistic director of Arca Images, agrees there are barriers for non-Spanish speaking theatergoers who might want to attend a performance in its original language.

Many companies now offer supertitles, much like opera, with the English translation appearing in text – but even that creates a barrier. Theater creates and requires an intimacy between actors and audiences, and that can become a battle for attention if the theatergoer is watching what’s going on onstage and following the words in captions.

Kuve says that especially for its upcoming production of “Hierro” (“Iron”), by Cuban-Spanish playwright Carlos Celdrán, it is important to draw in English and Spanish speakers.

“Carlos tells a very different story about José Martí who is a near mythological figure for Latin Americans. This play is an eloquent re-examination of his life,” says Kuve.

“Hierro” will open on Thursday, July 27, and run through Sunday, Aug. 6 at the Miami Dade County Auditorium in its original Spanish but with a simultaneous English translation. A translator, in another room of the theater, watches what is happening on stage through a video connection and translates in real time, she explains. Audiences can listen to the English version through wireless headphones that are provided. Although not the first time Arca has offered the simultaneous translation, Kuve is hoping the word gets out about “Hierro.”

“This is a play that has only been performed live before in Cuba,” says Kuve. Celdrán, who lives in Madrid, is directing the play and is in Miami working with actors, many of whom now live here but performed in the original production in Havana.

The play had its world premiere in November 2019 at Celdrán’s company, Argos Teatro.

“It had a good run there just before the pandemic hit,” he says. “It caused an impact.”

He says his work demystifies the image of the National Hero of Cuba and of the man who became a symbol of Cuba’s bid for independence from Spain in the 19^th century; many view Martí as the apostle of Cuban independence.

“This is not an official version of him,” Celdrán says in Spanish, with Kuve translating to English. “His image has been manipulated to the Cuban people.” He calls it “Martianism,” which has detracted from Cubans learning about his human side.

“Martí was an epic figure, but he was also human,” says the playwright. Kuve adds: “Through his research, Carlos discovered this person that was not in any history books.”

Celdrán says his purpose in writing the play was a mix of his own fascination with the Cuban nationalist, poet, and essayist, which began when Celdrán was a boy in Cuba and a desire to “start a dialogue about this figure that is so important for Cubans in and out of Cuba.”

The playwright says his story is a reinterpretation that returns to the beginning of Martí’s story.

“I wanted to unfold his personal life, his private life,” says Celdrán, who has included material centered on Martí’s exile in New York City, where he lived for 15 years after the Spanish deported him from Cuba for his radical ideas.

Celdrán’s approach was revered by many in his homeland of Cuba although he confides that people who had officially worked with research and history about Martí found some of the subjects the playwright chose to tackle problematic.

One sticking point: his infidelity. “Some of them do not accept that he was unfaithful to his wife and that he had an illegitimate daughter with the wife of a friend. They find that inappropriate.”

He says that there was only a small faction of naysayers when the play opened in Cuba. “It didn’t bubble up. It didn’t escalate.”

It was through Martí’s poetry that the playwright was able to “feel” the character he created, a man who had “a personal life filled with contradictions, agonies, problems, and suffering.”

Kuve says Celdrán brings out, too, “his sensitivity.” Her eyes well up as she talks about a part of Celdrán’s play that she says brings her to tears every time.

“There’s my favorite scene where Martí confronts the man who tried to poison and kill him. He tells him, ‘I need to forgive you. I need to understand you because I need to forgive you not for you but for myself,’ ” she says.

For Celdrán, the scene is the pinnacle. “It is a small passage of his life that is almost forgotten but it is a metaphor for the entire show. That we all need to overcome our hatreds.”

WHAT: U.S. premiere of Carlos Celdrán’s “Hierro” in Spanish with simultaneous English translation.

WHEN: Opens 8:30 p.m. Thursday, July 27. Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday. Through Aug. 6.

WHERE: Miami Dade County Auditorium On.Stage Black Box Theater, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami, FL

COST: $30, general admission, $25 seniors and students with valid ID. 

INFO: Call Miami-Dade Auditorium at 305.547.5414 or  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.

In-demand actress, Lindsey Corey, takes on solo role for Actors’ Playhouse’s ‘Defending the Cavewoman’

Lindsey Corey is a comedic everywoman in the Actors’ Playhouse premiere of the one-woman show “Defending the Cavewoman” opening Friday, July 21 and running through Sunday, Aug. 6. (Photo courtesy of Alberto Romeu)

When Lindsey Corey graduated from Miami’s New World School of the Arts with a musical theater degree in 2008, she thought she would pursue a classic actor’s dream:  go to New York and try to forge a career in the Big Apple.

But fate, in the form of small decisions and growing opportunities, had other ideas. Encouraged by director Stuart Meltzer, one of her New World teachers who was the artistic director of City Theatre at the time, the actor then known as Lindsey Forgey got her first professional gig in the 2008 edition of City’s popular Summer Shorts.

As Meltzer puts it, “The job opened up a different perspective and opportunity for her” in a kind of theatrical boot camp where she worked alongside seasoned professionals and got to create multiple characters in an evening of short plays.

Says Corey, “I ended up staying because I saw it was possible to create a life here.”

Has she ever.

Today, 44 shows later (54 if you count repeats, like the half-dozen times she appeared in “Rock Odyssey” at Miami’s Arsht Center), the Carbonell Award-winning Corey is among the most in-demand actors throughout South Florida.

Now she’s taking on a fresh challenge, the Actors’ Playhouse United States premiere of South African playwright Emma Peirson’s 2001 solo show “Defending the Cavewoman.”  The play was devised by Peirson and Vanessa Frost, then written by Peirson in response to Rob Becker’s wildly successful one-man show “Defending the Caveman.” Becker’s show ran on Broadway from 1995 to 1997 and made tour stops all over the United States, including South Florida.

Previewing Wednesday and Thursday, July 19 and 20, opening Friday, July 21 and running through Sunday, Aug. 6 in the upstairs Balcony Theatre at Coral Gables’ Miracle Theatre, “Defending the Cavewoman” is a truth-laced comedy about how very different women, men and their foibles can be. It is Corey’s first professional one-woman show, though she wrote and performed a shorter student piece 15 years ago as a New World graduation requirement.

The production will be the 10th in which Corey has worked with David Arisco, artistic director of Actors’ Playhouse for nearly all of the company’s 35-season history.

In the summer, Arisco generally favors lighter, funny or musical fare.  He was working on the Actors’ production of “Hank Williams: Lost Highway” a year ago when his longtime friend, Seth Greenleaf of GFour Productions, brought the “Cavewoman” script to him. Arisco said yes – and thought of Corey, who was then playing the country legend’s ferociously ambitious but less-than-talented wife Audrey in “Hank Williams.”

“This was handed to me. I got lucky,” says Arisco, who has been working with Greenleaf on tweaking and shaping the script for an American audience (Greenleaf gets Peirson’s permission for any changes).  “This is definitely different. We have taken what was kind of a standup act and given it a theatrical structure.”

Arisco chose Corey, he says, because “she’s a pretty exceptional talent. She’s capable of playing just about anything.”

Corey has been committed to “Defending the Cavewoman” since last summer.  She plays more than 15 characters, though most often she’s speaking as a woman named Evelyn or her husband Chris on the day after the couple’s crisis-filled 10^th anniversary.

Actors Laura Turnbull, Kareema Khouri and Carlos Alayeto have recorded the voices of several other characters, but Corey is well aware she’ll be the only artist literally in the spotlight.

In a one-person show, she says, “Once the train has left the station, you are the train.”

Corey knows that her challenges in “Defending the Cavewoman” will include physical, mental and emotional stamina.  Fitness and healthy eating have been part of her professional strategy since before the pandemic because, she says, “being conscious of what I’m putting in my body is reflected in my instrument.”

For “Defending the Cavewoman,” she has to remember a huge number of lines in a piece that has changed from two acts to an 80-minute show with no intermission.

“It is a very wordy script. It’s big,” Corey observes.  “Dave (Arisco) and I have a shorthand . . . I came to the first day of rehearsals having memorized as much as I could, and we blocked the first quarter of the script.”

As prepared as Arisco is from the get-go, Corey says he’s open to collaborative input (“he gives you the freedom to bring whatever you’ve got”).  The two have had workable sound cues throughout rehearsals thanks to Corey’s husband, Matt, an eight-time Carbonell Award winner. Says Arisco, “This requires a sound designer who can make a real soundscape.”

