GableStage reaches out virtually to engage diverse audiences

“Engage@GableStage,” featuring works by a diverse group of artists of all ages, will run each Friday from July 31 to Sept. 25. All of the virtual pieces will remain as free content on the company’s website. (Image courtesy of Alejandro Martin)

Like so many performing arts organizations, GableStage found itself facing an unplanned hurdle when the COVID-19 pandemic forced the company to shelve its production of Arthur Miller’s “The Price” in mid-March.

That hurdle turned into a crossroads on April 16 when Joseph Adler, the company’s award-winning producing artistic director since 1998, passed away after an 18-month battle with pancreatic cancer.

Added to the major loss of Adler, an outspoken artist whose company reflected his eclectic taste and passion for deeply engaging theater, GableStage’s planned move to a smaller, state-of-the-art version of the Coconut Grove Playhouse continues as its own contentious drama. And the remainder of its current season, which was to have run into the fall, has been scrapped.

All pose undeniable challenges.

Even so, GableStage’s board and its chairman, Steven M. Weinger, along with general manager Isabel Almaraz and the theater’s staff, are continuing to connect with artists and audiences via a world premiere digital project titled “Engage@GableStage.”

Administered by director Margaret M. Ledford, who produced GableStage’s version of Joseph McDonough’s “Ordinary Americans” with Adler, “Engage@GableStage” awarded grants of $1,500 to $3,000 to “thought-provoking and engaging” projects by a diverse group of artists of all ages: men and women; straight and LGBTQ creators; Black, Latinx and White writers, performers and composers; people with a long GableStage history and others who had never worked there.

“Eight panelists chose the projects,” says Ledford, who serves as artistic director of Miami’s City Theatre. “They had to be high-quality, high-caliber mini-productions dealing with where we are as a human race right now.”

Virtual content, which has been more expansively explored during this pause in live performances, is its own art form, but Ledford thinks it can help sustain artists and organizations as it fills a gap.

“Although we can’t be together in a room, this gives you the opportunity to find a connection, even though it’s not the connection. I know some people are having Facebook and YouTube watch parties because they’re seeking that sense of community, that synergy,” she says.

The eclectic projects will premiere at 7 p.m. each Friday from July 31 to Sept. 25 in a special section of the company’s website, Gablestage.org/engagegablestage. All of the virtual pieces will remain as free content on the site.

On the Monday before a piece premieres, the site will feature a video of Ledford interviewing the creator or creators behind that week’s offering.

A special tribute piece, “Sight & Sound” by George Schiavone and Matt Corey, will kick off the project on July 31. Schiavone, a photographer and actor who was a close friend of Adler’s, narrates a montage of GableStage production photos he shot over the theater’s long history, and composer-sound designer Corey has blended new original music with the music he created for numerous productions.

“The form is kind of Ken Burns,” notes Schiavone, who was in rehearsal to play Gregory Solomon, the antique furniture dealer in “The Price,” when the pandemic hit. “It has a mixed purpose. Although it exhibits the photography and Matt’s music, it also provides a look at the wide range of Joseph’s curiosity.

“These sessions afforded me some income as well as the fun of working ‘with’ Joseph again. He always had a very good visual sense, and we practically finished each other’s sentences as we worked … I feel as though part of me left with Joe. The thought that I can’t call, text or email him for an opinion – or vice versa – anymore leaves me bereft and very sad.”

Kunya Rowley’s “My Black Body Is,” premieres Aug. 7. The piece blends different art forms with the perspectives of Rebecca L. Hargrove, Ace Anderson, Rodney Jones II and Rowley, who is a New World School of the Arts graduate and artistic director of the multidisciplinary performance series, “Hued Songs.”

As the artists navigate “walking through a world in Black bodies,” Rowley says, the goal of the piece “is to highlight the trauma and the pain, because it’s very much real, but to also highlight the joy, the light and the beauty of being Black, and to celebrate our blackness unapologetically.”

Premiering Aug. 14 is “Intimate/Internet,” a piece by recent Florida International University grad Brandon Urrutia and director-playwright Michael Yawney, an associate professor in FIU’s theater department. The piece is about a man who has moved back to his parents’ house during the pandemic and wants to explore relationships online – but the WiFi in his bedroom is bad, and the décor is all about “Star Wars.” His delicate, personal search for love gets complicated when he discovers that the only decent connection is in his mom’s dominion, the kitchen, and she’s usually only a few feet away.

Jessica Farr and Caleb Scott, the playwright-actor duo who created and cohost the Florida Man-inspired “Worst Place on Earth” podcast, are represented by “A Florida Story,” which premieres Aug. 21. Performed by Vanessa Elise, Chad Atkins and the two playwrights, the piece features characters in distinct environments.

“The audience will be meeting four strangers as they recount experiences from their past; gradually, perhaps imperceptibly, all of these stories blend together into a symphony,” Farr and Scott say of their project, which interweaves visual storytelling, performances, archival footage and a new score by Miami’s Afrobeta.

