Josephine Baker silent film will be performed with live music at Coral Gables Cinema

Josephine Baker dancing the Charleston at the Folies-Bergère, Paris, in 1926, a year before “Siren of the Tropics” was released. (Photo by Stanislaus Julian Walery is in the public domain courtesy of Wikimedia)

A silent film starring Josephine Baker gets an original soundtrack treatment at the Coral Gables Cinema.

“Siren of the Tropics” is a French film directed by Mario Nalpas and Henri Étiévant about a West Indian native who nurtures an unrequited love for an engineer who hails from Paris. The legendary dancer and civil rights activist was the first Black woman to star in a major studio production in the 1927 film.

“I think it’s time for people to know her,” says Carlene M. Sawyer,  the executive director of the Dranoff 2 International Piano Foundation, who, along with the Coral Gables Cinema, is presenting a live two piano performance and screening of “Siren of the Tropics” on Wednesday, Sept. 14. “I don’t think many people have seen her perform,” adds Sawyer.

The event begins with an hour-long reception that kicks off at 6 p.m, followed by the film’s screening at 7 p.m. and then a talkback about Baker.

Performing for the event are pianists Angel Perez and Devin Shaw who will play live on two Steinway concert grands, according to Sawyer.

Perez, a Miami Beach native, has previously appeared at the Essentially Ellington Competition, Sankofa Jazz Festival, and the Miami Downtown Jazz Festival. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in music therapy from the University of Miami.

He will be joined by 19-year-old pianist Shaw, who began his classical music training at the Chicago-based Merit School of Music. He went on to continue his training with the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra and the Ravinia Jazz Scholars. He is in the Stamps Scholars program in jazz studies at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music.

During the performance, the two will present original works by jazz composer and Miami native Martin Bejerano and a new jazz score that will include music of Nina Simone, Duke Ellington, and Dizzy Gillespie, among others.

Bejerano, who assisted in the score’s curation, believes that the event is a great way to reach into the past while putting a new spin on a classic performance.

“I thought it would be nice to have some young blood in there, especially since it is such an old movie. I wanted to see what they would come up with,” Bejerano says.

Following the film, the program will delve into Baker’s contributions off screen.

“She’s such a star and a sophisticated performer as well. She wasn’t just an artist, she was an amazing human being,” comments Sawyer.

The talkback will discuss the historical significance of Baker’s cinematic roles as well as the overall portrayal of black artists.

Panelists include Dr. Terri Francis, author of “Josephine Baker’s Cinematic Prism,” Mo Beasley, performance artist, playwright and author, and Gentry George, a professional dancer who is on the faculty of the New World School of the Arts.

Roni Bennett, executive director and co-founder of South Florida People of Color, will lead the discussion. She hopes that the event will encourage everyone to take a second look at how Black people are portrayed in the media.

“During the talkback we will be able to objectively look at, not just films, but all types of media with a critical lens. This will hopefully help to dismantle stereotypes, tropes and implicit biases,” says Bennett.

Beasley points to how Baker actively used her movie roles to transcend restrictions imposed on her due to her race and ultimately used her influence and fame to her advantage.

“Josephine was an activist,” he says. “She left the United States because she wasn’t going to put up with racism anymore. For our children, and for our daughters in particular, it’s important to show them that she used those stereotypes to build a fortune so that she could fund her own movement for change. Whether it was having her rainbow tribe of children or by supporting liberation and the fight for freedom.”

Bejerano said that the film is a great way to see Baker in action and urged viewers to not pass up the chance to see the film.

“Silent films aren’t readily available. Silent films with a Black actress even more so. There are only a handful of films to choose from.”

He said that the opportunity to enjoy original music along with the screening is also an added bonus.

“It’s another step toward creativity,” says Bejerano. “They are going to create music live and one of the things I love about jazz is the improvisation aspect. The fact that we’re playing songs that have a structure and a melody and improvising quite a bit on top of those structures and to see that happening live along with the other visual elements is going to be really cool. And I hope it’s something that people will enjoy.”

Sawyer says that ultimately the night is about entertaining the audience.

“Two grand pianos and Josephine Baker? We’re going to have a blast.”

WHAT: “Siren of the Tropics” Screening with Talk Back Panel Discussion

WHEN: Wednesday, September 14,  6 p.m. Reception, followed by film showing at 7 p.m.

WHERE: Coral Gables Art Cinema,  260 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables.

 COST: $50, limited $5 student tickets available only at the box office.

INFORMATION:  786-385-9689 or dranoff2piano.org

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Grandmother’s past is pivotal in playwright’s ‘A Recollection After the Holocaust’

Inspired by the lives of the playwright’s grandparents, Samuel Rotter Bechar’s Spanish-language play “A Recollection After the Holocaust” plays three shows at the Colony Theatre, Miami Beach, on Saturday, Sept. 10 and Sunday, Sept. 11. (Photo courtesy of 305 PR).

“A Recollection After the Holocaust” suggests that the play’s author recreates something that took place in a Nazi concentration camp, but it’s far from that. Although the story is based on actual events, it is, in fact, a memory play — a love story that ends up being a reflection of how the present informs the past.

“We don’t feel comfortable representing the Holocaust on stage; it seems trivial to us,” says Samuel Rotter Bechar, the author, who co-directs the play with his wife, Carolina Perelman.

Featured in the cast of “Recollection,” which will be performed on Saturday, Sept. 10, and Sunday, Sept. 11, at the Colony Theatre, Miami Beach, are Sara Batuecas, Fernando Bodega, Ksenia Guinea, Ángela López Aguilar and Francisco Martínez Vélez.

The main characters are inspired by the author’s grandparents, Anna Rzechte (Warsaw, 1930), who, at the age of 12, escaped from the Warsaw ghetto, and Zygmunt Rotter (Krakow, 1920), one of the survivors of Schindler’s list.

“We wanted to focus on them after the war, as survivors, particularly the love that unites them,” explains Rotter Bechar, who was born in Caracas and has lived in Madrid since 2017. “And the memory of the war, the memory itself. In the beginning, we witness their first meeting and how each one understands they are survivors and have lost their entire family. We then see how the memory of that meeting evolves in my grandmother’s mind . . .”

As depicted in the play, the couple meet in Paris, where she has fled after the war thanks to a Red Cross program. She was 15 years old, and while studying and working there, she met the man who would be her husband by chance. He was from Colombia, visiting the French capital on a business trip. “My grandfather decided to postpone his return until my grandmother agreed to go with him,” says the author. “Three months later, she accepted him in marriage, and they moved to Colombia together.”

The weight of memories and the need to thoroughly unravel them has much to do with the person who became the love of his grandmother’s life, explains Rotter Bechar.

As the grandson of survivors, the playwright says he has always had an interest in studying and understanding the Holocaust.

“For me, it was a highly personal historical fact because, in a certain way, it was my family’s history. However, unlike so many survivors for whom it was difficult to talk about the subject, my grandparents dedicated themselves in the last decades to tell their stories in schools and universities,” says Rotter Bechar, adding that the pair founded a chair of Holocaust studies in Venezuela.

Determined to maintain that legacy, Rotter Bechar says he wanted to contribute as a writer and playwright to keep the memory of what happened alive. He also wanted to celebrate the love that united his grandparents, mainly how they supported each other to get through their difficulties and get on with life.

He explains that the play came about through a master’s degree in theater thesis that Perelman, who is now his wife, was working on.

Her teacher was the Spanish playwright Juan Antonio Mayorga Ruano, recently awarded the Princess of Asturias Prize for Letters 2022. “He has written plays about the Holocaust, and it seemed like a good opportunity for us to create one with the advice of a playwright with such a long career. So first, it was Carolina’s master’s thesis, then we presented it at the beginning of this year in Madrid. Fortunately, it received excellent reviews, encouraging us to continue investing in and improving it,” explains Rotter Bechar.