He says that much depends upon the leading lady and only live performer in the premiere: “A lot of this is more about guiding a really good actor.”

Over the decade and a half since her days at New World, Corey’s professional resume has taken off like a bullet train.

In the upcoming 2023-2024 season, for example, she has been cast in the pre-Broadway tryout of the Louis Armstrong bio musical “A Wonderful World” (the show had its world premiere in late 2021 at Miami New Drama after shutting down during previews in 2020 due to the pandemic).  The new production plays the Saenger Theatre in New Orleans Oct. 1-8, then heads to Chicago’s Cadillac Palace Theatre Oct. 11-29, and Corey is again cast as Rachel the Reporter/Ensemble, as she was at Miami New Drama.

Corey will also appear in “A Christmas Carol” in November-December at the Maltz Jupiter Theater in Palm Beach County, where she earned raves as the tragic Nancy in “Oliver!” this past March.

In the new year, she’ll head to Palm Beach Dramaworks to appear in the February world premiere of Christopher Demos-Brown’s “The Cancellation of Lauren Fein.”  And in March-April 2024, she’ll star as Sally Bowles in Zoetic Stage’s immersive production of “Cabaret,” with Meltzer directing.

In 2015, Corey got a breakout part when she originated the role of Masha, an exotic dancer from Belarus fighting for custody of her little girl, in the Zoetic Stage world premiere of Demos-Brown’s “Stripped.” Her performance won her the best actress in a play Carbonell Award. Corey says Masha is her favorite role so far. Not that it was easy: In addition to the play’s dramatic demands, the part required her to master pole dancing and learn the character’s Russian dialect.

Demos-Brown counts himself among the South Florida-based theater artists who believes Corey is headed for a stellar future.

“I didn’t write the role of Masha for anyone in particular. But Stuart [Meltzer] immediately saw Lindsey in the role and, of course, once we got into rehearsals, I couldn’t picture anyone else doing it,” Demos-Brown notes. “…There are two actors for whom I try to create a role every time I write a play. Lindsey’s one of them. She’s one of a kind.  A combination of Jennifer Lawrence and Meryl Streep. She’s that talented, that smart, that charming, that funny, that wonderful to work with. She’s a break or two from being a huge star.”

This moment is one Corey, 37, has been working toward for most of her life.  Raised in smalltown Harrison, Tenn., 20 miles outside Chattanooga, she started singing karaoke in bars when she was only five or so.

“My mom never had a drink in her life, but she knew I wasn’t afraid to get up and sing in front of people,” says Corey of her early start in showbiz.

“Her friend mentioned there was a magnet arts high school in Chattanooga, and I went there . . . I got into New World, and after graduating met (actor) Laura Turnbull doing Summer Shorts. Then her husband Avi Hoffman cast me in ‘Enter Laughing’ at the New Vista Theatre in Boca Raton. So moving to New York got farther away.”

Corey has created the life she envisioned in South Florida, both professionally and personally.

She met her husband when she was dating someone else, as was he, so for the first few years of their relationship they were theater friends and colleagues at Fort Lauderdale’s Insight for the Blind, where she still works as a digital magazine producer.

Matt Corey, whose father is actor and radio personality Dave Corey, is an accomplished creative force to be reckoned with. He’s president and CEO of Insight for the Blind, which supplies recordings of books and magazines to the Library of Congress, visually impaired clients and other libraries; a University of Miami-trained composer and bassoonist; and one of South Florida theater’s most in-demand sound designers.

The decade-long marriage in “Defending the Cavewoman” is meant to make us laugh as it highlights differences between men (hunters going all the way back to caveman days) and women (forever gatherers). Evelyn and Chris love each other but come off as comedic combatants.  She complains about his snoring, flatulence, the necessity of re-cleaning after he has “cleaned,” sending him to the grocery store with a detailed and descriptive list only to discover he left his wallet at home.  He complains that “someone” is always moving his things, and he asks her where the cheese he’s seeking is located in the fridge since he didn’t spot it first thing when he opened the door.

The Coreys, on the other hand, have now been married for nine happy years.

“I love that man, I love that I can collaborate with him in life and artistically,” says Corey. “We talk about the show at home; we’re each other’s support system.  It’s a lot for me and a big sound show for him.  Even though he’s done more than 100 shows at GableStage, this is his first time working at Actors’ Playhouse because mostly they do big musicals. But Matt wants to stretch himself.”

He’s also supportive of Corey’s upcoming out-of-town runs in “A Wonderful World,” and he’s planning to see the show in both tryout cities.

Arisco observes that Corey “loves South Florida and loves working here.  She’s a lovely person who has her world together, which allows her to dig deep and feel confident.”

As glimmering as Corey’s future looks right now, it also contains unknowns.  Will “A Wonderful World” move to Broadway, and if so, when?  How might that affect her other commitments?  If New York beckons with other opportunities, will she stay or go?

“It’s not lost on me what I have here,” Corey says of her longtime home base – her own wonderful world.

WHAT: “Defending the Cavewoman” by Emma Peirson

WHERE: Actors Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre’s Balcony Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables

WHEN: Previews 8 p.m. Wednesday and Thursday, July 19 and 20, opens 8 p.m. Friday, July 21; regular performances 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through Aug. 6

COST: $40 to $125 (seniors 65 and over get 10 percent off weekdays only; students with valid student ID pay $15 for a rush ticket available 15 minutes before a weekday performance)

INFO: 305-444-9293 or actorsplayhouse.org

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Festival gives young filmmakers chance to learn about craft, show skills

Deondre Marshall hones his filmmaking skills as part of URGENT, Inc.’s  Film Arts Culture Entrepreneurship Program (FACE). He’ll be one of the participants in the Miami 4 Social Change Youth Film Festival on Thursday, July 20 and Friday, July 21 at Miami Dade College, North Campus. (Photo courtesy of Deion Mendez)

Don’t you just hate it when someone steals your lunch?

This common conundrum is the subject of  “Dan’s Lunch,” one of 50 short films that will be screened at this year’s eighth annual Miami 4 Social Change Youth Film Festival.

The film, directed by Charmiana Delphonse, was plucked from over 600 submissions and will be shown during a two-day event that begins on Thursday, July 20 and Friday, July 21 at Miami Dade College, North Campus, Conference Center.

Saliha Nelson, Ed.D., and CEO of URGENT, Inc., a youth development program in Miami, is the festival’s producer, and says that the screening puts young filmmakers like Delphonse center stage.

“The festival is a way for them to show their films and compete against international storytellers in the same age range,” says Nelson. “This is a great platform not only to celebrate our students and the work that they created to compete, but it is also an opportunity for them to network with their peers . . .”

Presented by URGENT, Inc., in collaboration with Miami Dade College North Campus and the School of Entertainment and Design Technology, Nelson says the group of filmmakers is diverse and the genres run the gamut from music videos, public service announcements, animations, live-action shorts to documentaries.

Submission requirements were that films needed to be eight minutes or less, the content needed to focus on a social change theme, and filmmakers needed to be 24 years old or younger. Only original works were accepted.

In addition to getting their films screened, there’s a learning initiative included, too. The “Shoot Your Shot!” pitch competition gives young filmmakers a chance to introduce their film proposals. “Content creators between the ages of 15 and 17 will have 90 seconds to pitch their film ideas to prospective judges who will see if they have the presentation, the ideas, and innovation . . .”

There will also be panel discussions, which Nelson says will be facilitated by local industry professionals.

“We’ll have a Media Empowerment Industry panel so they can learn about different careers in the industry.”

Actor, model and motivational speaker Sergio Delavicci returns for the third year as the festival’s special guest along with hip hop artist Damon “Kool Rock-Ski” Wimbley, formerly of the Fat Boys.

“Because this is the 50-year anniversary of hip hop and its influence in film and soundtrack, we’re going to have old school hip hop artist (Damon) and he’ll be coming to share about how  (the Fat Boys) got started with hip hop in the film industry when they were young, so the kids will have some history as well,” says Nelson.

Educating participants about the entertainment industry is one of the festival’s primary goals and it is also an offshoot of Urgent, Inc.’s  annual Film Arts Culture Entrepreneurship Program (FACE).

Nelson encourages those who are interested to apply. Additional information is available on the website.