Working in this new way, the duo says, is worth exploring beyond the pandemic: “We should be asking ourselves all of the questions when it comes to presentation, form, content and engaging with audiences. Everything is uncharted territory. We don’t have to return to our old modes of operating. We need new voices, and those new voices should reflect both our community and the radically changing landscape of our environment.”

Joshua Hernandez, who got his first professional role in 2018’s “Admissions” at GableStage, premieres “Pretty Boy Josh” on Aug. 28. He transformed an early draft of a script for a solo show into something he describes as “performance art theater-meets-documentary film.” The piece explores “my experience growing up as a closeted queer Latino man in Miami, my battle with ulcerative colitis, and the possibility of living an optimistic queer life,” he says, adding that his dream is to develop it into a fully realized piece of theater.

Rachel Finley’s “American Bullet,” which premieres Sept. 4, is one piece of a solo show titled, “America Burning.” An actor-playwright and drama professor, Finley originally wrote “American Bullet” as a poem a few months before the 2018 school at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where her son was a student.

“The anguish of waiting to know who survived and who was lost, the pain of attending funerals of my former students and my son’s friends and his wrestling coach, participating in the protests rallying for common-sense gun control … were all a lot to process,” Finley says.

“The difficulty of processing this moved me to revisit and expand the poem into a performance piece that grapples not only with the shooting at my son’s school but America’s obsession with guns and martyrdom. I found that I couldn’t address this, as a Black woman, without also being influenced by the ways in which that obsession has specifically impacted my ancestors and contemporaries.”

Carbonell Award-winning actor Gregg Weiner, a veteran of 17 GableStage productions, has been using pandemic isolation as a time for taking stock and reinvention. His virtual piece, “Reboot,” which debuts Sept. 11, is the result.

“‘Reboot’ is a dark comedy about a man approaching the midpoint of his life and finding that his expectations for it have not come to fruition. He feels out of place, out of touch, and is losing control of his mental health,” he says. “Mental health, societal expectations and our ever-changing world all rear their heads in it.”

British-born actor-author Colin McPhillamy – whose resume includes roles on Broadway, in London and in numerous regional theaters including several in South Florida – has created a piece titled, “Stars in the Bard,” which premieres Sept. 18. In it, he interweaves material about William Shakespeare, astrology of the late 16th and early 17th centuries – and GableStage’s late guiding star, Adler.

The series winds up Sept. 25 with “1/1000” by New World School of the Arts alum Joshua Jean-Baptiste. Creator of the digital series “Grown” with fellow Haitian-American artist Edson Jean, Jean-Baptiste performed in GableStage’s “Actually” in late 2018.

His piece is a work of science-fiction “that came out of my own personal struggles with quarantine,” he says. “The project follows Melvin, a cynical tech worker who has unplugged from his responsibilities and submitted to a nihilist outlook … Instead of facing himself, he resorts to a mystical piece of technology that grants him access to change certain factors of his life – only to realize that new circumstances come with newer problems.”

Like his fellow grant winners, Jean-Baptiste welcomes the chance to continue making art in an altered world.

Artists, he says, are being forced to “think outside the box, within the box – the boxes of our houses, our Zoom calls, our phones. Creativity (and capitalism) have a funny way of driving innovation. I think ‘Engage’ is doing the smart thing and aligning with the present. This bridges the time by giving audiences a temperature check on the theater scene. It reminds them that creatives are still here, still chipping away at ideas and still ready to tell compelling stories.”

“Engage@GableStage” content will be available for free at Gablestage.org/engagegablestage at 7 p.m. each Friday from July 31 to Sept. 25. Visit the website for the schedule and more information.

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Oolite Arts’ Close Quarters Commissions reveals slices of life in times of quarantine

Pamela Longsword in “Kairi During Covid.” (Photo courtesy of Pamela Longsword)

The question: In this time of coronavirus, when creativity is under forced constraint because of social distancing and other restrictions, how can you take that concept and use it as an advantage, if you must, to make art?

The answer: Make films that reveal slices of life in Miami during quarantine.

Oolite Arts selected 12 Miami filmmakers and gave each $1,000 and two weeks to create works, up to three minutes long, using the limited resources of life amid COVID-19. The result was the Close Quarters Commissions, an online, micro-film festival that will be shown at 7 p.m. July 15.

“We wanted to use film to demonstrate what could be accomplished at this moment with the onset of COVID-19, to say nothing of the protests that followed,” says Jason Fitzroy Jeffers, Oolite’s cinematic arts manager. “We wanted to encourage filmmakers to keep working and help them to continue, even if it meant them creating from the confines of their home.”

After all, he adds, from its inception, the Cinematic Arts Program at Oolite Arts “has been about elevating Miami’s film community by tapping into its resourcefulness.”

Miami documentary filmmaker Christopher Lopez remembers receiving the Oolite Arts email asking if he wanted to be part of Close Quarters. At the time, Lopez says he was still going out and trying to film documentaries. Then he realized, as the quarantine was intensifying, that being out and about filming probably wasn’t going to be sustainable.