 

There were two fundamental reasons to make his grandmother, Anna, the protagonist, reveals the author. First, his grandfather’s story was already widely known thanks to Steven Spielberg’s film “Schindler’s List” (1993), and second, there was an importance that he and Perelman wanted to attach to the perspective of female characters.

After studying in the United States for a dual degree in literature and philosophy, Rotter Bechar moved to Madrid with Perelman. He finished his first novel, and then Perelman encouraged him to write a play, “Claridad,” which she would stage.

“It was during that montage that I realized how much I liked theater. It is a world of great passion, adrenaline, collaboration,” says the Rotter Bechar. A close friend later led him to a similar passion for cinema. As a result, he has written and directed two short films and co-produced two, which are now in the post-production process. But literature has not gone away. This year, he published his novel “Nothing Belongs to Us,” available on Amazon.

“I’m inspired by very different filmmakers and writers,” he says. Due to his fascination, when mentioning influences in the three literary, cinematographic, and theatrical fields, he cites Romanian poet Mircea Cărtărescu, Jorge Luis Borges, and David Lynch. Also, the Argentine filmmaker Lucrecia Martell and American playwrights Samuel Beckett and Richard Foreman, plus filmmakers Andrei Tarkovski, Ingmar Bergman, Stanley Kubrick, Yasujirô Ozu, Akira Kurosawa, Jean-Luc Godard, Agnes Varda, and Werner Herzog.

“Herzog is possibly the one I identify with the most. He has been his producer, and he has carried out all his projects without waiting for someone to open the doors for him,” confesses Rotter Bechar. “I am very interested in psychology and the subconscious, the transformative art that tries to make you reflect on your existence; I have nothing against art that is merely for entertainment. On the contrary, it seems to me that it is necessary and can be extraordinary —but I am more interested in this other thing that sometimes you don’t even know how to describe very well.

WHAT: “A Recollection After the Holocaust.” (Performed only in Spanish without English supertitles)

WHEN: 5 and 8:30 p.m., Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday

WHERE: Colony Theater, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach, FL 33139.

COST: $71.50, $61.50, $51.50, all include $6.50 service charge

INFORMATION:  305-674-1040 Monday through Friday between noon and 5 p.m. or miaminewdrama.org

To read this story in Spanish, click here for ArtburstMiami in Español.

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Review: At Actors’ Playhouse, ‘Now and Then’ explores roads taken and paths ignored

Stephen Trovillion, Kristian Bikic and Mallory Newbrough in Actors’ Playhouse’s “Now and Then” at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables through Sunday, Sept. 11. (Photo courtesy of Alberto Romeu)

A man walks into a bar and – OK, we’d stop right there if we’d vowed to keep this particular review 100 percent spoiler free.

But Sean Grennan’s dramatic comedy (or “dramedy,” as director David Arisco describes it) is neither a joke nor a shaggy dog story.  Even if you guess what’s going on minutes into the new Actors’ Playhouse production of “Now and Then” (and many people will), Grennan’s play keeps you hooked from start to finish.

Something in Grennan’s work speaks to Arisco, the company’s artistic director for nearly all of the 35 years Actors’ Playhouse has been in business. “Now and Then,” which premiered in 2018, is the fifth Grennan show Actors’ has presented (“Married Alive!,” “Another Night Before Christmas,” “Making God Laugh” and “The Tin Woman” were the others).  This one, with its carefully layered-in “surprises,” is as thought-provoking as it is entertaining.

Trying to share much of the story while avoiding spoilers is pretty much futile, so we’ll stick to the setup.

The aforementioned Man (Stephen Trovillion) walks into Mulligan’s Irish bar in Chicago in 1981.  Bartender Jamie (Kristian Bikic) is starting his nightly closing ritual as he waits for his girlfriend Abby (Mallory Newbrough), a waitress at the IHOP down the block.  The Man (that’s how he’s identified in the program) is in a hurry, desperate for a drink and determined, so Jamie pours a Scotch and soda with a twist – at the going rate of $1.25.

Once Abby arrives, the Man makes the couple a strange, escalating offer which ends this way:  If they’ll sit with him for one hour, talking and drinking, he’ll pay them $1,000 – each.

They bite. Jamie has been saving to take a break from the bar so he can focus on becoming a great jazz pianist. Abby wants to go back to college to study literature and writing. The Man’s money will speed up the process for both, so Jamie fixes a Tanqueray and tonic for Abby and a Rusty Nail for himself, then the Man launches into his storytelling, his questions and his agenda, sometimes with the help of a few rounds of Truth or Dare.  The very late arrival of a character called Woman (Laura Turnbull) adds more layers of complexity and emotion.

As the younger couple looks ahead to their future and the older one contemplates the past, Grennan explores the myriad decisions, the small ones and the big ones, that forge the course of a life.  Hopes, regrets, dreams, loss and love in its many manifestations all come into play, as well as that big, inevitable question: What if I choose this path instead of that one?

Arisco and his tight company of sublimely talented actors create moment after absorbing moment, including masterfully performed monologues.

Bikic’s Jamie knows what he wants but isn’t sure yet about what he doesn’t.  Newbrough’s Abby seeks a way forward toward a bigger picture. Turnbull, intense and commanding, reminds us why she’s considered one of the region’s finest actors.  The versatile Trovillion, back in South Florida after 16 seasons with City Theatre’s Summer Shorts festival and retiring from his subsequent university teaching job in Wisconsin, is everything in “Now and Then” – funny, maddening, heartbreaking.

With the play performed in the smaller Balcony Theatre upstairs at the Miracle Theatre, set designer Gene Seyffer and set dresser/properties designer Jodi Dellaventura give the cast a compact though proper Irish bar, its green-hued interior just waiting for the rush of  St. Patrick’s Day revelers, though here’s hoping Jamie can get the jukebox fixed before then.

Eric Nelson has designed lighting that fits the play’s shifting moods – mysterious, unforgiving, dreamy.  Alex Bonilla’s sound includes a snippet of Frank Sinatra crooning George and Ira Gershwin’s “I’ve Got a Crush on You,” Jamie and the Man playing the piano, and the noise of the era’s hot Asteroids arcade game.  Costume designer Ellis Tillman’s on-point work reflects the times, the characters’ taste (Jamie is one snappy dresser) and their financial status.

“Now and Then” isn’t a long play – under two hours, including an intermission – nor is it likely to change the way you look at life.  You’ll feel it, though, especially in its final moments – a transporting stage picture involving all four characters, with Trovillion crooning the same tune as Ol’ Blue Eyes.

WHAT: “Now and Then” by Sean Grennan

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

WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through Sept. 11

COST: $40 to $90 (seniors 65 and over get 10 percent off weekdays only; students 25 and under with valid student ID pay $15 for a rush ticket available 15 minutes before a weekday performance. Special Lunch Break deal offers half-price tickets between noon and 2 p.m. to same-day weeknight performances; Tix @ 6 offers half-price tickets weeknights between 6 and 6:30 p.m., with both requiring an in-person purchase at the box office, subject to availability)

INFORMATION: 305-444-9293 or actorsplayhouse.org

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Review: ‘Fade’ at GableStage follows unusual friendship multi-layered in culture, bias, and gender

Alexandra Acosta is Lucia and Alex Alvarez is Abel in Tanya Saracho’s “Fade” at GableStage in Coral Gables through Sept. 18. (Photo courtesy of Magnus Stark)

In many a fairy tale or rom-com, happily-ever-after endings are the norm.  The endings in art that surprises tend to be messier, less predictable, unsettling. The latter is true of Tanya Saracho’s “Fade,” an insightful dramatic comedy at GableStage.

