Review: At its best, ‘Long Distance Affair’ fully immerses you in different worlds

Naomy Romo comes unhinged in her Mexico City home in “Troya,” part of “Long Distance Affair.” (Photo courtesy of Juggerknot Theatre Co.)

The emotional currents and psychological challenges of our shared pandemic year provide the thematic fuel for the newest edition of “Long Distance Affair,” a globe-trotting, live, virtual theater collaboration between Miami’s Juggerknot Theatre Co. and New York’s PopUP Theatrics.

Accessible in a pair of three-play programs running Feb. 18-21, the six, new short works aim at making a genuine if fleeting connection between the actors who are performing in their far-flung homes and the small groups of spectators who are watching – sometimes interacting – from theirs. For the most part, this artistic mission is accomplished.

In Dipti Bramhandkar’s “Mrs. Asha’s Benevolent Purposes and Small Causes Musical Medium Services (M.A.B.P.S.C.M.M.S.),” hands-down winner of the short play with the longest title, Neha Singh plays a Mumbai-based medium whose gift is something called “clairaudience” – the ability to perceive inaudible sounds and tones emanating from each person, a kind of collective music.

Directed by former Miamian Tai Thompson, Bramhandkar’s portrait of a woman unexpectedly freed from the bonds of an arranged marriage provides a vivid sense of place, in part because of the musicality in the way Singh conveys the sounds of everyone from street vendors to Mrs. Asha’s judgmental relatives.

The writing is observant, evocative, amusing, as when Mrs. Asha describes the object of her now-absent husband’s affections: “She was so young she practically had dew on her.” A twist at the end plays with our perceptions of Mrs. Asha, the life-enlightened medium, and of the storytelling medium itself.

A second Thompson-directed play, “Angelique,” by ex-Miamian France-Luce Benson, centers on a Haitian-American movie studio seamstress living in Los Angeles. As the title character, actor Wendy Elizabeth Abraham begins by joyfully expressing her sensuality through dance, then taking us into her kitchen where she’s preparing a pot of sacred soup joumou as an offering to Erzulie, the voudou goddess of love and womanhood.

Benson’s story touches on Haitian history and spiritual practices, as it delves more deeply into Angelique’s desire to add a child to her happy marriage. That longing, as it happens, is rooted in sudden loss. Abraham’s sobbing, keening pain as she shares that part of Angelique’s story makes you wish you could breach the boundary of the digital world to enfold her in a comforting embrace.

At his home and studio in Lagos, Nigeria, actor Segun Adefila deals with the ordinary and extraordinary in Zainabu Jallo’s “Bariga Spirit.” Deep into a hot night, he welcomes observers into the home/studio he shares with his wife and four children, one of whom sleeps soundly on the floor of the room where Adefila is holding forth.

Under the direction of PopUP cofounder Ana Margineanu, Adefila pleads his case to us, stand-ins for the Yoruban ancestors/spirits beckoning him back to his birthplace to take up long-abandoned, sacred royal duties. Through ritual, movement and drumming, he makes an artfully persuasive argument that big-city life as an artist, husband and father is his true calling.

Leila Buck’s “Night Lights,” directed by Tracy Cameron Francis, takes the form of a nighttime, virtual, core connection class – equal parts dance and connective spirit – taught by a Beirut-based instructor named Layla (Pia Haddad). Although she’s encouraging and engaging, scripted interruptions bring the flow of the piece to a halt in ways that are more irritating than illuminating, leaving the actor and her audience literally in the dark.

Francis is also the director of the intense, stylistically bold “the break,” by another former Miamian, Michael John Garcés. In it, an increasingly agitated woman (Barbie Wu) conveys her fears as she hides out in a bedroom at her parents’ home in a suburb of Portland, Ore. Speaking in a rush of the election, the virus, violence in the streets, she sounds paranoid bordering on crazy – but is she?

Garcés, Wu and Francis take those watching on a wild, science fiction-tinged ride.  Wu’s rapid-fire monologue taps so quickly into the disruptive emotions and events of the present – even as it imagines a future that is simultaneously heaven and horror and hell – that the impact of the piece is visceral.

Mexican playwright-director Alfonso Cárcamo’s “Troya,” translated and performed by Naomy Romo with direction by Henrik Cheng, is an emotionally charged exploration of an unhinged woman’s grievances, particularly toward the man whose violent act changed her life. She smiles, she cajoles, she reaches for words that are vividly vulgar and ones full of imagery. Is she crazy? Perhaps; as one watcher suggested in a chat reaction, “la luna llena” (the full moon) seems to be having its way with her.

Even so, Romo’s performance and her finesse at utilizing the digital medium to establish intimacy make us feel for a woman on the verge of a horrific act. Like all the best work in “Long Distance Affair,” Cárcamo’s play fully immerses you in a specific world, one that somehow feels simultaneously foreign and familiar.

 

WHAT: “Long Distance Affair,” a virtual production by Miami’s Juggerknot Theatre Co. and New York’s PopUP Theatrics

WHEN: 7:45 p.m. and 9 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Sunday; through Feb. 21 

WHERE: longdistanceaffair.info

COST: $40 for three plays; $80 for six

 

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‘Long Distance Affair’ is back for a fresh virtual journey

Actor Barbie Wu plays a time-traveling woman in “the break,” by Michael John Garcés. (Photo courtesy of Juggerknot Theatre Co.)

With most venues shut down for nearly a year, pandemic-era theater has taken many forms: play readings; previously recorded productions; shows or revues shot with safety protocols in place; artist interviews or classes; and, more rarely, the occasional live experience.

But few digital productions have achieved what Miami’s Juggerknot Theatre Co. and New York’s PopUP Theatrics pulled off in May with “Long Distance Affair.”

Inspired by immersive, site-specific shows created by PopUP in different countries beginning 10 years ago, the production took at-home “travelers” on virtual journeys to Madrid, Miami, Paris, London, New York and Singapore, where theatergoers watched – and sometimes interacted with – actors performing new short plays.

Now “Long Distance Affair” is back with an entirely new set of plays, performers and destinations.

Running from Feb. 12 to 21, the production will take adventurous theater fans on virtual quick trips to Mumbai, Beirut, Mexico City, Lagos (Nigeria), Los Angeles and Portland (Oregon). A journey to three cities costs $40; double that for all six.

Juggerknot founder and executive artistic director Tanya Bravo notes that the first “Long Distance Affair” was propelled by “an urgency to connect” in the early days of pandemic isolation. She and her collaborators had hoped to do a second edition before the presidential election but felt too many colliding pressures during the fall.

“We were all stressed out. Many of us were trying to get the word out about voting. It became a different world after the election,” Bravo says. “The first ones got such a wonderful response that we said, ‘Let’s try this again.’ This time, we asked, ‘How close and intimate can we get in this medium?’”

Bravo is one of several Miami-connected artists involved in this edition of “Long Distance Affair,” producing alongside her sister, Natasha Bravo, who is Juggerknot’s community impact director.

Others include playwright-director Michael John Garcés, a Miami native and 2020 Doris Duke Artist Award winner who is artistic director of the Cornerstone Theater Co. in Los Angeles; playwright France-Luce Benson, who grew up in South Miami and serves as community engagement coordinator for Los Angeles’ The Fountain Theatre; Tai Thompson, a New York-based director who has spent the pandemic with family in Miami and Daytona Beach; and Michelle M. Lavergne, Juggerknot’s company manager and stage manager.

Each piece is the work of a playwright, director and solo performer – most of them first-time collaborators based in different cities. Meeting virtually, they got to know each other, asking questions whose answers were often worked into scripts, then rehearsed and refined the work via Zoom and other platforms.

Mumbai-born, New York-raised Dipti Bramhandkar wrote “Mrs. Asha’s Benevolent Purposes and Small Causes Musical Medium Services,” performed in Mumbai by Neha Singh. It is directed by Thompson, who is also directing Benson’s “Angelique,” featuring Los Angeles actor Wendy Abraham.

Tracy Cameron Francis, artistic director of Portland’s Boom Arts, is directing Garcés’ “the break,” performed by Portland-based Barbie Wu. She’s also staging Leila Buck’s “Night Lights,” performed by Pia Haddad in Beirut.

Ana Margineanu, PopUP cofounder and creator of the “Long Distance Affair” concept, is directing Zainabu Jallo’s “Bariga Spirit,” which will be performed by Segun Adefila at his home and arts center in Lagos.

Singapore-based Henrik Cheng, who will help run the show along with Lavergne, is directing Mexican playwright-director Alfonso Cárcamo’s “Troya,” to be performed in Mexico City by Naomy Romo.

The six pieces vary in style and thematic content, exploring marriage and betrayal, the longing for parenthood, spiritual connections and more. But a key element in each play involves achieving a real connection with those watching them.

“The goal is to make the audience actually be a part of the experience,” says Margineanu. “We don’t want to be competition for YouTube. With Netflix, if you step away to go to the bathroom, nothing changes … ‘Long Distance Affair’ has been pretty successful; people respond more strongly because of the intimacy. You sense when you’re needed. A connection has to happen from both ends.”

Director Thompson has worked hard with her playwrights and actors to create connections that will go beyond fleeting engagement with the stories.

“Coming out of this crazy year, where we’re all in this PTSD realm, there’s a certain amount of healing these shows are exploring,” she says. “[Benson’s] ‘Angelique’ is based on a ritual the character is sharing with her Facebook followers, a very personal, intimate experience … You feel like you’ve known her from the very beginning; it feels like we’re connected in the ritual. ‘Long Distance Affair’ has always been interactive, but this reaches a different level, as a metaphysical type of connection.”

Bramhandkar’s Mumbai-set play centers on a medium trying to tell her observers about themselves, while also tapping into the qualities of the city where she was born by conveying “the absolute warmth, natural rhythm and musicality of my culture and my city,” the playwright says. “I learned that for immersive pieces, the creation is even more in the hands of the people you’re creating with. The process of [the writer] letting go happens sooner … this is the first time I’ve created something with the audience so acutely in mind.”

“Our show cannot happen without the audience,” Thompson observes. “The [actors] are talking to you. They’re asking you questions. If you don’t answer, you might as well hang up.”