“The Film Festival is an opportunity that we’ve developed because we run our own film program,” says Nelson. “We hire high school students who are interested in film, and they work with us as interns year ’round. And so, not only do they learn how to be storytellers and learn the technical aspects of camerawork and storytelling, but they also get professional development and mentorship with a series of industry professionals.”

Delphonse admits that when she first began in the program in 2022 she really wasn’t invested in the craft of moviemaking.

“I was always interested in film. I watched a lot of movies and TV shows but I didn’t have much knowledge about film. I wasn’t that type of person who watched the credits at the end,” says Delphonse.

But as a pre-apprentice, her interest has grown.

In addition to her being a director in “Dan’s Lunch,” she is also the assistant director in “Loosen Up,” as well as an editor and actress in “Sock,” all of which will be screened at the festival.

Delphonse says that her time with FACE and her participation in the three short films has been an eye-opening experience.  She says the program and the film festival have challenged her to face her fears and how to work hard to achieve her goals.

“They taught me a lot about film in a short period of time.  . . .They also taught me about real-world etiquette,” she says. “I wasn’t used to the discipline that I was given. The real film industry, you know, it’s hard. It’s not easy. You have to have tough skin. It’s not about what you’re comfortable with. It’s about breaking that bubble.”

She is planning to attend Valencia Community College in Orlando this fall; her focus will be to get training in the film and entertainment industry, says Delphonse.

Nelson hopes that others will attend the festival and ultimately gain a positive experience.

“We want young people to come out and see other young filmmakers who’ve submitted their ideas. And also to learn about issues that they may not be aware of. It’s going to be a fun time. It’s going to be engaging. It’s going to be entertaining, but it’s also going to be really educational.”

WHAT: Miami 4 Social Change Youth Film Festival

WHERE:  Miami Dade College, North Campus, Conference Center, Bldg. 3, 11380 NW 27th Ave.,

WHEN: Thursday, July 20  and Friday, July 21.

COST: $20 adults, those up to 21 years of age are free. 

INFORMATION: urgentinc.org/youth-film-festival

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Review: Inventive ‘Native Gardens’ seeds summer laughs at GableStage

Kevin Cruz as Pablo Del Valle and Diana Garle as his wife Tania make a surprising discovery about their property line in GableStage’s “Native Gardens” on stage through Sunday, July 16. (Photo courtesy of Magnus Stark)

Making an inference from the new show at GableStage, playwright Karen Zacarías must know what it’s like to have challenging neighbors.

Her “Native Gardens” touches on a multiplicity of subjects, including the work-life challenges women face, acceptance of an offspring’s sexual orientation, prejudice both subconscious and overt.  But Zacarías absolutely nails what happens when the heretofore pleasant folks next door turn nasty.

Closing out producing artistic director Bari Newport’s second season at GableStage in Coral Gables’ Biltmore Hotel, “Native Gardens” is just what the theater doctor ordered as an antidote to the flow of apocalyptic news. The play isn’t theater of the absurd, but it’s absurdly hilarious.

Thanks to the inventive, joyful touch of director Victoria Collado and a killer cast of four, “Native Gardens” is a finely calibrated romp through the fast-disintegrating relationship of two couples who call an historic Washington D.C. neighborhood home.

The longtime residents are baby boomers Frank Butley (David Kwiat) and his wife Virginia (Barbara Sloan). He works for the government, mysteriously calling his employer “the agency,” while she’s an engineer at Lockheed Martin and an all-around dynamo.  Frank’s true passion is his lovingly tended, flower-filled garden, and he’s intently focused on beating the neighbor who always defeats him in the Potomac Horticultural Society’s yearly competition.

New to the house next door are millennials Pablo Del Valle (Kevin Cruz), an attorney who grew up in a wealthy Chilean family, and his wife Tania (Diana Garle), a New Mexico-born Ph.D. candidate whose first baby is due in a mere five weeks. Their home is in obvious need of TLC, their “garden” – currently home to an old oak tree, scattered leaves and acorns, a few paltry plants and a sad little gnome statue – even more so.

Pretty quickly (the play is only 90 minutes, sans intermission), the Butleys and Del Valles find themselves in a pickle.

Pablo – well aware of his status as the only Latinx attorney at what he calls an “intensely American” law firm, ambitiously aspiring to a future partnership – winds up inviting the entire office over for a Saturday get-together.  In a mere six days. Disbelieving Tania, who is preparing to defend her doctoral dissertation, needing to get the new place in order and (oh yes) have a baby, nonetheless rallies and suggests a backyard barbecue.

Frank’s competition, as it turns out, is the day after the barbecue. Tania believes she can quickly create a starter version of her dream garden, one filled with native plants and maintained without the use of pesticides.  But she’d really love to replace the pitiful chain-link fence between the two backyards with a more private wooden one.

Over getting-to-know-you drinks, the younger couple floats the fence idea, and Frank loves it – until Tania examines the plat map of her backyard and discovers that the Del Valles’ property actually extends two feet beyond the chain link fence.

Thus begins the next-door neighbor equivalent of World War III, with a lot more laughs.

Zacarías’s script is funny throughout, interspersing quirky silent vignettes between the scenes and growing ever more (amusingly) ridiculous.

As director, Collado is extravagantly imaginative and surgically precise.  Working with the ever-wonderful sound designer Matt Corey, she gets extra laughs with bridging music – the deceptively innocent “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” from “Sesame Street,” the theme song from “Jaws” when a miniature piece of wood fencing bobs up and down between the two houses.

Collado and the cast make key lines sting, as ugly biases surface in casual conversation.  Her comedic touch collaborating with her actors is priceless too, as when Frank, alone in his yard, does a bit of ballet as he dispenses pesticide in precisely timed squirts.

Kwiat and Sloan, a real-life couple, are an acting dream team as the Butleys. His Frank is a man of unbridled enthusiasms and a quicksilver temper; when a remark hits him especially hard, he makes a sound that’s a cross between a roar and a moan, as if he’d been gutted.  Sloan is masterful at playing sociability with a strong undercurrent of brittleness.  Her Virginia can be manically ruthless, too: When she goes for her chainsaw, watch out.

Cruz, who has been building his professional career since graduating from Miami’s New World School of the Arts just over a year ago, is a tall, striking leading man who persuasively conveys Pablo’s insecurities as well as his ambitions.

Increasingly active in film and television in both Miami and Los Angeles, Garle has come back to the theater and GableStage without missing a beat. Though she wears a faux pregnancy belly as Tania, Garle’s glow comes from within (well, maybe with a little assist from lighting designer Tony Galaska).  She’s an adroit comedienne who flawlessly navigates Tania’s wide-ranging emotions. Whether acting or reacting, Garle is a magnetic performer.

The look of GableStage’s “Native Gardens” is deliberately and delightfully cartoonish, featuring a pair of similar small-scale houses, two vastly different backyards and a sky dotted with puffy painted clouds. Frank J. Oliva, the season’s set designer, has delivered a playful environment in synch with the script’s style and Collado’s approach.

Plant designer/set dresser Victoria Murawski has surrounded the Butleys’ backyard with an abundance of colorful flowers (silk would have been better than plastic, though), and prop designer/set dresser Katie Ellison has effectively underscored the status of the two couples (the Butleys have been around forever and have money; the Del Valles don’t).  Likewise, costume designer Camilla Haith says plenty about Virginia (chic attire and glittering necklaces) and Tania (a still-stylish  millennial in comfortable pregnant-lady clothes).

“Native Gardens” has plenty of serious content threaded throughout, little issue-oriented land mines about racism, classicism, ageism and more.  Yet because those topics are so expertly woven into a disarming piece that keeps the audience laughing, it may just be that theatergoers will take inventory of their own prejudices. As Virginia says in the play, “Just because you don’t like what you hear doesn’t mean you shouldn’t listen!”

WHAT: “Native Gardens” by Karen Zacarías

WHERE: GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables

WHEN: 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesday, 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (additional matinees July 7 and July 15), through July 16 (streaming version available during regular performances June 16-July 16)

COST: $40-$70 (streaming ticket $27)

INFORMATION:  305-445-1119 or gablestage.org.

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Review: ‘Summer Shorts’ takes a wild ride with emerging Miami playwrights

Roderick Randle and Brette-Raia Curah face an apocalyptic future in “And Other Dreams We Had” by Phanésia Pharel. (Photo courtesy of Morgan Sophia Photography)

After a two-year pandemic/post-pandemic pause, City Theatre’s signature Summer Shorts festival came back blazing last June, belatedly celebrating its 25th anniversary with a collection of mini-musicals, short dramas, and concise comedies.