Saracho’s play, staged with a fluid cinematic beauty by D-Projects founder Teo Castellanos, explores classism within a subset of the Latinx community.  Its two characters are Mexican-American, somewhat alike in the particular sound of their Spanish, in their colloquialisms and slang, and in certain cultural references.

And yet, in addition to gender, their lives thus far make them different.

Lucia (Alexandra Acosta), a Mexican-born novelist who moved from Chicago to Los Angeles to make money as a television writer, bristles when she’s called a fresa, suggesting she once was a preppy with money and a maid. She was.

Abel (Alex Alvarez) is a janitor born in the El Sereno neighborhood of east Los Angeles.  He’s a product of his family’s Mexican culture, a man who served his country and his community before an awful, life-changing moment.  He gets the job done and doesn’t say much. Until he does.

In the succession of scenes – some fleeting or nearly silent except for the music flowing into Abel’s earbuds, others parsing bias and microaggressions and more – Lucia and Abel slowly develop an after-hours work friendship.

He’s reluctant at first, willing to banter with Lucia about bad TV and the cultural deafness of her all-white-male writer’s room but tight-lipped about his personal life.  Since her show is set in L.A. with a Latina leading lady and, late addition, a Latino love interest, Lucia soon realizes she can pick Abel’s savvy brain for ideas and authenticity.

That’s where the real trouble begins.

For nearly all of the play’s 95-minute running time, “Fade” is almost effervescent, thanks to Saracho’s gift for comic observations, Castellanos’s smooth and illuminating direction, and the wonderfully detailed work of two truly fine actors.

Like their characters, Acosta and Alvarez are stylistically different.

Acosta makes Lucia an over-the-top drama queen.  She’s always bursting into her office on the verge of tears, yelling, at her wit’s end about how to circumvent or beat her writers’ room nemesis.  Acosta believably takes the audience on Lucia’s journey from frightened neophyte to a professional willing to do anything to claim her power.

As Abel, Alvarez is exquisitely in control.  He’s funny, observant, down-to-earth, finally heartbreaking.  Simply watching Alvarez react to the emotional roller coaster that is Lucia is a mini master class.  Onstage, he’s not pretending to be Abel – he is Abel.

Set and lighting designer Frank J. Oliva has crafted a utilitarian beginning writer’s office for Lucia, one that proclaims it’s a showbiz workplace via classic movie posters in the hallway outside her domain, with set dressing and properties design by Jameelah Bailey.

Costume designer Camilla Haith has created a variety of quick-change looks for Lucia, who seems to like to make herself look taller with island-vibe platforms or a pair of sparkly hot pink high-heeled sandals; Abel, always in uniform, is stuck in blue coveralls.  Seth “Brimstone” Schere is the sound designer, providing a window into Abel’s varied musical world.

As it draws to a close, “Fade” – in film and television, the action of making a scene fade in or fade out – becomes something closer to the South Central L.A. slang meaning of the word: to murder.  In this case, it’s not a person who dies but a friendship.  An egregious violation of trust is the weapon, as truth is manipulated into a stereotype.  It happens, but it’s painful to watch.

Still, though the effervescence dims, “Fade” provides a thought-provoking, impressively realized exploration of the ways classism and stereotyping pollute our lives.

WHAT: “Fade” by Tanya Saracho

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

WHEN:  2 and 7 p.m. Wednesday, 7 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (additional matinee 2 p.m. Aug. 27), through Sept. 18

COST:  $45-$75 (includes fees)

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

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Latinx playwright, cast, director of GableStage’s ‘Fade’ recognize themselves in story

Alex Alvarez, Teo Castellanos and Alexandra Acosta rehearse a scene from Tanya Saracho’s “Fade” opening on Saturday, Aug. 20 at GableStage in Coral Gables. (Photo courtesy of Magnus Stark),

Tanya Saracho’s “Fade” is a smart, rueful workplace play that draws from the playwright’s imagination as well as her experiences when she was making the move from theater to television.

That’s what creative people do. They live and observe, sometimes folding that material into their work in ways that can make others unhappy.  Which happens in “Fade,” opening on Saturday, Aug. 20 at GableStage.

As Bari Newport, GableStage’s artistic director, observes, “Life is complicated, and so is art.”

When Newport became the company’s leader following the death of producing artistic director Joseph Adler, as she was thinking about her 2021-2022 season, she considered some plays GableStage had already obtained the rights to present. “Fade” was one of those.

She found Saracho’s voice “fast-paced and fresh,” she says, a good fit for the theater’s audience. She also felt the way the playwright explores classism within a particular community (in this case, both characters are Mexican-American) might encourage more theater lovers from Miami-Dade County’s Latinx majority to discover GableStage.

To stage “Fade,” Newport chose Teo Castellanos, the celebrated playwright-actor-director and founder of Miami’s dance-theater group D-Projects. (A 2021 Doris Duke Artist Fellow, Castellanos and choreographers Michelle Grant-Murray and Augusto Soledad will debut their newest work “F/Punk Junkies” at the Miami Light Project’s Light Box Oct. 3-8.)

Performing “Fade” are Alexandra Acosta, a Colombian-born Miami-raised actor now based in New York, and Carbonell Award winner Alex Alvarez, a Cuban-American actor from Miami whose past GableStage appearances include “The Motherf**ker with the Hat” and “Stalking the Bogeyman.”

Acosta plays Lucia, a Mexican-born novelist and novice television writer who is the only Latina in her show’s writers’ room, a “diversity hire” as she’s openly told.  Alvarez is Abel, a janitor and Los Angeles native entrenched in his family’s Mexican culture.  After an awkward start – Lucia switches to rapid-fire Spanish, not realizing that Abel barely speaks the language – the two become friends and empathetic listeners. For awhile.

Saracho, who was born in Mexico and raised in Texas, built her theater career in Chicago as an artistic director, playwright, actor, and activist.

She co-founded Teatro Luna and The Alliance of Latinx Theater Artists of Chicago, had her work produced at a number of Chicago theaters (Steppenwolf Theatre Company commissioned her adaptation of Sandra Cisneros’s “The House on Mango Street”), and acted in Luis Alfaro’s “Electricidad” at the Goodman Theatre, which co-produced “El Nogalar” (Saracho’s set-in-Mexico adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard”).  Her growing reputation led to commissions from a number of major regional theaters.

It was while she was supposed to be working on one of those, a musical biography of Mexican singer-actress-dancer Lupe Vélez for the Denver Center Theatre Company, that the seeds of “Fade” were planted.

Though her day job then was as a writer on Lifetime’s “Devious Maids” – for a time, she was the only Latina writer on a series about four Latina maids – in 2014 she participated in a playwrights’ workshop at the Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles.  She struggled to produce pages to share with the other writers.  Instead, she would complain about her TV job, until another group member said, “Why don’t you write about that?”

It took time and a couple of iterations, but that’s how “Fade” came to be.

“It started like therapy, but it became bigger once I’d started writing.  It’s been great to step back and see it finished. It became its own thing,” Saracho says by phone from Los Angeles.

“Abel is based on three janitors who would start working at 6 p.m. I’d stay until 11 p.m., trying to learn Final Draft (a screenwriting program). When the janitors went on strike, I joined the picket line.  In Chicago, I did theater for marginalized people; at Teatro Luna, we were very political.  But in Los Angeles, the showrunner said, ‘No, don’t do that.’”

Becoming the show’s stated diversity hire while not knowing exactly how writing for television works was lonely and frustrating. Once, she says, “I was called ‘Spic and Span’ in the writers’ room.”