Though Thompson and Benson are both from Miami, “Angelique” marks the first time the two have worked together. The playwright isn’t fond of virtual rehearsals – “It’s not my thing; I miss being in the room together, but this does feel closer to a live theater experience,” Benson says – and though she misses watching an audience respond to her work, she noticed something about pandemic-era virtual theater.

“This has made theater so much more accessible. Theater can be so elitist. It sometimes doesn’t reach the audience that it’s about,” she says.

“Long Distance Affair” also pairs artists from different countries, people with varied theatrical traditions and training, allowing them to collaborate inexpensively without the worry of travel, housing, meals or visa issues. Margineanu and Adefila – collaborating on “Bariga Spirit,” a story inspired by Adefila’s life of a Nigerian royal torn between traditional expectations and the dreams of a big-city artist – appreciate the benefits.

“Ana and I have different performance practices … At first, I saw the audience as mere spectators watching me tell my stories. Ana said, ‘Let’s make the audience the spirits.’ That’s the essence of ‘Long Distance Affair,’ the thin line between performers and spectators,” says Adefila, during a WhatsApp call from Lagos.

“I love trying something new. I’m an adventurer. The pandemic has created a lot of walls, but as artists, we manage to break down walls. With digital performances, I feel I’m coming out of this better.”

Adds Margineanu, “I was super excited to get paired with an amazing Nigerian actor whose practice is rooted in tradition and ritual. We made an effort to marry a modern perspective with a very local spirit … I’d love to believe that my methods of creating, relating and performing could bring him something he could use in his own art.”

In devising “the break,” Garcés was mindful of Portland as “a nexus of protest and of militias, with tensions between the left and right.” After discovering that Wu was interested in playing an antihero, he worked to craft a piece that would be fun and theatrical, with elements of science fiction. Director Francis also influenced the play’s final form.

“Tracy helped me find what was meaningful vs. what was extraneous,” he says.  “She helped sharpen it. We didn’t want too much exposition; we wanted it to have an internal logic, so the person following it could make their own story. Tracy has a great dramaturgical mind.”

Francis says credit for the play’s style belongs to Garcés.

“There’s a lot of poetry in the piece. The character’s memory is coming back in fragments. She’s caught in a time loop. She exists in 2041 and 2021. The dramaturgical purpose is to disorient your perceptions,” the director says.

Although the run of the second “Long Distance Affair” isn’t a long one, Bravo believes that this born-of-necessity virtual way of making theater is likely to remain part of Juggerknot’s creative endeavors once the company returns to in-person immersive productions.

“Can we have another leg of Juggerknot that’s virtual?” she asks. “I feel we can continue to do it, to work with artists from all over the world.”

 

WHAT: “Long Distance Affair,” a virtual production by Miami’s Juggerknot Theatre Co. and New York’s PopUP Theatrics

WHEN: Feb. 12-21; 7:45 p.m. and 9 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 12:30 p.m. and 2 p.m. Sundays

WHERE: longdistanceaffair.info

COST: $40 for three plays; $80 for six

 

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Live Broadway productions poised for a South Florida comeback

Amber Gray and the original Broadway cast of “Hadestown,” the New Orleans-infused musical running at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts from Sept. 28-Oct. 3. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Murphy)

Like Broadway itself, touring versions of big New York shows have been on an extended hiatus during the pandemic – as have the South Florida performing arts centers that rely on the productions’ broad popular appeal to bolster the bottom line.

But finally, despite the variables (and variants) associated with COVID-19, Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and Fort Lauderdale’s Broward Center for the Performing Arts are announcing their 2021-2022 Broadway series lineups. Both all-musical season schedules are the culmination of a frequently shifting puzzle, one involving not just tour routing and picking shows for particular markets but also tracking the evolution of the pandemic itself.

How important is the programming supplied by Broadway Across America to the region’s arts ecosystem and the reopening of its major performing arts centers? The short answer: extremely.

“There is a need for community, for gathering together [around an artistic experience],” says Johann Zietsman, the Arsht Center’s president and CEO.  “A big piece of that is touring Broadway. People love Broadway.”

At the Arsht, that love is demonstrated in part at the box office: Broadway tours accounts for 45 percent of the center’s average $16.9 million in gross ticket sales per year, according to a spokesman. They play an even larger role at the Broward Center, where shows typically run two weeks (vs. one-week runs at the Arsht), with touring Broadway programming bringing in 55 to 65 percent of the center’s annual revenue, a spokesman says.

“I’d certainly describe touring Broadway as core programming,” says Broward Center president and CEO Kelley Shanley. “Broadway has the broadest reach of any type of programming we present. It draws larger and more diverse audiences. It reaches everybody in the community … And it’s also a primary economic driver for the center.”

Miami’s season will kick off with the South Florida premiere of “Hadestown,” winner of the 2019 best musical Tony Award and the 2020 Grammy for best musical theater album. Running Sept. 28-Oct. 3, the New Orleans-infused musical by singer-songwriter Anaïs Mitchell and director Rachel Chavkin journeys to the underworld, blending the Greek mythic tale of Orpheus and Eurydice with the story of King Hades and his wife, Persephone.

A new touring production of “Hairspray,” the 2003 Tony winner, will usher in 2022 with a run from Dec. 28-Jan. 2. Based on the John Waters cult film, with an utterly infectious Marc Shaiman-Scott Wittman score, the uplifting and enduringly resonant musical deals with body positivity and racial prejudice in Baltimore circa 1962.

The moving 2017 Tony winner, “Dear Evan Hansen,” with a book by Steven Levenson and a score by the Tony- and Oscar-winning team of Benj Pasek and Justin Paul, will be at the Arsht from Feb. 15-20, 2022. In it, a high school loner’s life is transformed by an increasingly problematic string of mistaken assumptions.

“Anastasia,” with a book by the late Terrence McNally and score by “Ragtime” composer Stephen Flaherty and lyricist Lynn Ahrens, centers on a mysterious young woman on a quest to discover whether she’s the only survivor of the massacre of Russia’s ruling Romanov family. The Arsht has it scheduled for March 22-27, 2022.

The Broadway in Miami season will wrap up with a 50th anniversary production of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s early hit, “Jesus Christ Superstar,” from May 31-June 5, 2022. The lavish, Olivier Award-winning, rock musical revival focuses on the final seven days in the life of Jesus Christ.

At the Broward Center, Broadway fans can enjoy five shows with two-week runs, plus two optional “choice” shows running a week each.

The season will begin Nov. 3-14 with the 2017 Irene Sankoff-David Hein musical “Come from Away,” based on a true story about the welcoming generosity of a small Newfoundland town when 7,000 international airline passengers were stranded there after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Then “The Prom,” the 2018 Matthew Sklar-Chad Beguelin musical that became a recent Netflix movie, will run Dec. 14-19 as a subscriber option. The show is about an Indiana high school student fighting to take her girlfriend to the prom.

“Tootsie,” the first of several movie-inspired musicals in the Broward Center’s lineup, is set for Jan. 11-23. The 2019 David Yazbek-Robert Horn musical is about a notoriously difficult actor who finds career and personal rebirth by tapping into the woman within. And Motown legends get the jukebox musical treatment in 2018’s “Ain’t Too Proud – The Life and Times of the Temptations.” With a book by playwright Dominique Morriseau, the show will be at the Broward Center on Feb. 8-20, 2022.

Disney screen-to-stage hit, “Frozen,” will draw family audiences to the center on March 9-20, 2022. The 2018 show features a score by Oscar winners Kristen Anderson-Lopez and Robert Lopez, who added about a dozen new songs to the familiar ones from the animated smash. After that will be another subscriber option: a one-week run of Lloyd Webber’s 1982 hit, “Cats,” from April 5-10, 2022. 

Broward’s season will wrap up with 2018’s “Pretty Woman: The Musical,” set for May 4-15, 2022. The edgy fairy-tale story of a wealthy businessman and an escort who fall in love features a score by Grammy winner Bryan Adams and Jim Vallance, and a book by the popular movie’s late director, Garry Marshall, and J.F. Lawton.

With the enduring pandemic having pushed the Broadway seasons later into 2021, blockbuster hits “Hamilton” and “Wicked” aren’t part of the new lineups.

Susie Krajsa, president of Broadway Across America, explains that her company has been “working with producers, booking agents and other national tour representatives to put the puzzle together for all markets … The routing of each market and the dates being considered need to be contiguous, and the tour needs to move across the country in a manner that makes sense geographically.”

Both Zietsman and Shanley emphasize that theater lovers returning to their centers as part of full-capacity Broadway audiences will experience environments geared to safety protocols, including temperature checks, touchless ticketing, hand sanitizers, Plexiglas barriers, improved air circulation/filtration, and possible mask requirements (depending on the state of the pandemic at any given time).

The Arsht has just announced that it’s phasing back into live performances, starting at the end of February with once-a-month, socially distanced improv comedy shows by Zoetic Stage and programs of short plays from City Theatre, both on the center’s outdoor Thomson Plaza for the Arts.

The pandemic “interlude,” as Zietsman calls it, has been “like losing our voice. We’ve done a variety of [online] programming, but it’s not the same as getting together live. Even though Broadway won’t happen for another eight months, it’ll feel like getting back to life.”

Broadway in Miami’s five-show subscription prices range from $191 to $764. Call the Arsht Center box office at 305-949-6722, the season ticket hotline at 800-9399-8587, or visit Arshtcenter.org. Current subscribers will automatically be scheduled into the new season, and if season dates and shows shift again, fully paid subscribers can get a credit or refund, or opt to convert their subscription into a donation.

Broadway in Fort Lauderdale subscriptions, including the five major shows plus one “choice” selection, range in cost from $270 to $715. Five shows plus both “choice” options cost $301.50 to $805.50 (premium Club Level seats cost more). Call 800-764-0700 or visit BroadwayinFortLauderdale.com. As with the Miami series, current subscribers will automatically be scheduled into the new season, and if season dates and shows shift again, fully paid subscribers can get a credit or refund, or choose to donate the cost of their tickets.