“Just before Close Quarters, I was exploring this notion of making movies while at home. It all lined up when Oolite contacted me,” says Lopez, who had been fascinated by the 2018 Sundance winning movie “Searching,” the Aneesh Chaganty thriller that is told entirely on a computer screen.

A scene from Christopher Lopez’s “LOL_onlymiami.” (Photo courtesy of Christopher Lopez)

Lopez’s microfilm, “LOL_onlymiami,” records 24 hours in the life of a Miami social media Instagram account during the first weekend of the Black Lives Matter protests. It takes place on a Saturday in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic while peaceful demonstrations in downtown Miami take a turn for the worst. Police cars burn, protesters hurl objects at police, and police retaliate with tear gas and rubber bullets.

“Chris definitely taps into the feeling of the moment,” Jeffers says

Lopez says he realized that some of the best footage wasn’t on television news, but rather on social media. He became obsessed with getting everything he could download from social media accounts and stayed awake for 48 hours to make sure he didn’t miss a thing. He says he snagged 100 to 150 social media moments, everything from looters breaking into Bayside Marketplace to store owners protecting their stores with AK-47s.

“I started viewing my job as an archivist,” he says.

He was under a deadline because the average Instagram content lifespan is 48 hours. His microfilm captures the essence of the moment. “Social media was this source of news, but it was also this really absurd form of gross entertainment,” says Lopez.

He noted the odd juxtaposition: “There are these stories coming up on social about the protests, and then there are ads in between for face masks, and then someone else posting about a new tea that they made or showing workouts at a gym. It was very dystopian.”

Another powerful commission is Pamela Longsword’s “Kairi During COVID,” a three-minute look as the filmmaker gives birth during the pandemic.

Originally envisioned as a personal video diary, the piece ends up capturing the trials and tribulations of giving birth during the COVID-19 crisis, showing “how integrated this whole process has become into the intimacy of a person’s life,” she says.

Longsword wanted the film to include every bit of the hospital experience. One challenge she had to consider: “How am I going to direct during labor?”

Valerie Brooks in “Never Eat Soggy Waffles.” (Photo courtesy of Valerie Brooks)

She told her partner, Thiago Souza, who would be doing the shooting, that he had to keep rolling no matter what happened – even if it was just for audio, she says.

A moment etched in her memory was when she was given her baby to hold for the first time: “Seeing my daughter and not being able to kiss her because there was a mask on my face will forever affect me,” she says. “Now I don’t only have the memory of living it; I have documentation of it.”

A nurse in the shot eventually pulls her mask down, albeit in a sterile, down-to-business way, so she can kiss the baby.

There are other times documented in the film that she treasures – some poignantly intimate. In one scene, in the stark hospital bathroom, Souza bends down to wipe her blood with a white towel, the residuals of her emergency Cesarean section. In the next scene, the new father bonds with his baby as he feeds Kairi a bottle in a low-lit room.

The coldness of COVID-19 comes through what’s supposed to be one of the most joyous times in life. For example, she says, “the hospital staff is showing me how to breastfeed and feed the baby and they are all wearing masks and gloves.”

She says what she learned about her craft through this experience is to “capture life’s moments as natural as possible.”

Other films in the Close Quarters Commissions include:

Ronald Baez: “Buscando” (“Searching”)

Rachel Benjamin: “Day in Life”

Valerie Brooks: “Never Eat Soggy Waffles”

Alexa Caravia: “Nagasaki”

Juan Castaneda: “Echo Chamber”

Avram Dodson: “Mommy, Will You Play With Me?”

Anton Forbes: “Mad Chef”

Frantzy Moreau: “New Normal”

Carmen Pelaez: “Caridad Y Gallo”

Gabriela Serra: “Lil Haiti 115 NE 76 Calle”

Together, the films have special meaning.

“One thing we couldn’t predict was how viewing all the films together would really chart the emotional landscape of the moment we are living in right now,” Jeffers says. “Watching them together really churns through the confusion of all of that. And, as good as any individual film is in the program, I think together they are greater than the sum of their parts.”

 What: Oolite Arts presents Close Quarters Commissions, an online, micro-film festival

When: 7 p.m. July 15, followed by a question-and-answer session with the filmmakers, moderated by Jason Fitzroy Jeffers

Where: Online; RSVP at Oolitearts.org/closequarters

Cost: Free

Information: Oolitearts.org/event/closequarters

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Playwriting pair’s whale of a tale gets a big-time virtual reading

The “Jenna and the Whale” team give a wave upon wrapping up filming of the virtual reading, which will be available through Broadway On Demand on June 30. (Photo courtesy of Adriana Gaviria)

Musicals are typically the creation of composer-lyricist-book writer teams. On the other hand – although producing a play is a collaborative experience – dramas and comedies are nearly always the work of a solo playwright.