Nonetheless, Saracho persisted and became a master of her new craft, writing for “How To Get Away With Murder,” “Looking” and other shows. She created and served as producer-writer-showrunner on three seasons of the LGBTQ+ Latinx “Vida” on STARZ, leading a largely female, queer, Latinx writers’ room.  For Anonymous Content, she has turned her 2014 play “Mala Hierba” into a movie that she’ll direct.

In their own successful arts careers, Castellanos, Alvarez and Acosta have encountered the issues threaded through “Fade.”

Castellanos last worked at GableStage as an actor in the 2011 production of “The Brothers Size” by Tarell Alvin McCraney, the “Moonlight” Oscar winner, playwright and head of the Yale School of Drama’s Playwriting Program.  When McCraney was growing up in Miami, Castellanos – whom McCraney calls his “father in theater” – was his mentor.

“Classism and colorism is very, very alive in the Latinx culture.  Tanya captures it in a way that’s not holding the individual responsible. These characters begin to unravel and unlearn,” says Castellanos, who was drawn to the play because of the complexities of its characters and its sociopolitical issues.  “Each Latinx culture has its own unique traits and practices – there are vast differences in them.”

Making her GableStage debut, Acosta is elated to be working at home.  In 2018 she read “Fade,” which was produced in New York in 2016, and fell in love with the script.

“Tanya captures the class divide so brilliantly.  Lucia’s experience is similar to mine:  the loneliness you feel when you’re the only Latina in the room, and the connection you feel when you meet another one,” she says.

During the pandemic, theaters nationally did a deep dive into their practices, including limited opportunities for Latinx and BIPOC artists.  Change seems to be happening, with more plays by artists of color being produced and more work for actors, designers, and technicians. But how real and lasting are those changes?

“I think there’s been a ton of work available for Latinx actors at a smaller scale. I’ve been a part of many new play readings that feature Latinx characters, but they hardly ever become full productions,” says Acosta.  “I think there has been a slight shift, and we’re heading in the right direction, but we definitely need fresh new stories to be told and new voices to be heard.”

Castellanos agrees.

“Awareness is the first step. So many of us are embracing it. Some are fighting hard against it,” he says. “It took us 400 years to get here. I don’t think it will go away overnight. We must stay vigilant.”

Alvarez performs at theaters throughout South Florida, most often in non-Latino roles. He moved to Los Angeles from 2001 to 2009, hoping to find work in movies or television, but what he encountered was stereotyping and frustration.

“In L.A., you have a sense of what people want from you from the moment you enter a room,” he says. “They’d say, ‘Why don’t you do this with an accent?’ Everybody assumed I was Mexican. For them, there was no other kind of latinidad.”

Working with Castellanos for the first time, he appreciates the director’s approach to “Fade.”

“He emphasizes the importance of the story, of decolonizing the work. He’s really conscious of not treating this as if it’s just a well-made play. He’s aware of the themes and perspective – this is not a Eurocentric ‘great American play,’” says Alvarez, who is also a playwright and teacher.

The actor is also intrigued by the way Saracho explores class in “Fade” and impressed by her craft.

“Class is something we don’t talk about as much as ethnicity.  We can get very myopic regarding our own experiences,” he says. “The play is clever, funny, light and not so light, accessible. Once you start to inhabit the character, you realize this is really smart. There’s such rich nuance.”

As for Saracho, her continuing success in Hollywood has meant she’s essentially stopped writing for theater.  Outspoken as ever, she has plenty to say about what Latinas encounter in both worlds.

“In the 16 years I did theater, nothing moved.  The talk was great. I would get Latina-related commissions, which is how I got into those (major regional theater) spaces. It was tokenism,” says Saracho, who turned to acting and voiceover work to help pay her rent when she was writing plays.  “The American theater does not take care of its playwrights. They have to teach or come to television.  The creative voice is not valued in that way.  I was mad at the system, the marginalization, not the art form.”

While she loves writing in an extended form for television and film, Saracho remains dubious about Hollywood’s embrace of Latinx artists.

“There was a similar reckoning in the summer of 2020 towards radical inclusion.  Now it’s 2022, and James Franco is playing Fidel Castro (in the upcoming movie ‘Alina of Cuba’),” she says.  “Change didn’t happen.  I think it’s bleak. Hollywood is showing us what they think of us.  Erasure is almost worse than stereotyping.”

WHAT: “Fade” by Tanya Saracho

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

WHEN:  Previews 8 p.m. Friday, Aug. 19, opens 8 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 20; regular performances 2 and 7 p.m. Wednesday, 7 p.m. Thursday, 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday (additional matinee 2 p.m. Aug. 27), through Sunday, Sept. 18

COST:  $45-$75 (includes fees)

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.

Review: Area Stage Company’s transformative ‘Beauty and the Beast’ makes contemporary classic original

Frank Montoto as Gaston and understudy Michelle Gordon as Belle in Area Stage Company’s “Beauty and the Beast” with the audience seated at tables to watch the action. The production is in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami’s Arsht Center through Aug. 28. (Photo courtesy of Giancarlo Rodaz)

Area Stage Company’s new immersive production of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” is, as the French would say, magnifique.

Presented in a transformed Carnival Studio Theater at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, the show is a two-year labor of love and creativity on the part of Giancarlo Rodaz, Area Stage’s associate artistic director.  Working with numerous collaborators, the young director has achieved a larger-scale success on the order of his immensely popular immersive version of “Annie,” which the company presented in June of 2021, in the company’s smaller South Miami theater.

For this production, merely entering the Carnival Studio space is a tipoff that you’re not about to see a traditional version of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast.”  Set designer Frank Oliva has transformed the Carnival into the prince-turned-Beast’s castle. A small central playing area along one wall holds the creature’s throne, with the period-costumed musicians (all wearing white wigs, no less) nestled on either side.

Theatergoers are seated on benches at three long tables (a few can choose seating along two walls), and they’re warned not to put anything on the tables because, well, that’s where the actors perform much of the musical.  Even audience members get to make a grand entrance as they arrive to take their seats, and on opening night, two little girls who were each wearing Belle’s famous golden ballgown got a round of applause as they entered side by side.

So that’s the environment for a new way of telling a familiar story, one based on the 1756 French fairy tale “Le Belle et la Bête” by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont.

What’s most significant, of course, is the way that story is told.

In terms of the music by Alan Menken, lyrics by Howard Ashman and Tim Rice, and the book by Linda Woolverton, the Area Stage Company version is completely faithful to Disney’s enduring 1994 Broadway show.  But Rodaz’s distinctive interpretation sets the production apart and makes the familiar seem fresh.

One example among many:  The castle’s servants, suffering under the same spell that changed their cruelly imperious master Prince Adam into the Beast, are usually costumed as people who are gradually transforming into household objects.  Rodaz at first thought of having the actors use puppets, but now the performers, as costumed by Maria Banda-Rodaz, appear to be trapped in a never-ending masked ball, one in which they carry real antique objects representing what their service is to the Beast.  The effect is both beautiful and unsettling, and it gives a more adult feel to their plight.

Another example of the inventiveness: When the Beast, his heart softening toward the young woman he has taken prisoner, decides to let Belle have unrestricted access to his vast library, Rodaz creates a joyous moment by having audience members seated on either side of Belle and the Beast hold up books. They’ve been surreptitiously distributed by members of the ensemble.

The configuration of the room creates staging challenges, with actors running back and forth on the tables, leaping off the ends and squeezing by each other as they pass.  Joe Naftal’s lighting guides your gaze, but depending on where you’re seated, you may find yourself doing a lot of head swiveling.

The five-piece orchestra, led by music director and pianist Rick Kaydas, plays the score beautifully and sound designer Rob Rick gets the interplay among musicians, singers and sound effects just right.  Choreographer Irma Becker creates movement that necessarily plays out environmentally, but she honors tradition as the Beast dances with the golden-gowned Belle while Katie Duerr’s Mrs. Potts sings a moving version of the title song.