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Review: Area Stage takes its boisterous ‘Shrek the Musical’ outside … and it works

A cast of seven takes on Area Stage’s “Shrek the Musical.” (Photo courtesy of John Rodaz)

For nearly a year now, live theater has been a necessary rarity in an enduring pandemic.

But in South Florida, where winter weather is so often glorious, the option of taking art outside has allowed a limited, in-person reconnection of artists and audiences, an especially safety-conscious path back from virtual theater to live experiences. (A few companies, it should be noted, are producing theater inside their venues.)

Miami New Drama presented its ambitious, twice-extended production, “Seven Deadly Sins,” featuring original short plays performed in storefronts along Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road. Now, Area Stage is using the outdoor theater option for a limited run of its 2018 hit, “Shrek the Musical.”

This version of the 2008 Broadway musical by composer Jeanine Tesori and book writer-lyricist David Lindsay-Abaire has been devised by director-designer Giancarlo Rodaz. Son of Area Stage founders John Rodaz and Maria Banda-Rodaz, the young director again proves himself adept at imaginatively reinterpreting large-scale musicals so that they work in fresh ways.

“Shrek the Musical,” based on the 2001 DreamWorks animation film that launched a franchise, marks the first time Area Stage has created an outdoor production in its new home, South Miami’s Shops at Sunset Place.

The set, which has a deliberate Renaissance Fair/let’s-put-on-a-show vibe, and all the other creative elements (lighting, costumes, puppets) were designed by Rodaz with an assist from his Area Stage colleagues. Sound design is by Abraham Oleksnianski, with musical direction by Katie Duerr, who plays Princess Fiona and other roles.

Though the original Broadway version of the show, which was produced locally by Fort Lauderdale’s Slow Burn Theatre in 2019, features more than two dozen actors, Rodaz figured out how to do the show with just seven performers and a small band. The actors, even those playing the lead roles of Shrek, Fiona and Donkey, do double, triple, quadruple duty. Puppets and shadow puppets stand in for some characters. Somehow, thanks to Rodaz’s imagination and the actors’ robustly chameleonic voices, it all works.

The stage version of “Shrek” runs a half-hour longer (plus intermission) than the animated original, so at times the show feels overstuffed with tangents and made-for-the-stage musical numbers. But the socially distanced audience of about 80 people, including a few family groups picnicking on the grassy area closest to the stage, remained engaged throughout.

Like the movie, “Shrek the Musical” traces the journey of the oversized green ogre Shrek (Frank Montoto) from outcast loner to his own kind of hero. With help from the beyond-garrulous Donkey (Aaron Hagos), he rescues the cursed Fiona (Duerr) from her long imprisonment in a tower. Then, he falls for her as they make their way back to the kingdom of Duloc, where she is to become the bride of the dastardly, height-challenged Lord Farquaad (John Mazuelos).

Mixing fairy-tale whimsy, punchy musical theater numbers, inside-theater references, a happily-ever-after story with a twist, and enough adult humor to keep the grownups interested, “Shrek the Musical” is performed by a cast of young professionals, a few still in college and several with ties to Miami’s New World School of the Arts.

When he’s playing Shrek, Montoto transforms himself with little more than a fuzzy green clown nose and a Scottish accent, sometimes strumming his guitar as he delivers strong renditions of “Big Bright Beautiful World,” the playful “I Think I Got You Beat,” “When Words Fail” and more. Duerr, a senior at the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music, is funny, charming and clarion-voiced as Fiona. Hagos takes a bit to find his rhythm as Donkey, but once he does, he’s off to the comedic races.

Mazuelos sometimes takes to his knees to play the diminutive Farquaad but at other times doesn’t bother. Even so, he’s effective as a tiny bully with a towering ego. Gabi Gonzalez digs into the diva Dragon role; Imran Hylton leads the fairy-tale creatures in “Story of My Life” as a gangly and wry Pinocchio; and Jeana Montgomery pushes back against Farquaad as the Gingerbread Man, also known as Gingy.

With the band playing behind a glass storefront near stage left, the performers use microphones, so hearing them is never an issue. If anything, they can be a touch too loud, pushing the broad material harder than they need to.

In terms of safety protocols, Area Stage’s staff takes your temperature and gives you a wristband in lieu of a ticket. There’s up-close seating available on the ground (bring a blanket), and folding chairs are spaced in seating groups behind the grassy area. There’s a single bathroom for men and women, so plan accordingly.

The show, Rodaz has said, is an experiment to see how viable outdoor theater might be for Area Stage. It has been extended from Jan. 31 to Feb. 6, so you still have time to decide for yourself.

 

WHAT: “Shrek the Musical” by Jeanine Tesori and David Lindsay-Abaire.

WHEN: 7 p.m. Fridays-Sundays, through Feb. 6

WHERE: Area Stage Co.’s outdoor theater at Shops at Sunset Place, 5701 Sunset Drive, South Miami

COST: $16-$175

INFORMATION: 305-666-2078; areastage.org

 

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In a year of reinvention, Taylor Mac presents ‘Holiday Sauce … Pandemic!’

Theater artist Taylor Mac presents “Holiday Sauce … Pandemic!” – a livestream that will blend music, film, burlesque and “random acts of fabulousness.” (Photo courtesy of Little Fang Photography)

In a year when everything is changed, our holiday traditions are no exception. How will we manage family gatherings? Gift giving? Feeling hopeful and connected?

Just in time for this upended season comes Taylor Mac, the brilliant gender-bending theater artist, with “Holiday Sauce … Pandemic!,” a virtual vaudeville that blends music, film, burlesque and “random acts of fabulousness,” and pays tribute to the families we choose and the transformative power of imagination.

“Drag mentors and queens and single mothers and those who have children without the help of men, like the Virgin Mary,” says Mac. “We decided to treat the audience like Santa Claus. Our show is milk and cookies.”

The show debuts online Saturday, Dec. 12, hosted by 17 arts groups across Europe and the United States, including Miami Dade College’s Live Arts Miami. After the free screening, the show will be available online until Jan. 3, for a minimum $10 donation that will benefit a new Miami Dade College scholarship fund for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer or questioning community, as well as the show’s performers.

“I can’t think of any better artist to help us process this year than Taylor Mac,” says Kathryn Garcia, executive director of LAM. “Nothing replaces the magic and energy of a live theatrical experience, but it’s been a year of reinvention. We knew Taylor Mac would capitalize on that and make something fabulous…

“There’s still a lot of beauty and creative energy being shared online. And you gotta take it where you can get it.”

“Holiday Sauce” honors Mac’s gay and artistic mentor, Mother Flawless Sabrina, a pioneering drag performer who mentored generations of young gay men and artists for a half-century. Mac found her in the early 2000s, after years of struggling to make it as a conventional theater actor in New York City.

“I couldn’t even get into an audition room, much less a rehearsal room,” Mac says.

With Mother Flawless Sabrina, Mac found the kind of exuberantly creative gay community that had been decimated by AIDS in the ’80s and early ’90s.

“She came into my life at the right time, as she did for so many young people and artists. She had an apartment that was a haven for pure creativity. She invited everyone to these parties – it was pure bohemia, what I had longed for,” Mac says. “She gave me some tough love in terms of owning my own agency, in terms of what I wanted to do. She said, ‘The universe only commits to you if you commit to yourself.’ Sometimes it takes an old queen to tell you the truth.”

Mac focused on writing and performing an extravagantly original style of theater, blending wittily profound cultural satire and commentary, live music, and costumes and sets, by collaborator Machine Dazzle, that are a wild blend of drag queen glitz and psychedelic art object. Numerous accolades include a MacArthur “Genius Grant,” a Pulitzer Prize finalist citation, and the 2020 International Ibsen Award, known as the Nobel Prize of theater. (Mac performed in Miami in 2010 and 2013, in FUNDarte’s Out in the Tropics festival.)

“Holiday Sauce,” which Mac premiered in 2017, grew out of a longtime antipathy for Christmas: the overwhelming emphasis on traditional nuclear families, the religiosity, the orgy of spending.

“I hated December,” says Mac, who grew up in suburban Stockton, Calif. “The guilt of not participating with my family, or the guilt if you do of navigating heteronormative and religious space, the capitalism of the season. And I thought, ‘Taylor, you could have a month you despise, or you could change it.’”

The title invokes Mother Flawless Sabrina’s motto: “You’re the boss, apple sauce – you’re in charge of your own lives.”

Mac determined to honor the families that outsiders, particularly those who are LGBTQ, create with friends and kindred spirits, and the elders and metaphorical mothers in these communities.

“Gather your chosen family and children,” says Mac. “I look forward to December now.”

The 17 arts groups hosting the event will each honor a gay elder: LAM has chosen longtime HIV/AIDS and LGBTQ youth support activist Luigi Ferrer.

Ferrer was a founding member of SAVE Dade and an early volunteer – and then executive director – of Pridelines, which offers counseling and support for LGBTQ teens. These days, Ferrer, 62, leads the HIV prevention program for men at the Florida Department of Health.

HIV-positive since age 21, Ferrer says the COVID-19 pandemic is reminiscent of the early days of that other deadly virus.

“We were all shell-shocked trying to figure out what is this new disease, how do we protect each other,” Ferrer says. “A lot of us old-timers use the hashtag #notmyfirstpandemic. We’ve been through this before.”

Ferrer expressed being humbled, and startled, about the honor: “It’s a little disconcerting. It is very nice to finally be recognized. I have always enjoyed this type of work and been committed to it for many years. Especially as we grow older, in the queer community, you begin to feel you’re invisible and no longer relevant. I’m glad to be able to continue to make a contribution.”

Giving and community building are built into “Holiday Sauce.” LAM’s presentation prompted the Miami Dade College Foundation to create an endowed scholarship for LGBTQ students at the college, with fundraising that will continue after the event. Some of the proceeds from sales of a “Holiday Sauce” album will go toward the LGBTQ Asylum Task Force, a group advocating for LGBTQ asylum seekers.

 Miami drag diva Karla Croqueta, an MDC alum, will host a virtual after-party on Dec. 12 that will feature legendary Miami drag queen Adora. It is included as part of the performance.