“Jenna and the Whale,” which will get a high-profile virtual reading on Broadway On Demand at 5:30 p.m. June 30, is that rare exception: It’s a piece created by a pair of playwrights, Vanessa Garcia and Jake Cline.

Garcia was the author behind the long-running, immersive Miami hit, “The Amparo Experience.” Cline was part of the South Florida Sun Sentinel team awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service for its illuminating and ongoing coverage of the deadly shooting rampage at Parkland’s Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The two were paired creatively by William “Willie” Fernandez, the former Sun Sentinel managing editor who is now a New York producer and Zoetic Stage board member.

Fernandez, his Broadway United/Broadway Virtual producing partner, Jim Kierstead, and producer-director Conor Bagley were among the many Broadway producers of Matthew Lopez’s two-part “The Inheritance,” which won the 2020 Drama Desk Award for “Outstanding Play.” 

All three are now involved with “Jenna and the Whale” – with Fernandez teaming up the playwrights, Kierstead making the deal with Broadway On Demand, and Bagley directing the virtual reading. Also producing is Adriana Gaviria, whose New York-based arts/theater initiatives North Star Projects and The Sol Project will benefit from the reading.

“Jenna and the Whale” mixes metaphor, realism, sorrow, humor and hope in a kind of dramatic fugue. It begins in the sloshing belly of a whale, a la the biblical story of Jonah and the whale. Surfer Jenna (Dianne Garriga) winds up there after going out on her board despite horrendous conditions. Inside the massive creature, she meets Jonah (Gabriel Bonilla), who breaks the news that he has been there for three years. 

Memory is easily and quickly erased in that dank, dark environment. Still, Jonah soon reminds Jenna of someone – her boyfriend, Patrick, who was lost to the ocean three years earlier under mysterious circumstances.

“Jenna and the Whale” co-author Vanessa Garcia at the opening night of her previous play, “The Amparo Experience.” (Photo courtesy of Vanessa Garcia)

In the course of the play, we meet Patrick’s mother, Rita (Orlagh Cassidy), a surf shop owner, and his complicated/charismatic sister, Coco (Rebecca Jimenez); as well as Jenna’s mother, Lynn (Rachel Pickup); and Deputy Tyler (Melissa Ann Hubicsak), a by-the-book type who finds Coco intriguing.  

From an earlier pre-pandemic staged reading at Miami New Drama on Miami Beach, the playwrights got a sense of elements that needed changing, which they did before work progressed on the virtual reading.

“We learned a lot, but we had way too little time,” Garcia says. “The play is a fugue, but you need time to work on it or the actors get stressed out.”

Having worked with Garcia on “Amparo” and with Cline at the Sun Sentinel (and on his still-evolving first play, “Purple Hearts”), Fernandez thought the playwrights would be professionally compatible.

“They have similar styles. They both have a gift for dialogue and heartfelt writing. And they’re both the nicest people – you meet them and fall in love with them,” he says.

Cline and Garcia hit it off creatively when they followed up on the producer’s suggestion and met for drinks and conversation in July 2019 at The Mighty, a Miami bar on Coral Way, where Cline’s book club gathers. They swapped stories about what they’re each juggling.

For Garcia, there’s a Ruben Rabasa solo show; a second novel; several screenplays; an adaptation of Carlos Eire’s “Waiting for Snow in Havana;” and the happy addition of a baby girl to her family.

For Cline, there are freelance pieces for The Atlantic and The Washington Post; a fellowship in the Playwright Development Program run by Miami-Dade County’s Department of Cultural Affairs; and ongoing work on plays, short stories and novellas. Cline was previously editor of ArtburstMiami.com and is now publications director at Miami’s Arsht Center for the Performing Arts.

“Jake talked about things he was working on, including two novellas and a play. He told me the stories of all of them, and in one there was a whale that got beached,” Garcia says.

Playwright Jake Cline, co-author of “Jenna and the Whale,” is an avid surfer. (Photo courtesy of Ray Orozco)

“They were all set in Dunes Beach [a fictional Florida coastal town with good surfing], and the whale was the unifying factor,” Cline adds. “I’d been thinking about beachside towns. In my play, a man and a woman find themselves in the belly of a whale.”

Garcia sensed connections among the stories.

“As he talked, I saw them thread together. I wrote it all down and thought, ‘He’ll either hate it or we can work to make it one play,’” she says. “It started to grow. I could see it.”

Of their collaboration, Garcia observes, “You can tell if it will work right away.  Either it will flow, or it will fall apart. With Jake, it was flow, flow, flow.”

Cline put together a playlist for inspiration. The songs by varied groups and artists (The Velvet Underground, Florence and the Machine, Sharon Van Etten, Laura Marling and others) aren’t in the play, but they’re character-specific, and both playwrights listened to them while crafting the script.  

“The entire time, I felt we were on the same wavelength,” says Cline, an avid surfer.