The young 16-member cast was missing a key member on opening weekend due to the illness of Yardén Barr, who is expected to return as Belle for the second weekend of the show and the rest of the run.  Understudy Michelle Gordon stepped into the role, and despite a few nerves at the beginning of opening night, she sang with sweetness and power, conveying Belle’s brains and bravery.

As Prince Adam and the Beast, Maxime Prissert is a presence both dominating and vulnerable.  Rather than the customary Beast head and hairy “paws,” he wears a spooky metal mask with devilish curved horns, and his fleshless hands appear to be nothing but bone.  Prissert’s booming voice is glorious, and his rendition of “If I Can’t Love Her” is as heartbreaking as it should be.

Rodaz has surrounded the title characters with talented singer-actors, including Duerr as the warm-hearted, British-accented Mrs. Potts and Luke Surretsky as her little boy Chip.  Four of the other actors in key parts play two roles each.

Frank Montoto, who has a knockout voice, plays the seriously narcissistic Gaston and the charming Lumiere.  John Luis is Gaston’s comic sidekick Lefou and the Beast’s worried majordomo Cogsworth.  Imran Hylton is a loving, bumbling old soul as Belle’s father Maurice, but watch out when he dons the wig and dress of opera singer-turned-wardrobe Madame de la Grande Bouche – he’d be a shoo-in to win “Ru Paul’s Drag Race.” Greta Hicks is the Enchantress who does the spell casting and doubles as Babette, the sexy French maid.

When they’re not singing or speaking in lightly French-accented English, the large ensemble – Sofia Sanabria, Jacqueline Rose, Tico Chiriboga, Jorge Amador, Gabriela Collazo, Lucca Castañeda, Grace Suarez, Isabella Arza (and Gordon, once Barr is back playing Belle ) – scurry around the “castle” keeping order among observers.

The care that Area Stage Company has taken with its “Beauty and the Beast” is evident in so many aspects of the show.  Even the ornately decorated larger program is special, with French titles over its credits in a nod to the story’s origin.

Ticket demand for the show is great, but diehard fans of Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” should be prepared for something different.  What Rodaz and Area Stage Company are bringing to the table – well, those three long tables – is a different, involving way of storytelling, one that makes theatergoers of all ages look at a familiar piece with fresh eyes. And isn’t that what theater is all about?

WHAT: Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”

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

WHEN: 7:30 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, through Sept. 4. (No evening show Sept 4.)

COST:  $32 and $63

INFORMATION: 305-949-6722 or arshtcenter.org

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Area Stage director gives audience seat at the table for Disney’s ‘Beauty and the Beast’

Maxime Prissert is the Beast and Yardén Barr is Belle in Area Stage Company’s “Beauty and the Beast” at the Carnival Studio Theater inside the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, through Sunday, Aug. 28. (Photo courtesy of Giancarlo Rodaz)

Since its 1991 debut as an Oscar-winning animated movie, Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” spawned a 1994 Broadway musical that ran until 2007 (in 5,461 performances), toured the country, and played all over the world. The show has endured as an immensely popular title for regional, community, and school theater groups.

Now “Beauty and the Beast” is back, this time as an Area Stage Company production in the Carnival Studio Theater at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.  But the show, which will preview Tuesday, Aug. 9 through Thursday, Aug. 11 and officially open on Friday, Aug. 12, is not – emphasis on not – a typical version of the Disney hit.

Based on the 1756 French fairy tale “Le Belle et la Bête” by Jeanne-Marie Leprince de Beaumont, “Beauty and the Beast” is, as the housekeeper Mrs. Potts sings in the musical, a “tale as old as time.”

In Disney’s version, an enchantress’s spell turns the vain, cruel Prince Adam into a frightening man-beast.  If he can experience true love before the final petal falls from an enchanted rose, he – and his servants, who are transforming into household objects – can revert to human form.  But after the beautiful, brainy villager Belle takes her father’s place as the Beast’s prisoner, her captor behaves so badly that true love seems highly unlikely.

The beloved story is a classic. But that doesn’t mean the Disney favorite has to be produced in a traditional way.

As he did in the summer of 2021 with Area Stage’s immersive version of “Annie,” director Giancarlo Rodaz is taking a fresh approach to a treasured show.

“I’m amazed that no one’s done it this way before,” says Rodaz, who is associate artistic director of the company founded by his parents, artistic director John Rodaz and executive director Maria Banda-Rodaz.  “When you do theater, you’re competing with every great piece of media ever made. You have to take a risk.”

In this case, the risks include scale (16 actors are in the cast, with a number playing multiple parts), cost (Banda-Rodaz reports that Area Stage’s typical large-musical budget of more than $275,000 has to grow by 25 percent for shows at the Arsht because of additional production costs there), and faith that audiences will respond as enthusiastically to becoming part of the action as they did to “Annie.”

The director concedes that he sometimes says to his parents, “What have I gotten myself into?”  But the 26-year-old South Florida native, who grew up going to Disney theme parks, continues to dream big about giving audiences experiences that provide a deeper kind of fun.

“You think about what fun is. ‘Fun’ is cheap. It can be an inflatable pool in your backyard. What is something that’s truly transporting, that makes a huge impression on your memory?” Rodaz says.  “I thought, ‘How great would it be to have people really be our guest?’ I sat down with the actors, (set designer) Frank Oliva, and my parents to talk about what it would mean to make the story around the audience.”

To that end, Area’s “Beauty and the Beast” takes place in a massive castle hall – Rodaz describes it as a blend of the ballroom from the film and the Hogwarts castle from the Harry Potter series – with the audience seated at three long tables.  He insisted the story be told using only elements that could be found in an 18th-century castle.

The musical’s title characters are being played by New York-based Yardén Barr as Belle and Maxime Prissert (who grew up in Palm Beach Gardens) as the Beast.  Barr’s resume includes such shows as “Sleeping Beauty,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Something Rotten!,” “Brigadoon,” “A Very Potter Musical” and more. Prissert, who has a degree in musical theater and studied opera in Austria, has had leading roles in “Oklahoma!,” “Cabaret,” “Man of La Mancha” and “Shrek the Musical.”

Prissert, who played the self-adoring Gaston in an earlier production of “Beauty and the Beast,” observes, “The Beast and Gaston are the ultimate foils. I read the script from Gaston’s point of view before. Now I’ve noticed little things in the writing that are very obvious.  The characters are similar, but the Beast handles things better.”

Now he’s playing a man who badly needs to learn several lessons, including the one about true beauty coming from within.

“I am Prince Adam. The ‘beastness’ is an affliction, an exaggeration of his selfishness,” Prissert says. “But he learns how to be a prince, how to love; Belle shows him that.”

Adds Rodaz:  “The prince was always a beast.  Now he looks like what he is.”

Belle, the Israeli-born Barr’s favorite Disney princess, is a role the performer has long coveted.  When she found an audition notice for Area Stage’s production on Playbill.com, she went for it.

“Belle knows what she wants, but she doesn’t necessarily have the tools to get there.  She rejects Gaston. She has her own dreams, her own passions,” Barr says.

A number of Area Stage veterans are in the cast, and they’re excited about large-scale performing immersive theater at the Arsht Center.

“The size of this sticks out the most,” says Frank Montoto, who plays Gaston and the servant Lumiere in the show.  “It’s massive.”

“It’s so much grander,” says Katie Duerr, who plays the morphing-into-a-teapot Mrs. Potts.  “It’s a fairy tale, it’s magic, it’s Disney. We’re going all the time.”