“There’s a beautiful convergence of things that have come together around this show, inspired by Taylor’s idea of giving,” says Garcia, adding that virtual tickets to “Holiday Sauce” make a fabulous holiday gift.

The pandemic version of the show features Mac’s longtime artistic clan of musicians, designers, performers and producers, using pre-recorded material and live footage. There is a Sexual Consent Santa; Machine Dazzle as a glittering, grumbling Christmas Tree; subversive renditions of traditional Christmas songs and original Mac ditties like “Super Rich Kids.” Mac will host live, and open with a new song.

“It’s a grand experiment,” Mac says. “I see it as joining a big giant collaborative, with everyone trying to make virtual shows and survive in this pandemic.”

Mac was struck by how “Silent Night,” which they recorded live, resonates now.

“We’re trying to find grace and beauty in the darkness of these times,” Mac says. “‘Silent Night’ is a wake in some ways, but a joyful one. I think it’s the best ‘Silent Night’ ever heard.”

 

WHAT: “Holiday Sauce … Pandemic!”

WHEN: 7 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 12

WHERE: liveartsmiami.org; a Zoom link will be emailed to guests after RSVP.

COST: Free with RSVP (after-party included); but after Dec. 12, there is a minimum $10 donation fee to stream the show until Jan. 3.

 INFORMATION: liveartsmiami.org; taylormacholidaysauce.com

 

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Review: ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ explores conflict, demons and the joy of live performance

Andhy Mendez and Renata Eastlick play former lovers in “Andre and Erica,” one of the plays in Miami New Drama’s “Seven Deadly Sins.” (Photo courtesy of Ernesto Sempoll)

In the early days of the pandemic, when theater came to a sudden halt and artists turned to digital alternatives, Miami New Drama artistic director Michel Hausmann began dreaming of a way to get actors and audiences together again for a safe, live dramatic experience.

“Seven Deadly Sins” is the months-in-the-making fruition of that dream. Performed mainly in storefronts along the 1100 block of Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road, the production has twin objectives: to offer provocative new short plays from seven nationally notable playwrights, and to provide a safety-conscious evening unlike anything available in the virtual arts world.

Miami New Drama has succeeded on both counts.

“Seven Deadly Sins” is neither immersive nor interactive, strictly speaking. Call it experiential event theater.

After undergoing a temperature check and picking up wristbands at the Colony Theatre box office, theatergoers head west across Lenox Avenue to a pop-up, open-air bar called Purgatory, at the center of the 1100 block.

There, under the stars, with celestial white lights, devilish red ones and burning tiki torches decorating the space, singer Kareema Khouri and keyboard player/musical director Wilkie Ferguson kick things off with theme-appropriate numbers such as “Sinner Man” and “Fever.” The passion driving her singing and his playing underscores the joy of performers and audiences reunited.

The color-coded wristbands divide the audience into small groups, and each one has a guide who remains throughout the evening, distributing complimentary earbuds, explaining how to connect to the wireless receiver at each red chair or stool, holding up a QR code theatergoers can scan for a virtual program.

Hausmann has staged five of the seven plays, with Moisés Kaufman directing his own “All I Want Is Everything!” and Jade King Carroll staging Dael Orlandersmith’s “Memories in the Blood.”

Six of the pieces are performed inside glass-box storefronts (the seventh is nestled just inside the Colony, at its loading dock), and the playing areas feature vastly different set designs by Carbonell Award-winning brothers Christopher and Justin Swader.

Sound designer Matt Corey has devised the actor-audience aural connection, conjuring the sounds of protests and pianos and more; and lighting designer Yuki Nakase Link uses a palette that ranges from tasteful elegance to the flash of cameras as they expose the inconvenient truth of a woman’s life. Costume designer Marina Pareja nails each play’s aesthetic, from the expensive mourning attire of soon-to-be-warring siblings to an Amsterdam sex worker’s “uniform” of black lingerie, torn fishnet stockings and dominatrix-worthy heels.

Although each play is built around one of the seven deadly sins – envy, greed, gluttony, lust, pride, sloth and wrath – the dramas-in-miniature are as eclectic as their authors. Conflict drives them all, whether the born-of-a-plague play is a two-hander or a solo show, whether the combatants are ex-lovers with unresolved feelings or a former president thirsty for a return to power.

The latter is not the current occupant of the White House, though Donald J. Trump does figure into Rogelio Martinez’s “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” the play about gluttony. Gregg Weiner gives a captivatingly droll performance as a late ’80s Richard M. Nixon, a man ravenous for a return to the Oval Office.

Downing whiskey and puttering at the piano in an empty restaurant, an unrepentant and uncensored Nixon puts every disturbing facet of his character on display as he fusses at his new British assistant, Nigel (the bemusing, sly Christopher Renshaw).

Next door is director-playwright Kaufman’s “All I Want Is Everything!,” a study of filial ingratitude. Immediately after their wealthy father’s burial, Leo (Gerald McCullouch) asks his grieving sister, Vivienne (Mia Matthews), if they can go tout de suite to see the attorney handling the estate – Leo being a guy who has long lived far beyond his means in greedy anticipation of this spectacular payday.

But chic Vivienne, who literally and emotionally cared for their father, has expectation-upending news. Strikingly, this conflict plays out as the siblings stand in elegant spaces on either side of a vertical casket adorned with Calla lilies.

Playwright and actor Carmen Peláez is involved in “Seven Deadly Sins” as the writer of one play and the performer in another. In her play, “Strapped,” the statue of former Vice President John C. Calhoun (Stephen G. Anthony) has been pulled from its towering pedestal in Charleston, S.C., amid Black Lives Matter protests. The three-dimensional representation of the pro-slavery Calhoun, whose tenure in the nation’s second-highest office was three decades before the Civil War, is miraculously able to address us. Proud and not even the tiniest bit ashamed of his past, he turns on the Southern charm before giving full voice to his vile views.

As an actor, Peláez gives a very physically still, emotionally intense performance in Orlandersmith’s “Memories in the Blood,” a play about wrath, rage, whatever you want to call the simmering anger that’s always ready to boil over. Largely confined to her apartment during the pandemic, a nameless woman speaks about interactions during her fleeting forays into the outside world. But more viscerally, she’s dealing with old slights and unhealed wounds made freshly raw by her isolation.

In Aurin Squire’s “Blackfish,” an artist and African-American culture professor named Regina (Sandi Stock) is being profiled by an unseen reporter (Roderick Randle). The journalist is having a tough time connecting with people who knew this proud, spotlight-loving Black woman back in the day, and as the story unravels, even the voice of God (Kareema Khouri) wades into the issue of cultural appropriation – and the real meaning of sloth.

Hilary Bettis explores envy in “Andre and Erica,” a piece about former lovers who happen to be superb pianists. Andre (Andhy Mendez) is nervously practicing Beethoven’s Sonata No. 14 “Moonlight” before his Carnegie Hall debut when his ex, Erica (Renata Eastlick), pops in. Mendez and Eastlick convey the couple’s chemistry and unfinished emotional business, but after Erica sits at the piano and demonstrates her undiminished talent, the reasons for their split become clear.

Lust is the subject of Pulitzer Prize-winner Nilo Cruz’s “Amsterdam Latitudes,” the richest and most highly theatrical of the plays. Ludmila (Jessica Farr) is shimmying and shaking what her mama gave her in a booth in Amsterdam’s Red Light District. It’s a last call for sin, as the pandemic is about to shut the city down. A tormented man named Mirian (Caleb Scott) shows up seeking connection, with and through Ludmila, to his lost life and the figures who haunt him. The play and the performances are visceral, aching, poetic.

As much as theater lovers and artists long to return to performances for large audiences inside traditional spaces, that moment is not yet here. “Seven Deadly Sins” is one creative bridge between nothing and normalcy, a safe and imaginative reminder of live theater’s undiminished power.

WHAT: Miami New Drama’s “Seven Deadly Sins”

WHEN: Through Jan. 31

WHERE: Along the 1100 block of Lincoln Road, Miami Beach; pick up admission wrist bands at Colony Theatre box office, 1040 Lincoln Road.

SAFETY PROTOCOLS: Masks and social distancing required (6 feet); hand sanitizer provided.

COST: $60 and $75; purchase tickets at Miaminewdrama.org/7deadlysins

INFORMATION: 305-674-1040; Miaminewdrama.org 

 

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

 

Miami New Drama’s ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ finds a way back to live theater

Jessica Farr and Caleb Scott star in Nilo Cruz’s “Amsterdam Latitudes,” one of the plays of Miami New Drama’s “Seven Deadly Sins.” (Photo courtesy of Roberto Mata)

Envy, gluttony, greed, lust, pride, sloth, wrath.

Since ancient times, these vices have been known collectively as the seven deadly sins.

Now, nine months into the country’s battle against COVID-19, Miami New Drama and its boundlessly imaginative artistic director, Michel Hausmann, have figured out a way to turn vice into virtue, exploring the seven deadly sins in an ambitious return to live theater beginning Nov. 27.

“During the summer, I’d walk up and down Lincoln Road, and I saw a lot of empty storefronts,” says Hausmann, whose company was about to open the world premiere musical, “A Wonderful World,” at its home in Miami Beach’s Colony Theatre when the pandemic forced March’s abrupt shutdown. “I thought the seven deadly sins could be a great organizing principle to talk about our country through those sins.”

And he thought about those vacant storefronts, and about the fact that the often-glorious South Florida weather in November, December and January would allow for theater to move outside the box of the Colony Theatre.

The result: “Seven Deadly Sins,” a collection of short plays, will be presented through Jan. 17 in six storefronts along the 1100 block of Lincoln Road, as well as at the Colony Theatre’s loading dock.

For all of the effective ways arts groups have sustained themselves and their audiences with digital productions, Hausmann and managing director Nicholas Richberg have remained focused on how to return safely to live performances.

“We knew we couldn’t be a company that just does Zoom plays,” Richberg says. “We produce theater, with humanity mixing in person.”

Adds Hausmann: “We’re in the business of live storytelling. When you think of it through that prism, a huge freedom opens up.”