The recorded Zoom reading on June 30, which will benefit the nonprofit North Star Projects (using the arts live and virtually to build community) and The Sol Project (an initiative to produce the work of Latinx playwrights), has been staged and edited by Bagley. The 2016 Yale University grad already has a string of New York and regional credits as both a director and producer, and he directed several of the entries in the virtual Miami Monologues series for the Arsht Center’s Arsht@Home.

“When I first got ‘Jenna and the Whale,’ I couldn’t put it down,” Bagley says. “I thought it was one of the best new plays I’ve read. The two playwrights were writing in a unified voice … I was really drawn to the story of a girl struggling with grief and finding her way in a tough world.”

Of Garcia and Cline, Bagley says, “They’re very poetic writers with a supreme sense of beauty … The characters, five women and one man, all play such an integral role in the plot. Vanessa and Jake have a real great sense of both silly and dark humor, of levity and seriousness.”

Bagley likes the fact that the play doesn’t definitively answer what is and isn’t real, that it mixes imagination and reality. 

Although he, like everyone else in theater, longs for a return to live performance, he thinks giving current theater fans and potential ones a virtual taste of new works is a good thing.

Producer Fernandez loves learning about scripts from staged readings, and he thinks the Zoom model has a future even after the pandemic ends.

“It’s a great tool,” he says of the medium’s potential for sparking future productions. “Not every producer is based in New York. You film it, and people all over the place can watch it.”

“We weren’t sure it would work on Zoom, but it does. I think it’s a really good way to get it out there,” Garcia says.

Cline adds that he’s happy that, four months into this altered existence, arts lovers have become so accustomed to watching performances and readings online.

And yet, says Garcia as she looks who-knows-how-far into the future, “I’ll be very excited to be in a live space again. Ooooh, it’s gonna be nice!”

What: “Jenna and the Whale” benefit reading; a discussion with the playwrights and director will follow the initial presentation of the reading. The play will remain on the platform for several days.

When: 5:30 p.m. June 30

Where: Broadwayondemand.com 

Cost: $8

For tickets and more information: Northstarprojects.org 

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Amid BLM efforts, movie screenings aim to help ‘educate people to action’

O Cinema’s free virtual film series, created to invite conversation about racial equality and social justice, wraps up with “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am,” which chronicles the legendary storyteller’s life through her own voice and through interviews with others. (Photo courtesy of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders) 

Kareem Tabsch makes a valid point about how movies can provide a window to understanding concepts and cultures.

“Films are meant to educate, entertain and inspire,” the co-founder of Miami’s O Cinema says. “Sometimes, they do all three.”

When the killing of George Floyd on May 25 sparked protests throughout the country about racial inequality and social justice, Tabsch knew it was vital for his nonprofit, independent cinema to become part of the conversation.

“Not only to be part of the conversation but to be part of making lasting, substantive change,” he says. “How can we take the power of film so we can push this discussion forward and create real activism? How can we educate people to action?”

In partnership with the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, O Cinema worked with Magnolia Pictures to put together a series of virtual film showings available at magnoliapictures.com/knightfoundationseries, selecting works that speak to systemic inequality and, in a way, serve as blueprints for effecting change.

“We talked to our friends at the Knight Foundation and explained to them the vision of showing films that could really contextualize the experience of Black America and make it free and available to everyone,” says Tabsch.

With the seed planted in Miami, the Knight Foundation felt that there was a greater impact the series could have in other communities, so they found partners to share the same model in other cities including Akron, Charlotte, Detroit and Philadelphia.

“Educating ourselves is an ongoing process,” says Priya Sircar, the Knight Foundation’s director/arts. “Watching these films is one way we can connect with the issue of racial inequality — both intellectually and emotionally — so that we’re better prepared to engage in the discussions locally, nationally and even internationally.”

The series featured “I Am Not Your Negro” on June 7 and “Whose Streets?” on June 14 — and it culminates on June 21 with Miami-born director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders’ film, “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am.”

The biopic, which premiered locally at the Miami Film Festival in March 2019, chronicles the legendary storyteller’s life through her own voice as well as interviews with more than a dozen others. It is also an exploration of race, Black history and the human condition.

“Toni had an understanding of the issues that we are all beginning to talk about very openly today 40 years ago. She wrote from a Black perspective with pride,” Greenfield-Sanders says.

Morrison’s words illustrate the challenges of being a Black, female writer in a time dominated by white, male authors. She conveys her growing years in Lorain, Ohio, and her place in the world as a Black woman who moved to New York and became the editor at a publishing company. There are perspectives on her writings and her personal impact from interviews with personalities such as activist Angela Davis, photographer Fran Lebowitz and Oprah Winfrey, who turned Morrison’s novel, “Beloved,” into a feature film.

Toni Morrison and Miami-born director Timothy Greenfield-Sanders during the shooting of “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am.” (Photo courtesy of Magnolia Pictures)

Morrison is the only person in the film who speaks directly into the camera; others interviewed are shown looking off to the left or right side. It was a risky choice, admits Greenfield-Sanders, because it isn’t the common technique. His background as a photographer was what gave him the idea and it worked.