This year, the company has put together an eight-play festival that feels familiar yet different. “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition,” running through Sunday, June 25 in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami’s Arsht Center, showcases the talent of emerging BIPOC/Latinx playwrights, new-to-the-festival directors, plus new and seasoned acting talent

Like earlier festivals, “Homegrown” follows a tried-and-true structure as it delivers plenty of delight. The eight writers have been honing their work with master playwright Vanessa Garcia, whose “#Graced” had its world premiere in the same Arsht Center space last month. Though the subjects of the short plays differ widely, as a whole, “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition” is a love letter to Miami talent.

Act One features four comedies, plays that get the audience crazy with laughter, practically guaranteeing they won’t skip out during the intermission. Act Two offers three plays with more serious themes (though two also have plenty of laughs) before wrapping up with an out-of-this-world farce set in outer space.

“I Found This on the Web” by Ivan R. López kicks things off with an insightful, imaginative look at how devices can become an omnipresent third wheel when an online date becomes a fraught real-world experience.

Marcos (Raul Ramírez) is jittery as he waits for Jake (Samuel Krogh) in a nice restaurant.  The waiter (Graham Oberlink) is friendly and attentive, but once Jake walks through the door and starts talking, you think: Uh oh. Mismatch.

As it happens, Siri (Evelyn Perez), speaking from Marcos’s phone and watch, is of the same opinion. So she chimes in even when Marcos orders her to zip it (AI doomsday believers, beware).  The play gets crazier – see for yourself – but know that the script, performances and excellent direction by Alex Alvarez (an acting veteran of numerous City Theatre festivals) are moment-to-moment hilarious.

Alvarez was also at the helm of “7” by poet-turned-playwright Lolita Stewart-White. Set in the dressing room of a chapel in South Miami’s Richmond Heights neighborhood, the play imagines that married couples have to follow a federal law requiring them to renew their vows every seven years; if they don’t, the marriage is null and void.

Kayla (Brette-Raia Curah), a beautiful and decidedly nervous woman, is decked out like a bride but not at all certain about her next move.  Her elder sister Nubia (Toddra Brunson) and younger sister Hansline (Shaina Joseph) urge her to renew her vows with husband Curtis – Nubia is especially (and riotously) vociferous about it. But Kayla has just run into her bad-boy ex Troy, and she’s starting to feel like a runaway bride. So, Nubia goes nuclear as she reveals exactly why Kayla should stick with the good man she has.

Stewart-White spins a relatable tale out of her unusual premise, and Alvarez helps the cast deliver every laugh in the script.  Brunson, reminiscent of the actor-comedian Leslie Jones in this piece, steals the show.

Sefanja Richard Galon’s “Banana Bread,” adroitly staged for maximum comedic effect by Joshua Jean-Baptiste, should speak to anyone who has ever had a going-nowhere fast food job.  Tyrone (Roderick Randle) and Sebastian (Ramírez) are coworkers under the thumb of high-octane manager Tony (Krogh), who starts their day at 7 a.m. by making them recite the corporate motto.

Their working styles reveal plenty about their values and motivations.  Sebastian is coasting, going out for a pre-shift smoke break involving weed, taking his sweet time to do anything.  Tyrone is hustling hard, going by the book, trying to be sure the customers leave happy.

That last part isn’t easy:  The first customer (Chabely Ponce) is hilariously intolerable without her heart-starting first dose of caffeine, and the second (Lauren Cristina López) is a sleek corporate type whose demands extend to the minutiae of her order.  Well-written, well-directed and well-acted, “Banana Bread” is a scrumptious little comedy.

“Plastic Flowers” by Luis Roberto Herrera is polished, achingly funny and comes with the perfect comedic twist at the end. Directed by Maha McCain, the play involves a pair of estranged coworkers, Thaylee (Brunson) and Raia (Perez), who unfortunately pick the same moment to visit a comatose coworker (Daniella Valdivieso) in the hospital.  Raia has brought a bouquet of plastic flowers for the patient – tacky, as far as Thaylee is concerned – and soon it’s off to the races with insults and f-bombs as the women resume insulting each other.

Turns out, guilt is driving a lot of Thaylee’s behavior, particularly the last thing she said to the patient before her coworker landed in the hospital.  Perez and Brunson are seasoned actors who volley Herrera’s well-crafted dialogue so well that you wish “Plastic Flowers” were a little longer.

McCain is also the director of the most intense and sobering play in the “Homegrown” collection, “And Other Dreams We Had” by Phanésia Pharel.  The video that precedes the dialogue shows a disintegrating world filled with pollution, a ruined environment, flooding, the latter emphasized by the occasional sound of sloshing water.  Jules (Curah) and Mason (Randle) are a couple in crisis, trapped in an attic with a baby on the way – if they decide to go through with the pregnancy.

Worry and fear are omnipresent as they subsist on canned food and wonder (as so many parents do) how they could bring a child into a despoiled world. But their love is still alive in that attic, allowing them a brief escape into a reverie of beauty and hope. Pharel’s powerful, poetic voice marks her as a playwright to watch.

Ariel Cipolla’s “The Vultures” is a sly, layered piece that manages to combine the behavior of actual vultures (though the explanation of most of that is in the script’s stage directions) with the actions of three teen girls who have just finished middle school.  Those years weren’t a happy time for Jade (Ponce), Hazel (López) and Riley (Curah), and Jade is determined they’ll reinvent themselves with fresh social media personas that will make them bully-proof.

Director Melissa Almaguer gets truthful teen behavior from her young adult actors, and she flawlessly guides them through the characters’ constantly shifting emotions.  Pushy, controlling Jade turns out to be the alpha vulture, wielding social media as a weapon, though Hazel’s no saint either.  Part of the pleasure of Cipolla’s short play is that it’s full of surprise and emotional depth.

Almaguer has also staged Joel Castillo’s “Balloo(n),” a piece full of conflicting elements, including love, anger, comedy and condescension. Miami honeymooners Olivia (López) and Jason (Krogh) have gone to Havana, she to explore her family’s history, gringo Jason to be supportive and have an adventure. Outside the dolphin show at the Acuario Nacional, a smiling globera (Perez as the balloon  seller) tries to get them to buy one of her red, blue or green balloons. Jason gives the older woman the brushoff, barely looking at her, but this globera stands her ground nearby – which proves to be a great thing.

Perez emerges as the star of “Balloo(n),” a Cuban woman who has lived nearby with her English husband for most of her life.  When Jason’s comments about the run-down condition of the country and its pushy people cause Olivia to go nuclear, the globera offers her wise, funny counsel about men, husbands and more in a mix of Spanish and enough English so that everyone in the audience gets her drift.  Perez’s timing and delivery are perfección.

In “2201: Xibalba,” playwright Chris Anthony Ferrer has dreamed up a tongue-in-cheek space farce.  Staged by Jean-Baptiste, who brings the quirkiness of the characters to the forefront, the play is set aboard the massive Space Station Xibalba, standing guard just outside a wormhole to prevent universe-destroying aliens from taking over our solar system.

Diverse personalities and multiple crises collide as the Xibalba crew prepares to celebrate New Year’s Eve with plenty of booze and raunchy language.

Bombastic Commander Dax Lobo (Brunson) is justifiably nervous about turning over the controls to shaking cadet Cicero Lipschitz (Ramírez), who tries to convey a confidence way beyond his capabilities – but hey, Lobo’s got a party to attend. Major Gronkzalez (Randle) appears on the Jetsons-style control deck as a hologram, just long enough to threaten Lipschitz with the deadly consequences of dereliction of duty.  Sarai (Ponce, memorable again), an effervescent golden android, demonstrates that turning off her comedy function makes her an unhappy, aggressive, not-so-shiny girl.  Fireworks – the traditional kind and the firepower of an approaching alien armada – close out a New Year’s Eve to remember (if anyone survives the “celebration”).

“Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition” may seem like a fairly compact endeavor, with eight actors performing eight plays.  It isn’t, of course: More than 40 people are involved. They include City Theatre artistic director Margaret M. Ledford and executive director Gladys Ramirez, intimacy choreographer Nicole Perry, fight choreographer David Hyland, stage manager Randall Swinton, production manager Preston Bircher, and five interns.