As a first step, Hausmann commissioned 10-minute plays from seven celebrated playwrights – four men and three women, five of them Latinx writers and two Black – asking each to list a first-, second- and third-choice sin. Nilo Cruz, Dael Orlandersmith, Carmen Peláez, Moisés Kaufman, Hilary Bettis, Aurin Squire and Rogelio Martinez, most of whom have a history with Miami New Drama or Hausmann, all said yes to the project.

What the company got back, says Richberg, is a group of “exciting, unexpected stories. They’re definitely not the obvious takes on the sins. And they all have the depth of full-length plays.”

The plays are as eclectic as their authors.

Nilo Cruz, the Cuban-American, Miami playwright whose Pulitzer Prize-winning “Anna in the Tropics” premiered at Coral Gables’ intimate New Theatre in 2002, got lust as his subject. His new play, “Amsterdam Latitudes,” features Caleb Scott as Mirian, a lost soul in Amsterdam’s red light district, and Jessica Farr as Ludmila, the prostitute upon whom his attention is riveted.

“The moment Michel told me the design, I immediately [imagined] the brothels of Amsterdam. I saw an image,” Cruz says. “It would be in Amsterdam but with references to Miami, to water, to the fluidity of water and memory … Just the physical wasn’t enough. It had to be emotional and spiritual too, to transcend the body.”

“Amsterdam Latitudes,” one of five plays Hausmann is directing, has already been a fulfilling experience for Cruz.

“It’s exciting to work with actors again … And this piece is so cinematic. We’re going to be like voyeurs watching them,” he says. “There’s a desire to go back to the theater, to be part of that ritual, to experience something together.”

Scott and Farr feel that excitement. too.

“It’s been so long since we’ve been able to be in a room working with our bodies vs. just our faces,” says Scott, referring to what he calls the “horror box” that is Zoom. “The limitations of intimacy feel very right at the moment … [yet] this is very heightened. There’s no slow build. It opens at the apex of Miran’s conflict. It feels very charged.”

Adds Farr: “Nilo’s work is so poetic, elevated and challenging … A common theme is peeling away the veneer of ghosts to get to the person in front of you. It’s beautifully lyrical.”

Another of the plays, “Blackfish,” is the work of Aurin Squire, a co-producer for the CBS series “Evil” and “The Good Fight,” who has several other plays and an Amazon project pending. The piece tackles sloth and will be performed by Sandi Stock, who plays Regina, a successful artist and professor of African-American culture. There’s more than a little of Rachel Dolezal, a White professor who famously pretended to be Black, in the character’s artistic DNA.

“Michel mentioned this to me during the summer, and I thought of the history of plays during the plague,” says Squire, who grew up in Opa-locka. “Sloth actually means distance from God. It’s not a hard sin … but it supports all the other sins … These are morality plays by seven contemporary writers, reinventing that genre for now.”

Moisés Kaufman – a Venezuelan-American director and playwright whose New York-based Tectonic Theater Project devised the award-winning “The Laramie Project” – co-founded Miami New Drama with Hausmann. He is directing his short play about greed, “All I Want Is Everything,” which features Mia Matthews as Vivienne and Gerald McCullouch as Leo, a wealthy sister and brother at odds over their late father’s fortune.

“I immediately realized that this [project] was a brilliant idea. Everyone around the world is trying to figure out how to do theater in a pandemic,” Kaufman says. “There has been a great deal of attention to safety and to creating theater in these untenable times. There’s a hunger for theater.”

Inspired in part by stories of fights within families, Kaufman’s play explores more than the lust for money.

“Is greed only about money? Can you be greedy in love, in passion? We are all very, very greedy,” he says.

Longtime friends Matthews and McCullouch believe their extensive experience in film and television will be of benefit in this unconventional theater project, which requires actors to perform their plays seven times a night on single-show days and 14 times on two-show days.

“This merges the craft of acting for film and acting for live theater,” McCullouch says. “We have the experience [in film] of doing the same scene over and over. But in theater, we get to tell a story with a beginning, a middle and an end.”

“Moisés has been shockingly collaborative. He has a beautiful energy and excitement,” adds Matthews. “At one point in rehearsals, he had us switch characters. I feel like I’m getting a master class from a legend.”

Envy is the subject of “Andre and Erica” by Hilary Bettis, whose “Queen of Basel” (a fresh take on “Miss Julie”) had a developmental production at Miami New Drama in 2018. Bettis, one of the writers of TV’s “The Americans” and the upcoming Amazon series, “Rodeo Queens,” has crafted a play about two great pianists who happen to be former lovers. Andhy Mendez plays Andre, about to make his Carnegie Hall debut, and Renata Eastlick is his ex, Erica.

“I feel envy is very much my Achilles’ heel as a human being,” Bettis says. “I wonder why this has been in my psyche for most of my life, and I don’t know why. It made me take a hard look at myself. It has driven me as a writer – I feel like my work is never good enough …

“I wrote about two people operating from the same place but also loving each other. All the wounds are still there. I thought it could be big, grand, theatrical. That it could pertain to any passion or pursuit.”

Mendez, who appeared in Miami New Drama’s “The Cubans,” was in previews for the world premiere of Eduardo Machado’s “Celia and Fidel” at Arena Stage in Washington, D.C., when the pandemic hit. He’s thrilled to be back at work after the hiatus and, though he wonders if performing “Andre and Erica” in a storefront will be like “acting inside of a snow globe,” he loves the play.

“This script is phenomenal. There’s so much subtext. In just 10 pages, there’s a clear beginning, middle and end,” he says. “Whenever there’s chaos, that’s when art becomes an innovative, transformative platform.”

Eastlick, a New World School of the Arts grad, says the “Seven Deadly Sins” project is “literally historic during a pandemic. Miami New Drama had the vision and insight to think outside the box. Zoom is not the same as having a live audience. This is avant-garde, rogue, the essence of theater.”

Miami’s Carmen Peláez will be one of the busiest artists involved in “Seven Deadly Sins.” She penned “Strapped,” a solo show about pride starring Stephen G. Anthony, and will be performing a one-person play about wrath, “Memories in the Blood,” by Dael Orlandersmith.

Orlandersmith’s piece centers on someone simply called “Character,” a role designed to be played by a 30s-and-up actor of any race or gender – after all, pandemic isolation “is hitting us all the same,” says the playwright. On the rare occasions that the person leaves home to go to the market, he or she exchanges more words than usual with others, while at the same time memories of unhealed emotional wounds come flooding back.

“Especially with the pandemic, a lot of time is being spent alone,” says Orlandersmith, an acclaimed playwright and actor who lives in Manhattan’s SoHo neighborhood. “A lot of anger comes up. You think about things you could have said, but it’s not simply a revenge trip … Within this are aspects of loneliness, if you don’t know how to take care of yourself … After the vaccine, some people will go back to the same old, same old. They don’t know what to do with themselves.”

Orlandersmith feels Peláez, who wrote and starred in the world premiere of “Fake” at Miami New Drama in 2019, is the right actor for her piece.

“Carmen is open. She asks the right questions. She’s pliable and wonderful. And funny as hell,” she says.

Now in actor mode, Peláez finds “Memories in the Blood” deeply resonant.

“Dael’s work is amazing and super-challenging. As an actor, that’s what we live for … It’s an aria, once you get started,” she says. “Not gendering the character speaks to the universality of the piece. If you’re in touch with the human condition, it lays you bare. Every time I perform it, it pierces back.”

Peláez’s own play, “Strapped,” features Anthony as the come-to-life statue of John C. Calhoun, a pro-slavery South Carolina politician who served as the country’s seventh vice president from 1825 to 1832. In June, the statue was removed from its 115-foot-tall pedestal in Charleston, S.C., and her piece gives Calhoun some last words.

In writing “Strapped,” Peláez says she wanted to examine “the absolute banality and cruelty of these people … I can’t stand hypocrisy and injustice. They set me off like a rocket.”

Of Anthony, the playwright says, “He knows how to play the charm and banality of the man … He charms you, you see how heinous he was, then he calls you out.”

Another historical figure is at the center of Cuban-American playwright Rogelio Martinez’s “Itsy Bitsy Spider.” The sin in this case is gluttony, but the character’s voracious appetite isn’t for food. The man sitting at a piano, plunking out the tune of the children’s song that gives the play its title, is an out-of-office Richard M. Nixon, 37th president of the United States, and he is absolutely jonesing for a return to the spotlight.

“I wrote the play two months ago, before the election; you write a play that begins a conversation without knowing the result,” says Martinez. “I chose Nixon because I wanted to explore what it feels like to hold onto power, miss the spotlight, feel you’re needed. He had an appetite for it over four decades. They knocked him down, and he always got up again. There are all these levels. He’s Shakespearean.”

Gregg Weiner plays Nixon opposite director Christopher Renshaw as Nigel, the ex-president’s recently hired assistant.

“I felt intimidated about playing such a recognizable figure. He’s very layered and complex and fascinating. But even when you’re playing someone who’s perceived to be deplorable, you have to love them and advocate for them,” Weiner says. “I don’t want to play him like a ‘Saturday Night Live’ sketch or caricature … I’ve been digesting interviews, documentaries, speeches. I want to give a flavor of him.”

Renshaw, doing a now-rare bit of acting in “Itsy Bitsy Spider,” sounds like the director he is when talking about Martinez’s play,

“This play is very dense. In 10 minutes, it’s very precise and clear and detailed,” he says. “There’s so much that’s pertinent to the world today, what we’re living through. It’s visionary, and the language is very rich.”

Looking at “Seven Deadly Sins” as a whole, Weiner reiterates the back-to-theater excitement shared by the actors, directors, creative team and anyone aching for the return of an art form they love.

“This has something for everyone,” he says. “It’s 90 minutes of high-end plays, fully produced, that no one’s ever seen before.”

Adds managing director Richberg: “It’s living art on Lincoln Road.”

With safety paramount, presenting the short plays of “Seven Deadly Sins” has required a complex and creative logistical plan from Miami New Drama. The company has taken over six empty storefronts in the 1100 block of Lincoln Road just west of the Colony Theatre, and it’s using the Colony’s loading dock as a seventh space.