“It made Toni the center of the film, and it made it powerful,” he says.

When she tells the moviegoer directly about her determination to write without oppression, it’s thought-provoking and powerful. “Toni’s whole mission was to eliminate the white gaze, as she calls it. She talks about the little white man sitting on your shoulder,” says Greenfield-Sanders.

Says Morrison in the film: “So, the first thing I had to do was to eliminate white gaze … the little white man that sits on your shoulder and checks out everything you do and say. So, I wanted to knock him off, and you’re free.”

Despite being white, Greenfield-Sanders says he knows a thing or two about the white gaze from his own experience growing up in Miami. In 1953, his mother, Ruth Greenfield, founded Miami’s Fine Arts Conservatory, which is considered by historians to be the first interracial arts school in Florida. Greenfield, now 96, still lives in the neighborhood of Spring Garden.

“I went to clarinet classes in an integrated music school, which was unheard of in the 1950s,” says Greenfield-Sanders, a graduate of Ransom Everglades School in Coconut Grove. “I was always conscious of the segregation in Miami and how it shouldn’t be that way. My parents were blacklisted because of their political views. I think you are formed in some way by your upbringing – you either resist it or you learn from it.”

These are the kinds of conversations Tabsch hopes will come out of watching Greenfield-Sanders’ film.

“We all have a lane that we exist in, and this is a lane where cinema can help incite change. This is the birth of where all this came from – activism through art,” says Tabsch. “And this movie is just a great one to end on. We have to effect change, but we also have to create more spaces of Black America and where black storytellers can be told.”

“When Liberty Burns” about Miami’s McDuffie riots 40 years ago, gets an encore virtual screening by the Miami Film Festival on June 19. (Photo courtesy of Miami Film Festival)

‘When Liberty Burns’

The lane that North Miami filmmaker Dudley Alexis lives in — and where his documentary “When Liberty Burns,” which the Miami Film Festival is showing on Juneteenth, comes from — is a personal place.

“A friend of mine got into an altercation with a police officer on the highway,” he said. That friend was a 31-year-old cab driver named Junior Prosper, who in 2015 was shot and killed by police after a struggle on Interstate 95.

A few weeks later, Alexis said, he began researching policing in Miami. “It’s not like this was the first time I had thought about this issue, but it was the first time it hit so close to home.”

His research led him to the race riots in Liberty City, which happened 40 years ago on May 18, 1980, after four white officers were acquitted in the 1979 beating death of Arthur McDuffie. 

“As someone who grew up in Miami, people never really told me about that,” he said.

It took Alexis more than three years to make the documentary, which won the 2020 Knight Made in MIA Feature Film Award in March at the Miami Film Festival. 

The festival is now presenting a virtual encore performance of “When Liberty Burns” at miamifilmfestival.com/when-liberty-burns-online-screening on June 19, known as Juneteenth, a day that recognizes the end of slavery in the United States.

When asked how “When Liberty Burns” fits into the context of the current Black Lives Matter movement despite his chronicling of events that happened 40 years ago, he says: “This film doesn’t focus on the riots or the protests, but the why – the why it happened. And looking at it now brings it all to the forefront. It has made me realize even more how we keep revisiting this issue over and over again.”

What: “Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am”

When: Available for viewing from 2 p.m. June 21 through midnight June 22.

Where: magnoliapictures.com/knightfoundationseries

Cost: Free

More information: o-cinema.org

What: “When Liberty Burns”

When: Available starting at midnight June 19.

Where: miamifilmfestival.com/when-liberty-burns-online-screening

Cost: $13 for the general public, $10 for festival members. A portion of sales go to the Historic Hampton House Community Trust.

More information: miamifilmfestival.com

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Review: ‘Long Distance Affair’ perfect for anyone craving fresh, safe theater experience

Ángel Perabá performs “The Announcement,” in the Madrid performance of “Long Distance Affair.” (Photo courtesy of Juggerknot Theatre Co.)

Since the COVID-19 pandemic brought so many aspects of life to an abrupt halt in mid-March, those who create theater – and the people who love watching it – have explored myriad ways of staying connected: virtual readings, interviews, master classes, the streaming of previously recorded productions and more.

“Long Distance Affair,” a collection of six, new short plays set in a half-dozen cities around the world, becomes a master class of its own as it mines the possibilities of making artists and audiences forget there is a screen (and hundreds or thousands of miles) separating them.

Co-produced by New York’s PopUP Theatrics, which devised the concept in 2011, and Miami’s Juggerknot Theatre Co., “Long Distance Affair” is being performed multiple times per night (with some daytime performances) through May 30.

Immersive, intimate, thought-provoking and playful, the six pieces transport observers (via Zoom) into the home performance spaces of solo actors in Miami, Singapore, Paris, New York, Madrid and London.

In the first three cities, the artists perform for small groups (you’ll see a now-familiar Zoom grid). The New York, Madrid and London plays are one-on-one experiences, in which the actor might call you by name or mention something like the color of your hair or an imagined shared history.