Special kudos go to the designers:  Marina Pareja, who has underscored the personalities from so many worlds with her costumes; lighting designer Eric Nelson, who summons night, day and so many moods; scenic and prop designer Jodi Dellaventura; scenic and projection designer Natalie Taveras; sound designer Ernesto K. Gonzalez; projection specialist Steven Covey; videographer Christian Vandepas.

Video and projections are a major component of “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition.” Before and between plays, the audience goes along on a high-speed driving tour of Miami-Dade’s cities and neighborhoods, with the camera lingering just long enough on signs for theatergoers to experience that little flash of local relatability.  Props to City Theatre, too, for celebrating the theater community with shots of such companies as GableStage, Actors’ Playhouse and the much-missed Coconut Grove Playhouse.

Overall, “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition” proves the company’s premise — that there is depth and breadth of undiscovered and emerging theatrical talent here, and that the stories BIPOC and Latinx playwrights have to tell are both culturally specific and more broadly resonant.  And these writers know how to make you laugh.

WHAT: “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition” by Joel Castillo, Ariel Cipolla, Chris Anthony Ferrer, Sefanja Richard Galon, Luis Roberto Herrera, Ivan R. López, Phanésia Pharel,  Lolita Stewart-White

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

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through June 25

COST: $50-$75 (student tickets $15 with ID)

INFORMATION:  305-949-6722 or arshtcenter.org

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GableStage’s ‘Native Gardens’ brings a border dispute into the backyard

From left, Diana Garle, Kevin Cruz, Barbara Sloan and David Kwiat play next-door neighbors in Karen Zacarías’ comedy “Native Gardens,” opening in previews Friday, June 9 and continuing through Sunday, July 16 at GableStage in Coral Gables. (Photo courtesy of Magnus Stark)

With conflict at the center of so many headlines, it’s easy to forget that coexistence among people with differences is possible. Not simple, but possible. And, in the case of “Native Gardens” by Karen Zacarías, the road to compromise can be uproariously funny.

Closing out the current season at GableStage, the four-character play about a burgeoning dispute between neighbors has been performed throughout the United States since its world premiere in 2016. During the 2018-2019 season, “Native Gardens” was among the top 10 plays produced by America’s regional theaters.  GableStage’s production in its cozy space at Coral Gables’ Biltmore Hotel previews Friday, June 9 and opens Saturday, June 10 through Sunday, July 16.

“When I read the play, I thought, ‘Oh, this is fun.  It’s kind of a creative vacation,” says Victoria Collado, the show’s director. “The conflicts are funny.”

Collado adds that GableStage’s production “will lean into how ridiculous an argument can be.”

When a younger Latinx couple buys the townhouse next door to one owned by an older white couple, a relationship that begins with civility and friendly gestures frays for multiple reasons, including a property line dispute.

The Mexican-born Zacarías, the first playwright-in-residence at Washington D.C.’s venerable Arena Stage, lives in the nation’s capital and set “Native Gardens” in one of the city’s historic neighborhoods.

In his poem “Mending Wall,’ Robert Frost memorably wrote: “Good fences make good neighbors.”  That’s not always the case, as “Native Gardens” illustrates.

In her character descriptions, Zacarías describes all four as smart and likable – in other words, no one is a villain with malicious intent.  But differences and biases lead to escalating conflict.

Bari Newport, wrapping up her second season as GableStage’s producing artistic director, says, “Karen has done a fabulous job of very clearly drawing parallels between a border dispute involving two suburban lawns and all kinds of border disputes . . .The play is topical, polarizing, hysterically funny, all within a fabulous story.”

In the play, Tania Del Valle (Diana Garle), a New Mexico-born Ph.D. candidate who is eight months pregnant, is a passionate gardener dedicated to creating a garden built around native plants and natural ways of cultivating them.  Her husband Pablo (Kevin Cruz), who comes from a wealthy Chilean family, is establishing himself as an attorney and trying to impress his colleagues.

Virginia Butley (Barbara Sloan), an engineer working for a defense contractor, lives next door with her husband Frank (David Kwiat), who works for an unspecified federal agency and is devoted to cultivating his formal English-style garden, pesticides and all. After Frank’s much-anticipated neighborhood horticultural competition and Pablo’s backyard barbecue for his firm are scheduled for the same weekend, simmering conflict boils over.

Kwiat and Sloan, a couple offstage as well as on, have each been in numerous GableStage productions.  This is Kwiat’s first time back at the company since the passing of longtime producing artistic director Joseph Adler during the pandemic. Sloan notes that this is her third time playing memorable women named Virginia in a GableStage show – she was Ginnie in Joshua Harmon’s “Admissions” in 2018, Virginia in Claudia Rankine’s “The White Card” in 2022 and is Virginia again in “Native Gardens.”

Discussing Zacarías’s play, the Carbonell Award-winning Kwiat sounds much like the teacher he was for so many years before retiring from the New World School of the Arts.

“I made a list of subjects she includes in the play,” he says, zeroing in on numerous issues or topics.

Kwiat says they include territorial rights, organic pest control vs. pesticides, biodiversity, a glass ceiling for women, inequity in the workplace, border walls, xenophobia, Islamophobia, politicizing issues, Brexit, ageism, racism, classicism, sexism, white privilege, homophobia, victimhood and the American Dream.

“(The playwright) uses alliteration in a really subtle way. She really crafts everything carefully. When you go over a script as much as actors do, you notice those things,” says Kwiat.

Sloan agrees that Zacarías is a distinctive playwright.

“Karen’s style is fabulous. I like the way she constructs sentences, though they can be difficult to remember,” says Sloan, who talks about the play and runs lines with Kwiat on their commutes to and from GableStage. “I think she’s funny.”

Garle, whose career in television and film is growing ever hotter, hasn’t been onstage in awhile but said yes to “Native Gardens” when she was cast a year ago.  The daughter of a hard-working single mother, the now-bicoastal Miami actor has been performing since she was five and doing commercials since she was eight (that’s Garle playing the cashier with dimples in the latest Pollo Tropical commercial).

In the GableStage play, she’ll be wearing a weighted baby bump under her costumes. Though she saw her cousin born when she was 18 (“it was traumatic,” she admits), she hadn’t given much thought to having a family until recently – maybe because she’ll turn 30 during the run of “Native Gardens.”

She and Sloan have been friends since working together at Miami Theater Center in Miami Shores and in City Theatre’s cruise venture, Shorts on Ships. She’ll share the stage for the first time with Kwiat and Cruz, who graduated from New World in May 2022.  “Native Gardens,” Garle says, is “very much an ensemble piece” incorporating serious issues into a wild comedy that surges toward the style of a telenovela near its end.

“Vicky (Collado) has an eye for the outrageous and the farcical . . .We have these very grounded characters dealing with outlandish scenarios.  I haven’t had this much fun in a room in a long time,” she says.  “This is a play about community, neighbors, who we live with and how we can coexist. It’s for everyone, to build discussion.”

Garle sees a little of her past self in her costar Cruz as she thinks back to making her own GableStage debut in Stephen Karam’s “The Humans” in 2017.

“I was wide-eyed. It was a real milestone. Kevin is a sponge.  He has such eagerness. He’s so good, so talented,” she says.

As it happens, “The Humans” was a milestone for Cruz as well. The aspiring actor, who lived in Puerto Rico until he was 13, saw the GableStage production during his freshman year at New World, where his co-star Kwiat was his teacher, and it left him awestruck.

“I thought, ‘This is what theater can do. It can bring us home,’ ” he says.

He began a ritual after that performance, one he continues to this day.

“After the cast left, I would stand in the theater staring at the stage,” he says.  I would touch the floor and the walls. And I’d think, ‘One day. One day.’ ”

This production marks the second time Collado has directed a GableStage show. Last summer, she staged the Ruben Rabasa solo show “Rubenology,” a co-production of GableStage and the Abre Camino Collective, which she co-founded with playwright Vanessa Garcia.

Her cast, she says, “makes me feel like I won the lottery.”  And she loves working with Newport.

“Bari is one of my favorite artistic directors to collaborate with. She gives space, but she’s a good sounding board (who sometimes) proposes things,” says Collado.

Newport says of Collado, “Vicki is attracted to color, to bold choices. She likes to laugh. She’s a problem solver.  ‘Native Gardens’ begs for someone with a huge imagination.”

Next season

GableStage recently announced its 25th anniversary season, which Newport describes as the end of “a long and winding road” that involves “years of working relationships.”