HOW TO ‘SIN’ SAFELY

A dozen masked audience-members seated outside every space will watch each one- or two-person show, then move on to the next one, led from play to play by a guide. The total of 84 people per performance will see the actors performing inside the storefronts, and they’ll listen to the sound on souvenir earbuds that plug into each red audience chair (theatergoers who want to use their own earbuds can do so). Every seating area will have protective panels on either side. In the middle of the storefronts will be a bar dubbed Purgatory, which will also feature socially distanced seating.

“Seven Deadly Sins” is also among a relatively small group of Actors’ Equity-approved live productions nationally. To get that approval, Miami New Drama established frequent testing protocols and required the actors in two-performer shows to be housed together, according to managing director Nicholas Richberg. Every actor will have a private dressing room, and an elaborate ventilation system will ensure fresh air inside each space. All told, the production has 11 Equity contracts – part of more than 100 people, including designers, crew and others, who have been hired to work on the show.

 

WHAT: Miami New Drama’s “Seven Deadly Sins”

WHEN: Nov. 27- Jan. 17

WHERE: Along the 1100 block of Lincoln Road, Miami Beach; pick up admission wrist bands at Colony Theatre box office, 1040 Lincoln Road.

SAFETY PROTOCOLS: Masks and social distancing required (6 feet); hand sanitizer provided.

COST: $60 and $75; purchase tickets at Miaminewdrama.org/7deadlysins

INFORMATION: 305-674-1040; Miaminewdrama.org 

 

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‘Ya Habibi, The Story of a Song,’ the music that unites us

The virtual premiere of “Ya Habibi, The Story of a Song” is the centerpiece of the 2020 Havana Habibi Festival Online. (Photo courtesy of Jayme Gershen)

What does a well-known Egyptian ballad have in common with an obscure Cuban melody? Although it seems incredible, they are inextricably linked.

The connection between the famous “Ya Habibi Ta’ala” and “El Huerfanito,” a song written in 1931 by Bienvenido Julián Gutiérrez (1904-1966), is the subject of the documentary short film, “Ya Habibi, The Story of a Song,” which has its world premiere scheduled for 8 p.m. Nov. 21.

The virtual presentation, free with prior registration, is the work of Tiffany “Hanan” Madera, founder of Hanan Arts, and Miami Dade College’s Live Arts Miami, in collaboration with FilmGate Miami, O Cinema, and the National Arab Orchestra.

“I was looking for a way to crystallize the idea of the original concert performance that was canceled due to the pandemic into a short film,” Madera says. “The songs, ‘Ya Habibi Ta’ala’ and ‘El Huerfanito,’ provided a perfect way to discuss how cultures travel, bridge, merge, divert and collaborate. As a Cuban-American storyteller, I want to keep complicating the notion of identity and culture. These two songs showcase that.”

“The premiere of ‘Ya Habibi’ is an extension of our Ojala/Inshallah programming initiative begun in 2017, a series of performances designed to challenge Islamophobia while highlighting the shared cultural heritage and experiences of Miami’s multicultural communities,” adds Kathryn García, executive director of Live Arts Miami. “Both Hanan Arts and Live Arts Miami are two organizations committed to dismantling stereotypes through education, empowerment and artistic expression. It’s a joy to collaborate on this film that builds bridges of connection through the transformative power of the arts.”

The short film, directed by Gina Margillo, reveals the path of “Ya Habibi Ta’ala,” a song that became a love hymn made famous by Asmahan (1912-1944), a legendary Syrian singer and actress who rose to fame in Egypt.

It also traces the almost forgotten origins of “El Huerfanito,” which was originally sung by Antonio Machín and his quartet and later transformed into a Middle Eastern favorite. However, as with art and life itself, the song transcends its original purpose to become a perfect metaphor for the permeability of culture and identity and the often-invisible processes that blur borders and differences between cultures, defying even historical probabilities, as in this case.

Machín (Sagua la Grande, Cuba, 1903 – Madrid, 1977), was a singer who rescued “décimas” – a Spanish poetic form consisting of one or more stanzas each with 10 octosyllabic lines – and gave new life to almost-forgotten songs throughout all of his successful career.

The version that perhaps places “El Huerfanito” at a shorter distance in time is the one made by Abelardo Barroso (1905-1972), known as “The Cuban Caruso,” who first recorded it with Orestes López and the Charanga López- Barroso, then with Orquesta Sensación, and later with Severino Ramos’ ensemble.

This virtual premiere of “Ya Habibi, The Story of a Song” has been promoted as the centerpiece of the 2020 Havana Habibi Festival Online, a four-day event that pays tribute to the connection between the Cuban and Arab diasporas with films, music and Egyptian Raqs Baladi (belly dance), to boost the empowerment of women.

“Hanan Arts is a stand for all women and their personal, creative and community healing. Our mission is to empower women through dance and film,” Madera says.

Immediately after the screening of “Ya Habibi, The Story of a Song,” there will be a live panel with its director, Margillo, as well as co-producers Tiffany Madera and Vivian Marthell, and Michael Ibrahim, director of the National Arab Orchestra. 

For more information about the 2020 Havana Habibi Festival Online, set for Nov. 18-21, visit Hananarts.org. To register, visit LiveArtsMiami.org.

Story translated by Artburst Miami’s Orlando Taquechel. 

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

Miami short Film Festival to offer online & in-person screenings

Claire Rammelkamp in a scene from “The Appointment.” (Photo courtesy of Alexandre Singh)

The 19th edition of the Miami short Film Festival, taking place Nov. 13-15, will feature a selection of films for viewing both online and outdoors.

A sign of pandemic times, this year’s hybrid format will consist of an abbreviated live schedule and virtual offerings of films from more than 30 countries. Organizers chose 48 films for live screening and 70 films for virtual screening. (Additionally, once the festival concludes, the 48 films that screened in the live festival will be available to view online through Nov. 23.) Also in the plans: an opening night gala, seminars, a cocktail reception with live music, and an awards ceremony.

“Like everyone else, we had to make adjustments,” said Krystle Carrara, the festival’s director of marketing and development. “We were lucky enough that we had time to plan, so we split it down the middle.”

The festival has become an international platform for filmmakers to showcase their craft.

William Vela, the festival’s executive director and founder, noted that it wasn’t always this way. What started out as a movie night with a group of friends became much more than he had bargained for. During his first gathering, he had expected 20 or 30 people to attend. Instead, 300 viewers showed up.

“I was pleasantly surprised,” Vela said. “I knew that there was a community of talented filmmakers looking for a venue. Everybody started asking, ‘When are you going to do the next one?’ I sent out a call to action and now, almost 20 years later, we are still here.”

The COVID-19 pandemic affected the festival, of course, but not to the extent that one might think. There were even some advantages, Vela said.

“[Submissions have] been 20 to 30 percent lower, but people had more time to write, to work on their films and to edit, so we were not hit that hard,” he said.

There was definitely an uptick in submissions that were pandemic-related. Still, the content remains overwhelmingly diverse in scope.

Visit Miamishortfilmfestival.com to see the selection that will be available virtually and in person at Miami Beach Botanical Garden and the Deering Estate.

The following is a sample of films that will be screened during the event:

‘ANNA’ & ‘ASHMINA’

Director Dekel Berenson knows what it’s like to double down and not give up.

With two award-winning films being screened at the festival, his efforts have definitely paid off.

“Anna” is a film about a middle-aged, single mother in Eastern Ukraine who agrees to attend a dating party in the hopes of eking out a new future.

“Ashmina” highlights the story of a 13-year-old girl in Nepal who struggles to navigate her traditional upbringing against a steady influx of tourists in the region.

The films, which offer a peek into the lives of those who would otherwise remain hidden from society, have caught the eye of judges on the international stage.

Still, there was a time when Berenson didn’t know if he would make it. Being a new filmmaker didn’t make things any easier.

“I didn’t go to film school. I had no experience in filmmaking. I had no film contacts at the time,” he said. “As a new filmmaker, everything was surprising for me, everything was a constant struggle.”

He first worked on “Ashmina,” and he said that period marked “both the best time of my life and the worst.”

“It was very independent and low-budget. It was semi-professional,” he added. “We were working in a foreign country where we didn’t speak the language. We had to approach random strangers and find backpackers in the street to work in the film.”

With “Ashmina” under his belt, he then was inspired to make “Anna.”

Working in East Ukraine presented a whole new set of challenges. One of his biggest: making sure that his vision translated onto the screen, despite ongoing objections from those who surrounded him.

“People have their own ideas, and they think that you are stupid or crazy,” Berenson said.

Requests, including his insistence that the star of “Anna” should be an older woman, were often met with outright refusals.

In one poignant scene, a woman with a young child is in a line of other women, all waiting to be selected for a date. Having the young boy in that particular scene caused much debate.

“They thought having the child in the film was a mistake, but many people told me it was their absolute favorite part of the film,” he said. “They tried to talk me out of a bunch of things. But I wanted to make clear that this was like a meat market.”

For those willing to dive into filmmaking, Berenson director has one piece of advice: “Do not do this. Go and study to be a doctor or lawyer,” he said, jokingly. “It’s statistically improbable. It’s like being an outlier.”

But, yes. He would do it again.

“I was waiting for a rejection letter from Cannes when I started to work on my next film,” he said. “I was fully committed to keep working on and making films, so failure is not an option.”

‘MY FATHER’S FABULOUS FUNERAL’

Hearing about your father’s bedroom antics, especially from your stepmother, is one thing. Hearing about it during your father’s funeral is quite another.

Yet this is one of several running jokes in “My Father’s Fabulous Funeral,” about a family mourning the passing of their patriarch.

“My stepmother really loved to talk to me about my father’s sex life,” said Judy Copeland, who produced the short film based on her life experiences.

While making a comedy about a funeral would be a challenge for most, Copeland said she had the utmost faith in her director, Mark Stolzenberg, who was once a professional clown.

He admitted, however, that he wasn’t exactly thrilled when first presented with the subject matter.

“I’ve worked with Judy a dozen times, but when she brought this to me, I was less than enthusiastic,” he said. “But hey, it kind of grew on me.”