Imran Hylton, who donned a dress to play Miss Hannigan in Area’s “Annie,” is taking on two very different roles in “Beauty and the Beast.”  Audiences will see him as Belle’s eccentric father Maurice and as the opera-singing Madame de la Grande Bouche.

What Hylton appreciates in the process of reinventing a musical, he says, is “taking a show and stripping it down… It’s a lot of fun.”

Adds Tico Chiriboga, an ensemble member making his Area Stage debut, “Once we started to get into it, this felt like it’s the most natural way to do the show.”

Rodaz concedes that most of the musical numbers in “Beauty and the Beast” are large-scale, so he was challenged to find ways to make the audience part of the action.

“In the big number about Belle, we are gossiping to the audience,” he says.  “In the tavern number about Gaston, the audience at the center table will get prop mugs.  We’re making them complicit in cheering on a villain. It’s interesting and fun.”

Rodaz has faith that Area Stage is taking a deep dive into what he considers one of the two best Disney musical scripts (“The Lion King” being the other).  He has savored the creative process with his collaborators, the “journey of discovery” that he hopes will bring another dimension to a very successful piece of musical theater.

“We’re trying to amplify what’s there. This doesn’t feel like a kids’ show. It feels like a proper musical that’s beautifully written, with a great score,” he says.

WHAT: Area Stage Company: Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast”

WHERE: Carnival Studio Theater at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami

WHEN: Previews 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Aug. 9, Wednesday, Aug. 10, and Thursday, Aug. 11, opens 7:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 12; regular performances 7:30 p.m. Friday, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through Aug. 28

COST:  $32 and $63

INFORMATION: 305-949-6722 or arshtcenter.org

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Review: Nilo Cruz explores a distanced world in ‘Kisses Through the Glass’

Hannia Guillén and Leo Oliva in the world premiere of Nilo Cruz’s “Kisses Through the Glass” at the Miami Dade County Auditorium through Aug. 7. (Photo courtesy of  Julio de la Nuez)

A man and a woman meet in a truck stop diner, a place that can be conducive to connections of the fleeting physical kind.  She is an edgy, ravishing beauty looking for a ride south. He is a good-looking trucker, and he is a man mesmerized – as is every other guy in the place – by the irresistible woman he spies through the window.

That setup could lead, well, anywhere.  But because the play, “Kisses Through the Glass,” is a world premiere piece by Pulitzer Prize winner Nilo Cruz, the journey that follows blends symbolism, poetic language, allegory, and realism.

Commissioned by Miami’s bilingual Arca Images and presented by Arca and Miami-Dade County Auditorium (MDCA), “Kisses Through the Glass” is getting a two-week run at MDCA’s On.Stage Black Box, the venue’s more intimate space where actors and audience occupy the stage. The Cuban-American Cruz, who also directed the production, wrote the play in English (as is his custom). Simultaneous translation in Spanish is also available through headsets.

Truth be told, the language in “Kisses Through the Glass” is Cruz’s own dramatic/literary blend, a lexicon suited to dialogue suffused with imagery.  This is his pandemic play, though COVID isn’t referenced, and the mysterious virus infecting and killing people is most often referred to as the “malady.”

The strangers on a journey without a set destination are truck driver Trevor dos Santos (Leo Oliva) and actress Anabella Lundi (Hannia Guillén).

Their attraction is such that, in a world free of the malady, they would doubtless become lovers.  Vibrant Anabella is a caution-to-the-wind type, ready to act on their growing passion.  Trevor shares her desire but, because he is obviously becoming ill, he won’t do anything that could lead to her death. He won’t even touch her, much as he wants to.

Sometimes, Trevor and Anabella do what Cruz calls “…speaking their thoughts through the language of the gaze.”  They also talk about the events that happen on their journey – a run-in with a deer, nature itself, Trevor’s exhaustion and near-delirium. He helps her rehearse dialogue from a play-within-a-play about a persecuted priest and nun in 1920s Mexico. He wants to leave Anabella and the truck, abandonment being his solution to keeping her safe.

“Kisses Through the Glass”  is a difficult play to stage, and despite his prodigious gifts as a director and the talents of his collaborators, Cruz hasn’t fully met his script’s challenges.

Perhaps a story set in a big rig needs to be a movie, so you have the vehicle and the road and the closed-in environment of the truck’s cabin.  Here, set designer Amalia Restrepo puts a truck seat on a platform with a few stairs leading to invisible driver and passenger “doors.”  Nature takes the form of ever-changing projected paintings or a rainy deluge, with rocky red mulch representing the forest floor.  Imagining contagion in a wide-open space – despite our several years of experience with it – isn’t easy.

The playwright-director has ideal storytellers in Oliva and Guillén, both of whom appeared in his November Arca images world premiere “Hotel Desiderium.”

The New York-based Guillén, who launched her acting career at Miami-Dade College’s Prometeo under Teresa María Rojas, has appeared in numerous Cruz plays throughout the country; the author and the actor get each other. She’s a brilliant, physically engaging, captivating performer, and in celebrity designer Danny Santiago’s all-black costume for Anabella, she gives off a Goth-meets-“Sex and the City” vibe.

Oliva, a Miami native based in Los Angeles (he’s also the producer-writer and an actor on the streaming series “Home Invasion”), exudes strength and sensitivity as Trevor.  His decline as the “malady” takes hold is distressing and thoroughly believable. And he, too, has a way with Cruz’s words.

As with so many of the plays Cruz has staged for Arca, “Kisses Through the Glass” underscores the artistry of theatrical collaboration.  Ernesto Pinto’s lighting is vital to emphasizing the shifting moods of the couple’s journey.  Sound designer Mariana Restrepo summons crickets, birdsong, the roar of the truck engine. And the music woven throughout the play is haunting and emotionally illuminating.

“Kisses Through the Glass” is different from so many plays in Cruz’s body of work.  Some of its language seems almost formal, while other lines blaze with vivid imagery.  Anyone – everyone – who endured pandemic isolation and engaged with others through a distancing computer screen will understand – as Trevor and Anabella do – the ferocious need for no-filter human contact.

WHAT:  Arca Images world premiere of “Kisses Through the Glass” by Nilo Cruz, in English with simultaneous Spanish translation

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

WHEN: 8:30 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 5 p.m. Sunday, through Aug. 7

COST:  $30 ($25 students and seniors)

INFORMATION: 305-547-5414, miamidadecountyauditorium.org or arcaimages.org

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Review: Main Street Players Lean Into the Absurd with ‘Black Sheep’

Michael Vadnal is Nelson and Kyran Wright is Carl in Main Street Players’ production of Lee Blessing’s “Black Sheep”  through Sunday, Aug. 14 in Miami Lakes. (Photo courtesy of Juan Gamero)

Playwright Lee Blessing has been a prolific mainstay of American regional theater throughout much of his long career. Though his best-known play “A Walk in the Woods,” about a pair of Russian and American nuclear arms negotiators, was his only work to get a Broadway run, Blessing’s many other plays have had high-profile productions at regionals of all sizes.

Manalapan’s much-honored Florida Stage, which shut down in 2011, commissioned one Blessing play (1993’s “Patient A”) and staged the world premiere of another, “Black Sheep,” in 2001.  Now a smaller regional company, Main Street Players in Miami Lakes, has chosen “Black Sheep” as its second production in its new theater a block west of its longtime Main Street home.

“Black Sheep” is an absurdist dark comedy, a piece that is very difficult to pull off tonally.  Blessing is experimenting with style in this play about racism, greed and ravenous desire.  But until the 90-minute production’s waning moments, director Brandon Urrutia and the cast leave the audience as baffled and unsettled as the play’s central character.