The 2023-2024 season begins Sept. 29-Oct. 22 with the solo show “How I Learned What I Learned,” written by Pulitzer Prize winner August Wilson and Todd Kreidler. Miamian Robert Strain stars as the playwright whose Pittsburgh Cycle focused on Black life in each decade of the 20^th century.  MacArthur “genius” grant winner Larissa FastHorse’s “The Thanksgiving Play,” a poignant comedy that comes at a beloved American tradition from a native American point of view, follows Nov. 17-Dec. 10.

Playwright Jon Marans will direct his “Old Wicked Songs,” about a young Jewish pianist and his antisemitic professor in 1986 Vienna, with a run set for Jan. 12-Feb. 4, 2024.  Newport will direct Ben Power’s adaptation of Stefano Massini’s “The Lehman Trilogy,” an epic play about the three German siblings whose namesake Lehman Brothers spectacularly collapsed in 2008; it runs March 15-April 14, 2024.

The new season wraps up May 17-June 24, 2004, with Miami native Alexis Scheer’s “Laughs in Spanish,” a comedy set in a Wynwood gallery during Art Basel.

WHAT: “Native Gardens” by Karen Zacarías

WHERE: GableStage in the Biltmore Hotel, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables

WHEN: Preview 8 p.m. June 9, opening 8 p.m. June 10; regular performances 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesday, 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (additional matinees July 7 and July 15), through July 16 (streaming version available during regular performances June 16-July 16)

COST: $40-$70 (streaming ticket $27)

INFORMATION:  305-445-1119 or gablestage.org.

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

‘Summer Shorts’ is back with diverse ‘Homegrown’ plays from the 305

Brette-Raia Curah, Lauren Cristina Lopez and Chabely Ponce are going for a social media makeover in Ariel Cipolla’s “The Vultures,” one of the plays featured in City Theatre’s  “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition.” (Photo courtesy of  Morgan Sophia Photography)

Since 1996, when City Theatre founders Susan Westfall, Stephanie Heller and Elena Wohl dreamed up an event to celebrate the art of the short play, the annual Summer Shorts festival has been a much-anticipated part of the South Florida theater season.

The Miami company’s programming has broadened over the years to include a full-length play, myriad readings at different locations, a middle school tour, a national playwrights’ conference and a host of developmental programs. After two dark years during the pandemic and its aftermath, City Theatre bounced back with its postponed 25th anniversary festival last June.

This year, the festival is returning with yet another evolutionary twist:  The world premiere plays that make up the festival have all been written by emerging BIPOC  Miami playwrights mentored by Vanessa Garcia, whose play “#Graced” had its Zoetic Stage world premiere at the Arsht in  May.

Previews for “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition” are Thursday, June 8 with the opening date Friday, June 9 and running through Sunday, June 25 in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami’s Arsht Center.  Eight new plays performed by an eight-actor company are in the lineup, with four directors at the helm and City Theatre artistic director Margaret M. Ledford overseeing it all.

City Theatre has long given opportunities to diverse playwrights and actors, aiming to help create a sustainable arts ecosystem that will keep Miami artists living and working here. The difference this year is that the playwright cohort, the actors, the directors and much of the behind-the-scenes talent are BIPOC artists.

“Philosophically and ethically, South Florida is so rich in many different cultures. But what so often floats to the surface at major theaters are white voices and mainstream voices,” says Ledford. “We have to ask, ‘How do we represent Miami?’  This festival isn’t about the ‘tourist’ Miami.”

Although past festivals have featured work by a lengthy roster of well-known playwrights – including Paul Rudnick, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Dominique Morisseau, Michael McKeever, France-Luce Benson, Christopher Durang, David Ives and many more – Ledford says Summer Shorts aficionados will experience the kind of festival they’ve come to know and love.

“Nobody knows the plays they’ll be seeing, going in. This is not less than. We’re exalting and amplifying what we have in our own backyard . . . I would hope that there’s a pride that this is coming from the 305,” she says.

Ledford says theater is, and should be, a social leader.

“We have a lot of different theatrical tastes in Miami, but it’s important to remind people that a shared theatrical experience is not like anything else, particularly in a state that’s making it harder to speak out . . . We have to start the hard conversations.”

Homegrown master playwright Garcia credits City co-founder Westfall, who left her day-to-day leadership role in November and now serves on the company’s board, with the vision of finding “ . . .BIPOC writers, putting their work onstage here and pushing it out into the world.”

During the 18-month program, Garcia is working with the eight playwrights on their short plays, full-length plays and a collectively written piece to be titled “The Unbound.”  She has also brought in a variety of theater professionals to talk to the participants about different aspects of achieving success as a playwright.

“City has always given voice to people who needed it in a particular moment.  It has brought the voices of women to the forefront; same thing with BIPOC and Latinx writers,” says Garcia, who adds that this year’s “Summer Shorts” features a collection of what she dubs “calling card” plays. “This cohort is going places.”

The eight playwrights of “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition” are diverse in terms of age, experience and background.

Lolita Stewart-White is an African American poet and filmmaker who is adding playwright to her skill set with “Summer Shorts.” Ariel Cipolla, a Mexican-Argentine playwright and dramaturg who recently graduated from Florida International University, was part of City Theatre’s Next Gen Young Playwrights program in 2017.

Chris Anthony Ferrer, who played Lewis in Garcia’s “#Graced,” is a New World School of the Arts alum who made his professional playwriting debut with “Swindlers” at the Aurora Theatre in Lawrenceville, Ga.  That piece was directed by another “Homegrown” playwright, Ivan R. López, a Cuban American actor-playwright-director from Miami who is an FIU faculty member.

Phanésia Pharel, whose bio notes that she grew up on a dragon fruit farm in Miami, is a Haitian American Barnard College grad living in San Diego where she’s a full-time graduate student; she has also had numerous fellowships, commissions and residencies.  Sefanja Richard Galon, who was born in Miami and grew up in Suriname, is an actor-director-playwright who graduated from New World School of the Arts and recently made his professional directing debut with the Main Street Players’ production of Lynn Nottage’s “Sweat.”

Luis Roberto Herrera, a Columbian American playwright and actor who graduated from the University of Florida and The New School and who teaches at New World, is a prolific playwright who performed his solo show “As I Eat the World” at New York’s Frigid Fringe Festival in February.  Joel Castillo, a Cuban American University of Miami graduate, has been writing plays since high school and now writes mainly for his students at the arts magnet Coral Reef Senior High School.

As they get ready for the more intense focus that “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition” will inevitably bring to their work, the writers are juggling fears, excitement, anticipation – the gamut of feelings that any playwright has on the way to an opening.

“I have not written this much in my life. I like to write papers, essays, presentations for school. I like to write long paragraphs. But I realized that’s not how people talk,” says Galon.  “I’ve had to switch up my writing style.  It’s terrifying, but you have to find it . . . I’ve rewritten my ending four times. And every time it got better.”

Herrera, who studied playwriting with Carbonell Award winner McKeever at New World, says that writing a short play for the festival is “like going home.  I’m used to writing plays that are 50 to 120 pages.  Now I’ve written 12 pages. It was a relief that I didn’t have to worry about anything being complicated.”

Pharel, who like Cipolla was part of City’s Next Gen program in high school, says she was inspired to become a playwright when she watched Benson’s “Risen from the Dough” at an earlier “Summer Shorts” festival.

“That was the first time I witnessed the Haitian community of Miami be honored. It was specific, true and made me really happy.  I dreamed of being a ‘Summer Shorts’ playwright because it’s a big deal,” exclaims Pharel.  “So many great writers have passed through this festival. . . It means the world and makes me feel like I need to raise the bar.”

After living in New York and now California, Pharel is beginning to see career possibilities in her hometown.

“This is happening in large part because of Margaret Ledford and (executive director) Gladys Ramirez, (who) are unrelenting in advocating for BIPOC voices and making sure City Theatre Miami reflects Miami,” she says. “I partially left Miami because all the writers I knew from Miami (felt they) had to leave.  This festival proves you don’t.”

Ferrer believes the possibilities for Miami’s BIPOC playwrights are getting better – but he feels the need for further change.

“The community is reflecting a lot more diverse work. This is really more about professional clout,” says Ferrer. “When I graduated from college, theaters would say their subscribers wanted to see ‘Oklahoma!’ for the fifteenth time.”

Herrera has felt the bias toward the traditional and the safe in programming too.