Stolzenberg said he worked hard to ensure that the film stayed true to Copeland’s wishes: “The challenge for me was preserving the essence of her story. She definitely had a vision, and I wanted to honor that vision.”

While humor was an overwhelming factor in the film, Stolzenberg also wanted to touch on issues that weren’t so funny.

“Sometimes [during funerals], family members aren’t talking to each other. There’s dysfunction, and there are so many conflicts,” he said.

Tackling these issues on-screen allowed both of them to walk away from the project with valuable life lessons, including what not to do.

“Try not to shoot a cemetery scene on the hottest day of the summer,” said Copeland. “It was 99 degrees!”

That, along with a chorus of cicadas, made for a memorable shooting experience.

“You always have to expect that the worst can happen,” Stolzenberg said.

Ultimately, Copeland thinks her father “would get a kick out of it,” because he definitely had a sense of humor.

“I think that my father would have loved the film, but he would’ve really loved to attend the funeral!”

‘RED (THE COLOUR OF LOVE)’

What’s worse than shooting scenes in a hot cemetery? Try filming a music video in the middle of a Pakistani desert.

But the scorching heat, lack of basic accommodations, and surprise sandstorms didn’t stop Nabeel Qureshi, an award-winning director and screenwriter, from producing this visually arresting, modern-day tribute inspired by an ancient poem.

“RED (The Colour of Love),” stars Sonya Hussyn and Mohsin Abbas Haider, with music sung by Shani Arshad.

In a series of riveting scenes, a couple is shown attempting to escape the wrath of her family. In the end, their love is simply not enough.

Qureshi, who normally focuses on feature films, assembled a summertime crew of 60 to 70 people for a three-day film shoot. His choice of location was influenced by an unlikely source.

“I got my inspiration from ‘Mad Max,’” he said. “Though the story is very different, the landscape had a similar terrain. It was beautiful but barren.”

Qureshi said he worked hard on the visual aspects of the video.

“The meaning of the lyrics were very inspiring, and I wanted to tell a story,” he said. “I also wanted the images to connect with that story.”

‘FLOTSAM’ 

One man’s fascination with a band of rebellious seamen is transferred onto the screen in the visually stunning “Flotsam.”

Kjell Redal’s documentary delves into the lives of those who fish in kayaks in Miami. He said that when he initially encountered the practice, it quickly captured his imagination.

Redal, who grew up fly-fishing in Colorado, marveled at the cultural contrast.

“Miami is such a glitzy and glamorous city with big, shiny, white boats. Kayak-fishing is such a brutish pursuit,” he said.

With the assistance of cinematographer Josh Liberman, he documented this chase in gorgeous detail. They amassed a treasure trove of footage, including scenes featuring mahi-mahi and barracuda – but one thing was missing.

“We got a bunch of shots that we were super-happy with, but the one shot that I had in my mind that I think attracted a lot of people to the project is the sailfish,” Redal said. “These big, open-ocean pelagic fish next to a kayak was the kind of visual I was looking for.”

Not one to be put off by a challenge, he purchased a $15 mask-and-goggle set from a local tourist shop and a GoPro camera to seek out the desired footage.

“I ended up being so excited when I had the first sailfish on the line that I jumped into a whole pile of jellyfish, without any rash guard or anything and got the c*** stung out of me,” he said. “But I got the shots, and a lot of those are the main sailfish shots in the final project.”

Redal credited a dynamic behind-the-scenes team, which helped him in his production. You can go far with limited resources, he said, if you find the right people who are like-minded.

“The budget came completely out of my pocket and out of the generosity of people that have worked on this with me,” he said. “I’m pretty happy with what we’ve been able to come away with, and I know that wouldn’t have been possible if they didn’t have some kind of inherent excitement behind the subject matter of the film.”

‘THE APPOINTMENT’

“The Appointment” offers a peek into the bizarre happenings in the life of Henry Salt, a man hellbent on discovering why his diary reveals an upcoming rendezvous at a restaurant.

Once there, a surreal scene unfolds in which patrons are feasting on a glistening pile of squid and a disemboweled rodent, while waiters walk by with an entire Zebra on a stick.

“It’s a little bit of a rollercoaster ride,” admitted Natalie Musteata, who produced the film. Alexandre Singh, a visual artist, served as the movie’s writer and director.

“We come from a world of art, and since this is our first film, we were trying to make something that would keep audiences in their seats,” Musteata added. “This is a feast for the audience’s eyes. Every frame is full of details.”

Singh and Musteata noted there were both positives and negatives to being first-time filmmakers.

“Sometimes it can be frustrating because we will come up with much simpler, quicker and more effective ways to do things and we would get quite a lot of pushback,” Singh said.

But then, being new at the process did offer a whole new perspective, Musteata said.

“Because we were not tied to conventions of filmmaking, we were able to innovate, and that led to something that was a little quirky or unusual,” she said.

And as for the restaurant scene, Singh said the meals pictured are a little closer to reality than one might think.

“The kind of food that’s displayed, it may feel strange, but in reality that’s what Western cuisine is like,” he said.

“Except for the rat!” chimed in Musteata.

 

WHAT: Miami short Film Festival

WHEN: Nov. 13-15

WHERE: The live festival will take place at Miami Beach Botanical Garden,  2000 Convention Center Drive, Miami Beach, and Deering Estate, 16701 SW 72nd Ave., Miami. The virtual screening 

COST: The live festival costs $15 per person, $25 for single-ticket opening night gala (includes welcome drink and popcorn), and $90 for a three-day pass. The virtual screenings cost $5 for a single film, $15 for a pre-selected block of films, and $29.99 for an all-access pass.

SPECIAL NOTICE: Starting Nov. 16, the 48 films that screened in the live festival will be available to view online through Nov. 23. Anyone who purchased a virtual pass (all-access or block) will also have access to these films. In addition, a new pass will be sold, only for these 48 films, for $19.99.

INFORMATION: Miamishortfilmfestival.com 

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

 

Actors’ Playhouse presents a simplified, streamed ‘Camelot’

From left, Nick Fitzer is Lancelot, Britt Michael Gordon is King Arthur and Kayleen Seidl is Guenevere in “Camelot” by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, adapted by David Arisco. (Photo courtesy of Actors’ Playhouse)

In our pandemic-altered world, “normal” life remains both a memory and a longed-for dream.

Going to a grand theater, being surrounded by hundreds of people taking in a classic musical? That’s one among many things we can’t safely do just yet. So we adapt, with artists creating digital content, and smaller audiences watching from the safety of their couches.

When the pandemic shutdown hit in March, Actors’ Playhouse artistic director David Arisco and his cast were already in technical rehearsals for their production of Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe’s beloved “Camelot.” In an instant, that “Camelot” vanished just like another of Lerner and Loewe’s musically mythologized places, “Brigadoon.”

The halted production at the Actors’ Playhouse at The Miracle Theater in Coral Gables was a more compact version of the 1960 original, with Lerner’s book (itself based on T.H. White’s “The Once and Future King”) adapted by David Lee; new orchestrations by Steve Orich; a slightly smaller, 11-member cast; and about an hour lopped off the show’s 3 ½-hour running time.

Soon enough, though, Arisco had a vision of how a streamed, song-driven version of “Camelot” could work. Working with the permission of Music Theatre International (MTI), Arisco further adapted the musical that became a cultural touchstone during President John F. Kennedy’s administration.

Propelled by 13 beautifully sung numbers, this “Camelot” keeps its focus on the musical’s tragic love triangle –  between idealistic King Arthur; his radiant queen, Guenevere; and his sublimely confident, dearest friend, Lancelot – and the way Arthur’s illegitimate son, Mordred, schemes to crush his kingdom.

Available through Oct. 25 on MTI’s streaming platform, ShowTix4U (accessible via the Actors’ Playhouse website), this version of the show has been abridged, adapted and directed by Arisco, with sound mixing and video editing by Shaun Mitchell, and musical direction/accompaniment by David Nagy. It stars the same actors who were just about to open the show at the Miracle Theatre in March: Britt Michael Gordon as King Arthur, Kayleen Seidl as Guenevere, Nick Fitzer as Lancelot, Sean Patrick Doyle as Mordred. Orlando Rodriguez appears briefly at the end as young Tom of Warwick, the boy charged by Arthur with sharing the story of the noble experiment that was Camelot.

Clocking in at a lean 80 minutes, this digital “Camelot” comes across as a first foray into a new way of working.

Arisco appears on camera to greet the audience, much as he would in a pre-curtain speech at The Miracle, offering tidbits about the adaptation. Then, with storytelling narration serving as a bridge between songs, “Camelot” unfolds.

Dressed in simple contemporary clothing and wearing an earbud, each actor worked solo against a plain neutral background. Although they’re sometimes seen singing together, they were never in the same room, and shots of Arthur using his Excalibur sword to knight Lancelot and young Tom involve editing trickery. Likewise, in scenes featuring two or three characters, the actors’ images pop up side by side.

Acting in this way involves a degree of difficulty. Nearly every shot is a closeup, so style and facial expressions land differently than they would on a stage in a large theater.

When Fitzer’s Lancelot first appears on camera, he’s so close that you can see his ring light reflected in the irises of his eyes. Some of Seidl’s reaction shots as Guenevere feature her broad, beautiful smile in moments that would seem to call for a little anguish.

Gordon exudes both warmth and deep sorrow as Arthur, though a streak on his wall and a briefly visible electrical outlet fleetingly pull focus. Miami native Doyle, who made his professional debut at age 10 at Actors’ Playhouse, is an actor with cut-glass cheekbones, Broadway credits and loads of TV experience. He knows how to work a camera, baby, and his Mordred is the most evil creature since Cruella de Vil.

Although Nagy’s keyboard accompaniment obviously can’t match even a small orchestra, the vocal performances are the most compelling reason to sample this “Camelot.”

Gordon properly radiates pre-wedding jitters as he sings, “I Wonder What the King Is Doing Tonight,” turns tender on “How To Handle a Woman,” and makes you feel the pull of Arthur’s vision as he sings the title song.