He is Carl Winship (Kyran Wright), the biracial “black sheep” in the fabulously wealthy (and white) Winship family. Though still young, Carl has just served 10 years in prison for the accidental killing of his half-brother.  His uncle Nelson (Michael Vadnal), who agrees with everyone that Carl should not have been tried as an adult, has invited his nephew to take up residence in the guest house on his estate and thus rejoin the extended family.

Nelson’s wife Serene (Jennifer Leah) is anything but what her first name implies whenever she’s in Carl’s presence; she is, in fact, a predator, constantly making moves on him regardless of his lack of interest.

Carl’s cousin Max (Anthony Wolff) is possibly the horniest dude alive, likely because his porn actress girlfriend Elle (Lucy Lopez) is holding out for marriage.  Max, who has perfected the art of building a career as a film critic despite doing the tiniest amount of work possible, is the personification of a scion of the idle rich.

Soon enough, the reason for Carl’s presence on the Winship estate becomes clear.  Each of the characters suggests that, in return for half of Nelson’s fortune, Carl should “accidentally” murder the others. After all, he’s experienced, right?

“Black Sheep” explores insidious racism, the micro- and macroaggressions, among those who insist they are absolutely not racist.  Just one example: Nelson asks Carl where in Africa his “people” are from. Then he looks at one of the many primitive figures now in the guest house. “Why don’t African artists carve what they see?” Nelson asks. Carl’s response? “Maybe that is what they see.”

Much is made of dreams or nightmares in “Black Sheep,” as characters provoke each other or claim some upsetting act took place in a dream state.  Ghosts enter into the picture, too, via references to the 1953 Japanese classic “Ugetsu,” though no one but the most devoted cineaste is going to get that.

Set and lighting designer Amanda Sparhawk has created a kind of gray void with multiple doors to represent the guest house. A few tiny shelves hold the carved figures, but the predominant “furniture” consists of a single barrel moved around on a handcart until it becomes part of yet another noisily expressed sexual fantasy for the man-boy Elle calls “Maxie Millions.”

Urrutia is working with a mostly young, less experienced cast that tends to make obvious choices rather than deepening their line readings.  As Carl, Wright at first tends to scowl, coming off as skeptical or puzzled.  He grows through the play, though, eventually exploiting the character’s power over the others.

Vadnal and the younger Leah are a mismatch as a couple, she too obviously young to be Max’s mother (stepmom maybe, though the script refers to her as his mother and to Nelson and Serene as Max’s parents).  Wolff is outrageously amusing as he explains his career strategy to Carl and just outrageous when he’s acting out sexually.  Lopez portrays Elle as a conniving beauty who imagines she’s way smarter than she is.

Sound designer Alex Tarradell and Sparkhawk’s lighting contribute to the spooky surreal vibe of “Black Sheep,” and costume designer Angie Esposito effectively contrasts the country club look of the wealthy Winships with Carl’s post-prison attire, which is meager enough to fit in a backpack.

Though the style of Main Street’s “Black Sheep” doesn’t coalesce until later in the play, it would help any theatergoer to know this going in:  This is a play that operates on dream logic. It isn’t linear. Not everything makes sense.  If you can surrender to a story told in an unconventional way, you’ll enjoy it more.

WHAT:  “Black Sheep” by Lee Blessing

WHERE: Main Street Playhouse, 6812 Main St., Miami Lakes

WHEN: 8 p.m. Friday-Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday, through Aug. 14

COST:  $30 ($25 for students and military personnel).

INFORMATION: 305-558-3737 or mainstreetplayers.com

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Review: Actors’ Playhouse delivers a concert and cautionary tale in ‘Hank Williams: Lost Highway’

Jeremy Sevelovitz, Andy Christopher, Lindsey Corey and Stephen G. Anthony in Actors’ Playhouse’s “Hank Williams: Lost Highway” through July 31 in Coral Gables. (Photo courtesy of Alberto Romeu)

In 1987, singer-songwriter Hank Williams was given a posthumous Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.

The honor, bestowed to a country music icon whose body of work included “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You),” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Hey Good Lookin’,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart” and countless Billboard Country and Western chart toppers, was richly deserved.

But Williams’ lifetime? That was tragically brief. From hardscrabble beginnings in Alabama to his lonely death on the way to a concert in West Virginia, he never made it to his 30^th birthday. Yet he packed so much living, self-destruction and success into those years that he had enough material for dozens of unforgettable hits.

Whether or not you know much about Williams’ songs and the man who wrote them, you’ll encounter a fascinating, complex, charismatic version of a gone-too-soon artist if you catch the new Actors’ Playhouse production of “Hank Williams: Lost Highway.”  The Randal Myler-Mark Harelik show, which premiered at the Denver Center the same year Williams got the Lifetime Achievement Grammy, went on to play other major regional theaters, which included Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium and a 2002-2003 off-Broadway run, among its many productions.

Actors’ Playhouse artistic director David Arisco is justifiably proud of his company’s version of
“Hank Williams: Lost Highway,” which is running in the upstairs Balcony Theatre space at Coral Gables’ Miracle Theatre through the end of the month.  Performed by a cast of 10 actor-singer-musicians – some of them South Florida-based talent, others from places near and far – the performers deliver at the level Williams’ music deserves.  Listening to them sing and play is moving, entertaining, and many times thrilling.

The Myler-Harelik script hits the highs and cautionary lows of Williams’ short life, which could be a template for many a subsequent star lost to disorienting fame and substance abuse.  Williams’ severe back pain (he was born with spina bifida occulta) and bad heart, coupled with alcoholism and drug abuse (amphetamines, Seconal, morphine, and the addictive sleep drug chloral hydrate) did him in.

The show begins with the shocking news of the star’s death in the back seat of his baby-blue Cadillac convertible on New Year’s Day 1953.  Then it scrolls back to his beginnings as he learns blues-infused phrasing and guitar playing from street singer Rufus “Tee-Tot” Payne, here played by the magnificent Chaz Rose (from the Actors’ production of “Memphis”).

Any bio-musical requires a chameleonic actor-singer in the title role, and Arisco found an ideal Hank in Andy Christopher.  Christopher has played Williams and rock ‘n’ roll original Buddy Holly in different productions, so he’s obviously successful at tailoring his voice and in-the-spotlight charisma in transformative ways.

He’s a sensational Williams: tall, more handsome than the original, deft at inserting a well-placed yodel at the right moment in some of the lyrics.  He charms, yes, but doesn’t stint on the ugliness when Williams’ life is disintegrating.  Christopher’s rendition of “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” is haunting and heartbreaking, sad and beautiful at the same time.

A stellar group of actor-musicians portrays Williams’ band, The Drifting Cowboys.  Bass player Stephen G. Anthony, reprising his role as Hoss from the off-Broadway production, serves as musical director, sometime narrator and Williams’ increasingly frustrated old friend. The towering Jeremy Sevelovitz is Jimmy, aka “Burrhead,” the talented and too-frank guitar player.  H. Drew Perkins’ fiddle player Leon, called “Loudmouth,” earns his way into the band with a scorching version of “Sally Goodin.”  As the steel guitar player Shag, Russ Wever (who also did the show off-Broadway) infuses classic country into the sound.

As music publisher Fred “Pap” Rose,” Barry Tarallo also narrates and frequently butts heads with Christopher’s stubborn Williams.  He’s good, very good as yet another victim of Williams’ increasingly erratic behavior, but it’s a shame that the character sings only with the group at the beginning and end of the show – his tenor voice is a thing of beauty.

Elizabeth Dimon plays Mama Lilly, Williams’ driven, church-going mother who served as his first manager.  She’s a no-nonsense gal who doesn’t have much more luck controlling her alcohol-abusing son than anyone else will, and though we get a taste of Dimon’s terrific voice before another woman supplants Mama in Williams’ life, it’s not enough.