“Plays that get chosen are by white playwrights or playwrights who have a previous relationship with a company.  South Florida doesn’t feel like a place for new playwrights. I came back (after grad school) because I wanted to be part of the change,” he says.

Herrera points to what’s happening in other cities, particularly New York.

“It’s so sad and frustrating.  Off-Broadway, you have all these stories by BIPOC and Latinx writers getting rave reviews.  ‘Fat Ham’ (by James Ijames) is a queer, black adaptation of ‘Hamlet’ that won the (2022) Pulitzer Prize. The lack of opportunities is what makes people in this area leave.”

Expanding audiences by telling more inclusive stories will pay off down the line, the playwrights believe. Cipolla thinks that, while audiences that turn out for theater don’t often reflect Miami’s broad diversity, Homegrown will demonstrate what theater can be.

For “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition,” the acting company and the festival’s four directors are as diverse as the playwrights’ cohort.

Playing multiple roles are Toddra Brunson, Brette-Raia Curah, Samuel Krogh, Lauren Cristina López, Evelyn Perez, Chabely Ponce, Raul Ramírez and Roderick Randle. The performers were found both through auditions and through a conscious effort by Ledford, Garcia and Ramírez to seek out the region’s BIPOC talent.

“We spent a lot of time making sure we saw a lot of theater, and not just at the major companies,” says Ledford. “These playwrights are writing for younger voices, so we saw plays at FIU and went to New World’s showcase. We wanted to find emerging actors too.”

As for the multifaceted directors – they are teachers, actors, filmmakers, writers – each is staging two plays.

Alex Alvarez, a Cuban American artist who has acted in five editions of Summer Shorts and Winter Shorts, is directing López’s “I Found This on the Web” (a comedy about dating in a world permeated by AI) and Stewart-White’s “7” (a play about a jittery bride who might or might not recommit to her husband of seven years).

Joshua Jean-Baptiste, a Haitian American filmmaker and co-creator of the digital series “Grown,” is staging Ferrer’s “2201:  Xibalba” (a wild sci-fi comedy involving a space cadet and a wormhole) and Galon’s “Banana Bread” (a dramedy about a friendship torn asunder by corporate maneuverings at a banana bread shop).

Maha McCain, an actor-director who teaches at the University of Miami, is directing Pharel’s “And Other Dreams We Had” (a young couple is on the cusp of a dream or nightmare) and Herrera’s “Plastic Flowers” (about estranged friends arguing as they visit a comatose pal in the hospital).

Melissa Almaguer, a Cuban American actor-director who teaches at Felix Varela Senior High School and who most recently starred as Catherine in Garcia’s “#Graced,” is staging Castillo’s “Ballóo(n)” (in Havana, a honeymooning Miami couple encounters a balloon seller) and Cipolla’s “The Vultures” (a trio of teens is set on doing a social media rebrand before starting high school).

In working on “Homegrown,” Alvarez has felt City Theatre’s intention becoming reality.

“It doesn’t happen that often that your values align with the story you’re telling. It’s great to give new voices a chance, to uplift those who are just starting,” he says.

Jean-Baptiste believes that change needs to start with the people leading companies, and not just artistic directors.

“Other companies should take a page from what City Theatre does, from M Ensemble and Miami New Drama,” he says. “Real conversations need to start at the top and trickle down. Do you have a board that reflects a diversity of thought? Miami is hella diverse.”

Almaguer adds, “I know what it’s like to feel that a lot of stories I see onstage are not my stories….There is so much talent here, so many stories that deserve to be told. For me as an artist, that’s the most exciting thing.”

For herself and anyone else who loves theater, McCain advocates broadening perspectives and taking chances.

“We’re in a time now when we can’t have fear about pushing back, especially in this state, where it can be terrifying to be an artist and a teacher,” she says.  “I need to be taken out of my comfort zone. I can learn things that are different from me. I don’t want everything to sound and feel the same.”

As the playwrights of “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition” get ready for their cohort’s first milestone, they’re continuing to bond, network and figure out how to build on the opportunity City Theatre has given them.  Stewart-White, for one, is confident they will.

“We’re not waiting for anybody; I think Vanessa Garcia is the model for that.  We’re the new ambassadors of what can be done,” she says. “Everybody is super talented, super energetic.  The door is cracked, and now we’ll come through.”

WHAT: “Summer Shorts: Homegrown Edition” by Joel Castillo, Ariel Cipolla, Chris Anthony Ferrer, Sefanja Richard Galon, Luis Roberto Herrera, Ivan R. López, Phanésia Pharel,  and Lolita Stewart-White

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

WHEN: Preview 7:30 p.m. June 8, opening 7:30 p.m. June 9; regular performances 7:30 p.m. Thursday-Friday, 3 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through June 25

COST: $50-$75 (student tickets $15 with ID)

INFORMATION:  305-949-6722 or arshtcenter.org

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

Review: At Actors’ Playhouse, ‘Proof’ displays its undiminished power

Michael McKenzie as Robert and Jessica Sanford as Catherine have a complicated birthday celebration in “Proof” at Actors’ Playhouse. Photo by Alberto Romeu

David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Proof” has been produced a number of times by South Florida theaters since its Broadway debut in 2000. When the Coconut Grove Playhouse did it in 2002, Auburn himself directed the production.

Two major surprises help power the intricate drama, which is centered around a genius mathematician whose life and career were shattered by mental illness, and the daughter who fears she may have inherited his affliction along with his brilliance. Those shocks are part of the play’s enduring power, so we won’t reveal them here.

Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables has now taken on “Proof” in a strong new production in its upstairs Balcony Theatre. On opening night, you could tell that many theatergoers had never encountered the play before: When those two moments happened, they gasped, underlining the undiminished impact of this Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning drama.

Set on the deck of an old home near the University of Chicago, “Proof” skips back and forth in time as it assembles the pieces of a mysterious puzzle. Catherine (Jessica Sanford) grew up in the house, and though she left for a time to study math at Northwestern, she was pulled back into her role as fulltime caretaker for her delusional father Robert (Michael McKenzie).

Harold “Hal” Dobbs (Daniel Llaca), who had Robert as his doctoral adviser, has come over to comb through the many notebooks in Robert’s office, hoping that he’ll discover something to prove that during a recent nearly year-long period of lucidity, his mentor was doing important work.

Claire (Stephanie White), a successful currency analyst in New York, has paid the bills while Robert has been unable to work, leaving her younger sister to do the heavy lifting with their father 24/7. She has come back to Chicago with a proposal for Catherine: Why not move to Manhattan and start a new life?

Director David Arisco and the cast burrow into the characters’ conflicting motivations and complexities as the actors embody people in crisis.

McKenzie’s cheery Robert is scattered, yes, but lovingly paternal toward Catherine until one chilling scene when he turns frightened and driven as it becomes clear that his disease has come back in force.

As Hal, Llaca represents superstar wannabes who believe that doing the kind of work it takes to become famous has to happen when a mathematician is in his 20s – and at 28, he feels that window closing. He’s genuinely attracted to Catherine, but the possibility of being associated with a colossally important discovery is revealed as his central motivation, and at one point he becomes Catherine’s bellowing inquisitor.

White’s brusque, know-it-all Claire is supposed to be an annoying contrast to her emotionally vulnerable sister, and oh does she succeed. Focused on her mission of persuading Catherine to move, she barely listens to anything her sister has to say. She roams over the deck describing her shiny New York life to the suffering Catherine, and before long, her hidden motivation becomes clear.

“Proof” revolves around Catherine, of course, and the part needs an actor whose quicksilver changes and emotional range draw the audience in, whether things are looking up or turning disastrous. Sanford is more than up to the challenge, delivering one of her finest performances. At 25, her Catherine is stubborn, vulnerable, caring, brilliant and hurting, having sacrificed so many possibilities for her father’s sake.

Because the play is being performed in the more intimate Balcony Theatre – the right space for a four-character play – Gene Seyffer’s set (with set dressing and props by Jodi Dellaventura) is necessarily more compact than it would have been had “Proof” been done on the far larger Mainstage. Though it looks more like a pale-blue cottage than a well-worn place where a University of Chicago faculty member would live, it’s pretty to look at for 2 ½ hours and provides all the levels and doors for the actors’ shifting configurations.

Eric Nelson’s lighting reveals the shift of the seasons and changes in emotions. Sound designer Alex Bonilla links the scenes with minimalist, alluring piano music. And costume designer Ellis Tillman uses clothing to communicate not just attention or indifference to style but, for Robert and Catherine, their shifting mental
states.