Seidl’s glorious, crystalline soprano voice can be both playful (“The Simple Joys of Maidenhood,” “The Lusty Month of May,” “What Do the Simple Folk Do?”) and pensive (“Before I Gaze at You Again,” “I Loved You Once in Silence”). Fitzer has fun with the narcissistic “C’est Moi,” then slays (as he should) with an aching “If Ever I Would Leave You,” and Doyle delivers Mordred’s nihilistic ditty, “The Seven Deadly Virtues,” with arch pleasure.

At the start of the 1960s, “Camelot” was a show-as-symbol, a metaphor for the most idealistic of a president’s dreams. This time around, the compact “Camelot,” though full of stirring music, is a placeholder for the day when artists and theater lovers can return to live performances.

 

WHAT: “Camelot” by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, adapted by David Arisco

WHEN: Ticketholders get 48-hour access, through Oct. 25

WHERE: Streamed performance on Music Theatre International’s ShowTix4U platform, available through the Actors’ Playhouse website.

COST: $30 (subscribers and ticketholders for the canceled live performance get free access)

MORE INFORMATION: Actorsplayhouse.org

 

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Rene Lavan is a star of stage, screen … and now Zoom

Actor Rene Lavan made his Broadway debut in late 2005 in “Latinologues.” (Photo courtesy of the artist)

Rene Lavan is an actor with range, charismatic sensitivity and the kind of evolutionary ability that buoys a long career.

The likelihood of achieving crossover success in such a glamorous world would probably have seemed unfathomable at the most dramatic moment of his young life in 1980. That’s when 11-year-old Rene Lavandera, his parents and younger brother Rey left Cuba for a new life in Miami during the Mariel boatlift.

Born in 1968 in Artemisa, southwest of Havana, Lavan spent each Sunday through Friday during his Cuban childhood at a school where ideological lessons, working the fields and military training constituted the curriculum. But on one memorable day, his parents tricked him into leaving school by saying his grandmother was in the hospital.

“They took a cab to the place you had to be to take the boat, and you had to be very discreet,” Lavan remembers, his voice growing thick with emotion. “The cab drove in front of my grandmother’s house. My dad was crying because he couldn’t say goodbye.”

Though Lavan spoke not a word of English when his family arrived in Miami, he worked hard to learn the language and lose his accent, becoming an on-air radio talent at Power 96 (WPOW-FM) by the late ’80s.

“I submerged myself in Miami’s English-speaking culture,” says Lavan, who discovered his passion for acting thanks to Miami Senior High drama teacher Marty Hancock, still a friend today. He transitioned into the innovative high school-college Performing and Visual Arts Center (PAVAC) magnet program, then graduated from Miami’s New World School of the Arts in 1988.

Success came quickly to the bilingual artist.

His lengthy resume includes: soap opera and telenovela hottie (“One Life To Live,” “Morelia,” “Enamorada” and “Maria Belen”); breakout movie star (director Leon Ichaso’s tragic “Azucar Amarga”); Hollywood actor (“Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights” and “Christmas with the Kranks”); and TV performer (“CSI: Miami,” “The Glades,” “Burn Notice,” “Every Witch Way” and “Hialeah”). Most recently, Lavan appeared in the 2020 indie movie, “El Ultimo Balsero,” which is now making the rounds of film festivals.

Although Lavan’s work in theater has been less frequent, he made his Broadway debut in late 2005 in “Latinologues.” During the long Miami run of Vanessa Garcia’s hit immersive play, “The Amparo Experience,” in 2019, he stepped into the roles of both Havana Club Rum scion Ramon Arechabala and Bacardi sales manager Juan Prado.

Now the actor is trying theater of a different sort. He’s starring alongside Tim Creavin in a recorded Zoom reading of “Borrowed,” the playwriting debut of Broadway producer Jim Kierstead. The play will begin streaming Oct. 22 on Broadway Virtual’s YouTube channel, with part of the $10 ticket price benefiting the nonprofit Humanity Project.

Plans are also in the works for a post-election “official” showing of “Borrowed” at Drive-In at the Fair, a movie-concert venue in a parking lot on the Miami-Dade Youth Fairgrounds.

Produced by Kierstead’s frequent producing partner, William Fernandez, along with Adriana Gaviria and George Cabrera, the virtual “Borrowed” reading was directed by Conor Bagley, Creavin’s former Yale University classmate.

Most recently, Fernandez, Kierstead, Gaviria and Bagley teamed up for the Broadway On Demand streamed reading of “Jenna and the Whale” by South Florida playwrights Garcia (“Amparo”) and Jake Cline. On Oct. 15, Fernandez and Kierstead were among the groups of producers who received 2020 Tony Award nominations – best play for Matthew Lopez’s two-part “The Inheritance,” and best revival for Terrence McNally’s “Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.”

“Borrowed” takes place in a bungalow on the New Jersey side of the Hudson River, near the George Washington Bridge. David (Lavan), a lonely older artist whose face bears the scars of cancer surgery, has connected with the younger Justin (Creavin) online, inviting him over with a sexual connection in mind. But things quickly go south, and after David refuses to let Justin leave, their encounter evolves into an intense evening of shared histories and, perhaps, the beginnings of healing.

Kierstead, the show’s multifaceted author, has a master’s degree in computer science, and another in clinical and counseling psychology. He got into producing theater 20 years ago and has had an increasingly active Broadway and regional career. His original impulse to try playwriting came after he saw a play on Broadway that he thought was just plain bad.

“I wrote ‘Borrowed’ on long flights to California and Chicago when I was producing ‘Kinky Boots,’” says Kierstead, who originally put the pseudonym “Jack Allen” on the script because he didn’t want those with whom he shared it to be reluctant to criticize it or influenced into producing it. “When people read it, they had two reactions. They asked, ‘This didn’t happen to you, did it?’ (It didn’t.) Or they thought it was so haunting.”

The character of David is a Vietnam veteran who married, raised a troubled son and later embraced his sexual orientation. Though the role wasn’t written specifically to be played by a Latino actor, Kierstead calls Lavan “really amazing.”

“He’s very warm, very kind and obviously a very good actor … He’s got to walk a fine line, being threatening without being too scary, and vulnerable without being too vulnerable.”

Fernandez, who along with Kierstead and Cabrera was a producer of “Amparo,” got to know Lavan when the actor joined the cast of the immersive show and suggested him for the role of David.

“René is a very naturalistic performer who can be both tender and frightening,” Fernandez says. “On film and in person, he comes across as very warm … He’s a subtle actor. He plays very well against Tim, who goes from calm to explosive.”

The New York-based Creavin pinpoints what his fellow actor brings to “Borrowed.”

“David is deeply hurt and tormented, and that comes out as rage, violence and abuse. It could be one note. You need someone you can empathize with, even though the character does awful things,” Creavin says. “René is compelling to watch … It’s hard to stay mad at him – he has an undeniable charm, which adds another layer and makes it a three-dimensional character. I would kill to see René in that role onstage.”

Gaviria, who will lead a “Borrowed” talkback at 8 p.m. Oct. 22, was moved by what Creavin and Lavan brought to their roles in the play’s filmlike reading.

“There’s a playfulness when you see Tim portraying Justin, because that’s how the character has learned to survive,” she says. “With René, especially when there are deep emotions involved, he just jumps right in. That’s gold right there. He’s a very open, warm, intelligent actor. In someone else’s hands, David wouldn’t be as appealing. You wouldn’t care as much.”

Although the “Borrowed” reading is among his newer projects, Lavan remains quite busy generating widely varied work for himself and others. And he has become quite the Zoom master.

The actor, who lives in Fort Lauderdale with wife Amanda and their 13-year-old identical twin sons, Luca and Julian, is a managing partner and cofounder of Elevado Entertainment, which he describes as “a boutique production company” he runs with friends Don Alan, Claudia Murray and Chad Steinberg.

“There are now so many avenues. Content is king. If you produce, you can’t be denied,” he says.

During the pandemic, Elevado has kept Lavan busy recording legal depositions via Zoom. But mainly, the partners intend to create work for themselves and the vast South Florida talent pool in front of and behind the camera. Lavan has been in both positions, with a list of producing, directing and hosting credits.

Plenty of Lavan’s varied work has been in mainstream entertainment, but he has also been a risk-taker, particularly when a project and his own history intersected, as with “Azucar Amarga.” In his breakout movie, he played Gustavo, a fervent supporter of Fidel Castro’s government until the experiences of his family and the woman he loves lead to his disillusionment, with tragic results.

“I was doing ‘One Life to Live’ when I got a call from Leon Ichaso about making a movie set in Cuba … When I read the script, it was in English, and it was so powerful – I thought, ‘I need to do this,’” says Lavan.

Ultimately shot in Spanish and in gritty black-and-white, the movie was made in just over a week with locations in the Dominican Republic and New York. On set, Levan discovered that among the props were history books brought from Cuba. They brought back memories of his pre-Mariel boyhood.

“It’s one thing to feel you were betrayed,” he says. “It’s another to have the evidence.”

Lavan hasn’t been back to Cuba since he and his family left in 1980. But last year’s “Amparo,” his first experience with immersive theater, became a kind of emotional passport connecting past and present.

“To see a grandson walk his grandparents through ‘the revolution,’ it bridged the generations. You saw what it was like to lose your freedom like that. The story was magic, beautiful … And that final monologue, in the middle of the audience, was like a hybrid of film and theater,” he says. “I read it. I lived it. It was in my skin. Every night was such a soul-cleansing experience. In doing all those shows, I must have cried 5,000 gallons of tears.”

WHAT: “Borrowed,” a virtual reading of a play by Jim Kierstead

WHEN: Oct. 22-29

WHERE: Broadway Virtual’s YouTube channel; guests will receive an emailed link.

COST: $10; part of the proceeds will benefit The Humanity Project.

MORE INFORMATION: Producer Adriana Gaviria will host a talkback with producer William Fernandez, playwright Jim Kierstead, director Conor Bagley and actors Rene Lavan and Tim Creavin at 8 p.m. Oct. 22. If you buy a ticket for the Oct. 22 reading, you can access both the show and the talkback. Get information and tickets at 3feo.com.

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