The “other” woman is Lindsey Corey as Williams’ first wife (and second manager) Audrey.  Attractive, ambitious and aggressive, she is determined to follow her hubby into country music stardom. Trouble is, she has no discernible talent – a problem Corey herself does NOT have.  The actor is a glorious singer – just listen to her during the “I Saw the Light” finale – so playing off-key Audrey can’t be easy.  Myler and Harelik have written the role as a caricature of the pushy wife, but Corey makes the comedic most of it.

Sofia Porcel plays a character known only as Waitress, a woman who works in a truck-stop diner while she smokes and obsessively listens to Williams on the radio.  She’s representative of his legion of fans and one-night stands – as we see, finally, when the two end up in a cow pasture – but keeping her onstage through most of the show is distracting; ditto with having Rose’s Tee-Tot parked on the porch of a country gas station.

It’s impossible to guess whether the Actors’ Playhouse design team contains any hardcore country music fans, but all seem to have been inspired by Williams, his music and his story.

Ellis Tillman, whose work is always excellent, has outdone himself in creating a huge array of period- and genre-perfect costumes, particularly his versions of the famous Nudie-brand suits Williams favored. Those suits cost $500 back in the early ‘50s; in today’s dollars, that translates to more than $5,000 apiece.

Set designer/set dresser Jodi Dellaventura has filled the small Balcony Theatre stage with three different environments, which lighting designer Eric Nelson bathes in a nostalgic glow (Tee-Tot’s porch), unforgiving illumination (the diner) and bright concert lights.  Alex Bonilla’s sound design is a match for the cast’s glorious voices.

Just one more note:  If you try to see “Hank Williams: Lost Highway” after July 31, you won’t. That’s the closing date, and because Actors’ has another show waiting in the wings, there won’t be an extension.  So, get a move on or you’ll be left, like Williams, singing the “Long Gone Lonesome Blues.”

WHAT: “Hank Williams: Lost Highway” by Randal Myler and Mark Harelik

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

WHEN: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday, through July 31

TICKETS: $40 to $90 (seniors 65 and over get 10 percent off weekdays only; students 25 and under with valid student ID pay $15 for a rush ticket available 15 minutes before a weekday performance. Special Lunch Break deal offers half-price tickets between noon and 2 p.m. to same-day weeknight performances; Tix @ 6 offers half-price tickets weeknights between 6 and 6:30 p.m., with both requiring an in-person purchase at the box office, subject to availability)

INFO: 305-444-9293 or actorsplayhouse.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.

Filmmakers ‘Pass the Mic’ to their subjects in trio of Miami-based documentaries

Caribbean-American filmmaker Ronald Baez created the short documentary  “Apart < A Part” in collaboration with community experts Fidel Aquino (aka Aquino the Tailor) and the Allapattah Collaborative CDC. (Photo courtesy of Ronald Baez)

Three filmmakers selected to submit documentaries to Oolite Arts’ “Pass the Mic: We Will Tell Our Stories” focus on issues from gentrification in Miami’s Allapattah neighborhood to the plight of day laborers in Homestead as well as tenants’ rights in Miami.

Danielle Bender of Oolite Arts and Nadege Green of the Community Justice Project selected Ronald Baez, Diana Larrea and Terrence Price II for Oolite’s second commissioned film series, which will be screened at the Little Haiti Cultural Center at 7 p.m., Friday, July 22, followed by a discussion moderated by Green.

Baez, Larrea and Price were given a list of organizations from which to select. “We wanted to look at ways to work with filmmakers collaboratively with community members as experts,” says Green.

Bender adds that in selecting the filmmakers they were “deliberate in choosing people that are thoughtful and focused on being collaborative and great storytellers.”

Baez’s film “Apart < A Part” zooms in on the Allapattah neighborhood, particularly the Allapattah Collaborative CDC, and features business owner Fidel Aquino as the “community expert.” The film’s focus is the ever-present threat of gentrification in the neighborhood and the Collaborative’s personal approach to the issue.

Baez explains the unusual title comes from a cartoon he once watched. “I tend to name my films after things I’ve read and seen . . .  There was a small cartoon about two dinosaurs and two trees that were growing apart,”  he explains. “What stayed with me was an image that showed that although the trees grow apart above ground the roots still grow together, so that felt like what we should do with developing neighborhoods.”

The filmmaker met Aquino, a master tailor and local business owner, through the Allapattah Collaborative CDC.

“I figured maybe we could tackle the gentrification issue through the commercial corridor,” says Baez. “I met Aquino and I loved that he had a way of feeling hopeful despite being frustrated.”

He says he spent time with Aquino even before shooting his film, just one-on-one, getting to know Aquino and his wife at their shop.

“It helped me earn their trust as well as express my intentions rather than telling them what my intentions were. The different approach allowed Aquino to become more and more candid throughout the process,” says Baez.

Baez’s own background also influenced work on his film. He chose Allapattah because of his Dominican roots, he says, and how he felt he could relate to the neighborhood and the many Dominican residents and business owners. “I know their culture although I don’t understand their plight. I felt their work is very important and I was able to speak to them and the community on a cultural level.”

Larrea also says she related to those portrayed in her film, eventually joining the organization she spotlighted. She was drawn to the voices of day laborers in Homestead, who are leaders of the non-profit WeCount! and their transformation after arriving in the United States. Larrea, who is Peruvian and has an American passport, says she is still sometimes “afraid they’re going to take it away from me.”

Her film, “Monarcas,” features community experts Alejandro and Pedro (the filmmaker did not want the men to be identified by their last names out of fear for their immigration status), who are both Guatemalan, and their transformation to becoming spokespersons for WeCount! Their path, she says, has now brought them to being the ones teaching immigrants that they “have rights and need to maintain their dignity.”

“I really wanted the film to focus on them, the stories of the two men, one of them even still speaks a Guatemalan dialect, Spanish is his second language,” said Larrea.

The title, “Monarcas,” represents the monarch butterfly as a symbol. “It’s a very well-known symbol of migration,” she explains.

It was a very personal experience that led to Price create his film “Rooted like a Tree,” which features community expert Keisha Guyton, a member of Miami Workers Center, fighting for tenants’ rights and the fight to pass the first Tenant’s Bill of Rights in Miami.

Price first learned about Miami Workers Center when his apartment was sold to a development company from Colorado who told those who lived there that the building was going to be demolished. “They put us on a monthly lease so basically after each month they could tell us to leave,” says Price.

That’s when he and the tenants reached out to Miami Workers Center. “We sought the support of our neighbors to rally together to fight the developers and Miami Workers Center found us pro bono lawyers who helped us navigate the situation and stay out of any legal trouble,” he explains.

Price eventually became a member of Miami Workers Center in January 2022 and began working on the film after he joined the group.

His film focuses on the Tenant’s Bill of Rights which MWC began in July 2021. He documented what he says was a three-month journey of the creation of the bill. The Miami-Dade Board of County Commissioners ultimately approved an ordinance creating Miami-Dade’s first Tenant’s Bill of Rights in May of 2022.

“It was a personal journey I felt compelled to document,” says Price.

In addition to highlighting important issues, Green and Bender both hope the documentaries – all around 11 to 15-plus minutes in length – will continue to benefit people in similar circumstances.

“These films create a historical framework that will remain in archives and will forever show how these neighborhoods are changing. They create a historical record of these stories that otherwise might not have existed in this way,” says Green.

WHAT: “Pass the Mic: We Will Tell Our Stories”

 WHERE: Little Haiti Cultural Center, 212 NE 59th Terrace, Miami

 WHEN: 7 p.m. Friday, July 22

 TICKETS: Free but RSVP required Pass-the-Mic-We-Will-Tell-Our-Stories-Screening

 INFORMATION: 305-576-4390 or oolitearts.org/pass-the-mic/

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.