Actors’ production of “Proof” is fine if not flawless. One scene in particular, when Robert is sitting on the deck wearing just a T-shirt and pants, writing like a man on fire even though the outside air is frostbite cold, is just not convincingly staged.

The play itself, now almost the age of its protagonist, has so much to say about genius (and, sometimes, its cost), caretaking, sacrifice, support, honesty and more. It contains the riches of the best dramas, its impact undiminished. All you have to do is go to Coral Gables and partake.

WHAT: “Proof” by David Auburn

WHERE: Actors’ Playhouse production at the Miracle Theatre, 280 Miracle Mile, Coral Gables

WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through June 4

COST: $40-$125 (10 percent discount for seniors and $15 student rush tickets at weekday performances)

INFORMATION:  305-444-9293 or www.ActorsPlayhouse.org

ArtburstMiami.com is a nonprofit source of theater, dance, visual arts,
music and performing arts news.

Review: M Ensemble rolls on with compelling, complex ‘Two Trains Running’

Pamela Hankerson is Risa and Chaz Reuben is Sterling in M Ensemble’s production of August Wilson’s “Two Trains Running” at the Sandrell Rivers Theater, Miami, through Sunday, May 28. (Photo courtesy of Christa Ingraham)

“Two Trains Running,” the latest offering from M Ensemble at Miami’s Sandrell Rivers Theater, isn’t just another production of an August Wilson play. It’s an ongoing part of the mission of Florida’s oldest professional black theater company.

Creating thought-provoking art for its audiences for more than half a century now, M Ensemble is still being led by co-founders Shirley Richardson and Patricia E. Williams (the late T.G. Cooper was its third founder).

With several generations of colleagues, the women have presented the work of a wide variety of black playwrights; given opportunities to an uncounted number of actors, designers and behind-the-scenes workers; and artistically nurtured future theatergoers through the company’s programs for children.

Inarguably, among M Ensemble’s most significant programming has been producing all 10 plays in the late August Wilson’s Pittsburgh Cycle (initially called the Century Cycle):  “Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom,” “Jitney,” “Fences,” “Joe Turner’s Come and Gone,” “The Piano Lesson,” “Two Trains Running,” “Seven Guitars,” “King Hedley II,” “Gem of the Ocean” and “Radio Golf.”

Wilson, who grew up in Pittsburgh’s Hill District (where most of these plays are set), is considered one of the country’s greatest playwrights.  “Fences” and “The Piano Lesson” brought him Pulitzer Prizes. The Pittsburgh Cycle, with each play set in a different decade of the 20^th century, brought him fame.  And in creating worlds filled with vivid black characters, his singular blend of humor and tragedy, poetic and vernacular language, African and American traditions and history made his work unforgettable.

M Ensemble first presented “Two Trains Running,” a play set in 1969, in 2004 – nearly 20 years ago. The company’s audiences have grown and changed as older theatergoers have departed and younger ones have taken their place. Its performance location has also changed, from its longtime home in North Miami to Miami-Dade County’s state-of-the-art Sandrell Rivers Theater in Liberty City.

The point:  Plenty of M Ensemble’s audiences and Miami theater fans in general haven’t seen “Two Trains Running” onstage. Now they can and should.

The title refers to the trains running daily between Pittsburgh and Jackson, Mississippi, once home to restaurant owner Memphis Lee (Melvin Huffnagle).  But in the metaphorical sense, Wilson has said, the trains represent life and death – so riding them is universal and nonnegotiable.

The play is set entirely inside Memphis’s Hill District restaurant, a cozy place with a couple of booths covered in black vinyl, a table, a counter, blackboards in lieu of menus. It’s also a place where the illegal numbers racket thrives, so the winning combination goes on the menu board each day too, despite Memphis’s worry about cops showing up. A perpetually broken jukebox sits near the door, the covers of unplayable albums adorning the wall beside it, along with signed black-and-white photos of celebrities who, presumably, have dined at Memphis Lee’s.

Designed by Mitchell Ost (who also did the fine lighting) and built by Geordan Gottlieb,  the eatery – in tones of pale gold, red and green – is inviting if simple.  Too, the costumes by Chasity Hart reveal how well or poorly each character is living, good times and hard times obvious to everyone who sees them.

Though the restaurant is tidy thanks to Risa (Pamela Hankerson), a quiet cook and server who comprises the entire staff, it has seen better days – as have most of the folks who gather there daily to share rumors or gossip, ruminate on life or eat whatever Risa can find to cook in the understocked kitchen.

Politics, protest and the injustices of the turbulent ’60s go on outside the restaurant. But inside is a kind of refuge – which is not to say voices don’t get raised – where Memphis and his few remaining customers can let off steam, philosophize or talk out their problems.

Memphis, for example, is about to unwillingly sell his restaurant to the city as urban renewal sweeps through the neighborhood. He paid $5,500 for it back in the day, and it was once profitable, but the business and its owner have fallen on hard times.  He’s expecting a lowball offer from the bureaucrats, though West (Ray Lockhart), the wealthy owner of the funeral home across the street, says he’ll pay $15,000.  No deal, Memphis rages. He won’t take a penny less than $25,000.

At the opposite end of the Hill District’s socioeconomic scale is Hambone (Keith C. Wade), an impoverished, damaged man who loudly repeats a single sentence: “He gonna give me my ham!”  You can feel tragedy on the horizon as the meaning of a years-long obsession is eventually revealed.

Wolf (Jean Hyppolite) hangs out and uses the restaurant’s pay phone to take bets on the numbers, no matter how many times Memphis yells at him not to do it.  Soon Sterling (Chaz Reuben), newly released from prison, shows up. In short order, he falls for Risa, tangles with Wolf and becomes the subject of speculation by the others:  Which one, Sterling or Wolf, will end up dead and which will end up behind bars?

Holloway (Chat Atkins), newly retired, talks at length about the exploitation of Black people by white ones, the foolishness of plenty of Black folks – well, give him a topic and he’ll run with it. It’s Holloway who first utters the name “Aunt Ester” in an August Wilson play (she’s mentioned in others and then made flesh in Wilson’s “Gem of the Ocean”), and he urges anyone with troubles to seek out the ancient prophet, who professes to be 322 years old.

Staged by André L. Gainey, a longtime M Ensemble company member, the production brings out fine work by each of the actors, veterans and newcomers alike.

Huffnagle gets several lengthy Wilson soliloquies (or arias, perhaps?) and tears into them with a magnetic commitment. He relates a horrifying story about how Memphis was cheated out of his farmland back in Jackson, and he makes the telling of it so vivid that you want to weep.

Both Hyppolite and Reuben bring boundless energy to their portrayals of Wolf and Sterling.  Hyppolite’s Wolf is full of cockiness and hustle.  Reuben’s Sterling is a hugely unrealistic dreamer, a man who bounces from one idea to the next, though he’s undeterred in his pursuit of Risa.  Why Hankerson’s Risa, who has self-harmed by scarring her legs to keep men at bay, eventually softens toward the relentless Sterling is a bit of a mystery.

Lockhart is cool as a cucumber as West, low-key and slightly menacing in his almost all-black outfit (hat and gloves included).  He’s among the wealthiest residents of the Hill District, and before long, Lockhart shows us how the sly West got that way.

Atkins and Wade both appeared in M Ensemble’s earlier production of “Two Trains Running” in different roles.  Old hands and wonderful actors, the two completely inhabit their new characters.  Atkins is a garrulous, funny, sobering storyteller.  Wade, who was incredibly moving as Gabriel (another damaged Wilson character) in the company’s 2016 production of “Fences,” has little dialogue as Hambone.  But his watchful, contained performance becomes its own kind of eloquence.

Watching “Two Trains Running,” which unfolds over nearly three hours, serves as a reminder that the intricate, stubbornly persistent roots of racism run deep. Wilson demonstrates, as he does throughout the Pittsburgh Cycle, that the more things change, the more they stay the same.  His language, his craft, his larger-than-life yet familiar characters make M Ensemble’s  “Two Trains Running” a journey worth taking.

WHAT: “Two Trains Running” by August Wilson

WHERE: M Ensemble production at the Sandrell Rivers Theater, 6103 NW Seventh Ave., Miami

WHEN:  8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through May 28

COST: $36 (student and senior discounts at box office only)

INFORMATION:  305-705-3218 or themensemble.com

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