The work is, of course, different from the in-person communal experience that is a core aspect of live theater. But by manipulating the camera, altering perspective and involving those who are watching, the “Long Distance Affair” directors and performers find fresh – and, yes, powerful – ways to connect.

Sabrina Sng fights back against bullying in Singapore as part of “Long Distance Affair.” (Photo courtesy of Juggerknot Theatre Co.)

This is a ticketed experience, but the cost is reasonable. Admission ranges from $11 for a one-city visit where you’re traveling with others to $40 for the trio of one-on-one plays – with 65 percent of ticket revenue going to the performers (the two theater companies share the rest).

Accessing “Long Distance Affair” is as easy as going to a Zoom meeting, with Miami-based navigator Michelle M. Lavergne and Singapore-based Henrik Cheng placing you in virtual holding rooms, then whisking you into your show.

Written by six different playwrights, the pieces vary in tone and style, but many touch on themes that resonate strongly as we have been in retreat – psychologically, physically – from the deadly danger posed by a pandemic. Loneliness, longing, faith and hope are threaded through the plays, as is the overarching desire to feel connected.

Juan C. Sanchez’s “Julieta,” set in the bedroom of a home in Miami’s Westchester neighborhood, reunites the playwright with performer June Raven Romero, who has appeared in two editions of Juggerknot’s popular immersive “Miami Motel Stories.” Directed by PopUP Theatrics co-founder Tamilla Woodard, the play features Romero as a droll young woman who is test-driving her lash-extension tutorial on her virtual visitors.

Romero’s Julieta Ferrer is new to the tutorial game, imprecise in her instructions, given to going off on tangents and funny as hell. Her very deep, brown eyes, the windows to Julieta’s soul, draw you into anecdotes about her star-crossed love life and the ache of loneliness. Sanchez, Romero and Woodard – finding a theatrical sweet spot as writer, muse and mediator – make the Miami segment of “Long Distance Affair” wholly satisfying.

Garret Jon Groenveld’s “Some Surprise” unfolds in a toddler’s bedroom in Paris during the wee small hours of the morning. Dad Danny (Paul Spera) enlists our help in a surprise virtual 30th birthday celebration for younger brother Dave, who is sheltering at home in the United States. Director Chari Arespacochaga and Spera keep the mood playful, yet the alterations and uncertainty of everyday life are omnipresent.

June Raven Romero offers a lash extension tutorial in Miami’s “Julieta.” (Photo courtesy of Juggerknot Theatre Co.)

Zhu Yi’s Singapore-set “Fight Club,” directed by PopUP co-founder Ana Margineanu, features Sabrina Sng as a fitness coach teaching her visitors and younger sister how to stand up to bullies. The instructor asks those watching to punch and move – and they do – but much of her conversation is directed toward her silent sister, whose camera and sound remain off. Energetic and focused, Sng addresses those watching by name, imagining them as kids with a bully problem. But the play achieves its most poignant moments when she is trying to help her little sis navigate the rough patches of childhood.

In general, unsurprisingly, the plays involving an actor performing for a single virtual theatergoer have a different dynamic. The scripts are set, but there’s a little more give-and-take in these private performances, more intensity in the immersion.

In a Madrid bedroom, Ángel Perabá plays a wingless angel in Jean Tay’s “The Announcement,” directed by Margineanu. Perabá is an adroit physical performer who engages through the camera, then recedes in a beautifully choreographed marriage of words and movement. He is predicting a miracle – your miracle – and if you give yourself over to the notion, the intensity of the experience may surprise you.

Rebecca Peyton displays a nervous edge as she invites you into her slightly messy London bedroom in Lally Katz’s “Rebecca,” directed by David Winitsky. The idea here is that she’s trying online dating with you – fun or discomfiting, depending on your age, gender, sexual orientation and marital status – but she’s also filling you in on her most recent failed romance, which involved watching and making porn for her sexually indifferent boyfriend.

Ella Greenhill’s “Cupido,” directed by Tai Thompson, features Dexter McKinney as a New York hipster version of Cupid. He wears a Tupac T-shirt, listens to the late rapper’s “Do for Love,” and has daddy issues with his harsh father, Mars. As usual, he’s peering out of his Brooklyn bedroom window toward the apartment occupied by Amina, a woman he adores despite the forbidden nature of god-mortal hookups. Soon, he gets around to it: Could you maybe use social media to help him make Amina aware of his existence – and his feelings?

Those who appreciate short plays understand the potential, power and appeal of the form.  The six pieces in “Long Distance Affair” plunge you, briefly but meaningfully, into different fully formed worlds.

The Juggerknot-PopUP collaboration is just the ticket for anyone craving a fresh, safe theater adventure.

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

When: Through May 30

Where: longdistanceaffair.info

Cost: Attending a solo play costs $15 for one city and $40 three cities. Attending with a small group is $11 for one city and $30 for three cities.

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Miami’s Juggerknot and NY’s PopUP Theatrics craft drama for a virtual world

June Raven Romero offers a lash extension tutorial in “Julieta,” the Miami performance in “Long Distance Affair.” (Photo courtesy of Juggerknot Theatre Co.)

Though the collection of a half-dozen short plays delivered virtually may seem like a project created in response to this unprecedented moment, “Long Distance Affair” was first devised nine years ago as a way to connect artists and audiences in different parts of the world.

The new joint production from Miami’s Juggerknot Theatre Co. and New York’s PopUP Theatrics – available at longdistanceaffair.info from May 23-30 – just happens to be a trailblazing example of a form that theater may utilize more frequently in the future.

“The world is going in that direction,” says Juggerknot founder and artistic director Tanya Bravo. “Right now, we can’t [easily] fly or go anywhere, but we can connect in this way.”

“Making theater this way won’t be instead of [traditional theater],” adds director Tamilla Woodard, who founded PopUP Theatrics with fellow director Ana Margineanu. “It’s a new vocabulary. It’s in addition to other forms. It lets people who are homebound enjoy live performance.”

This is the seventh iteration of “Long Distance Affair” since the project debuted in New York in 2011. But it’s the first in partnership with Juggerknot, and the first one audiences will access from their homes.

“Long Distance Affair” is made up of solo shows, which have it’s-up-to-you opportunities for interaction and take place in actors’ homes in Miami, New York, London, Paris, Madrid and Singapore.

Sabrina Sng fights back against bullying in Singapore as part of “Long Distance Affair.” (Photo courtesy of Juggerknot Theatre Co.)

The plays set in Madrid, London and New York are available as one-on-one experiences costing $15 for a single play or $40 for all three. You can also choose to experience Miami, Singapore or Paris, along with four other audience members selected by the producers, for $11, or visit all three for $30.

Each actor performs his or her play eight times per day, from 7 to 9 p.m. EDT (which means the Europe- and Singapore-based actors are actually performing during the morning of the following day). The artists receive 65 percent of the proceeds from ticket sales, and the two companies share the rest to pay production costs.

All six plays make eclectic use of the medium.

The Miami piece, “Julieta,” directed by Woodard and written by “Miami Motel Stories” playwright Juan C. Sanchez, features June Raven Romero as a young Westchester woman offering a not-very-polished-yet-often-hilarious tutorial on lash extensions.

Margineanu directs Zhu Yi’s Singapore-set “Fight Club,” with Sabrina Sng teaching observers how to fight back against bullies. In Paris, Paul Spera performs Garret Jon Groenveld’s “Some Surprise,” directed by Chari Arespacochaga, about a guy throwing a virtual, surprise birthday party for his younger brother.

Ella Greenhill’s New York-set play “Cupido,” directed by Tai Thompson, features Dexter McKinney as a Cupid with daddy issues, a funny guy besotted with a mortal he spies through her window.

Jean Tay’s “The Announcement,” directed by Margineanu, is performed in Madrid by Angel Peraba as an angel trying to convince those watching him of a miracle to come. And Lally Katz’s “Rebecca,” directed by David Winitsky, features Rebecca Peyton as a Londoner with a troubled romantic past, a woman who has decided to try Zoom dating.

Angel Peraba performs “The Announcement” in Madrid. (Photo courtesy of Juggerknot Theatre Co.)

Miami’s Romero has appeared in “Miami Motel Stories: MiMo” as a transgender woman attacked by a date and in “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach” as a tough 1930s reporter. She and playwright Sanchez both believe they’re artistically simpatico.

“I learned how to read Juan’s stuff properly by watching him talk about his own material,” says Romero, whose day job is as director of training for the nonprofit TransSOCIAL Miami. “I’m stoked to do this. I find myself so lucky to fall into these experimental and mold-breaking things. I feel like we’re on the precipice of something. And I get to represent the city. Me!”

“When I write for June, I just hear her.  I open myself up to her voice, her vocal rhythms,” Sanchez says. “I like what she’s doing. I’d like to continue writing for her.”

Director Woodard, who calls Romero “an incredible comedienne who underplays in a wide-eyed way with an incredible sense of timing,” says Sanchez’s play will “make people laugh and make them forget they’re sitting in their living rooms.”

Sanchez credits Woodard’s dramaturgical skills with helping him pare down a 12-page first draft to a shorter, more effective piece about a character who is so lonely in isolation that she has taken up a new hobby. He watched multiple makeup tutorials and vlog stories as he was preparing to write.

As Romero says, “Juan found himself down a rabbit hole of tutorial videos and home beautification rituals.”

Paul Spera throws a surprise birthday party in Paris in “Some Surprise.” (Photo courtesy of Juggerknot Theatre Co.)

Woodard speaks with excitement about the challenges and potential of making immersive theater, with the performer working digitally in one city and the at-home audience members scattered around the globe.

“How do you get to know someone after 10 minutes? How do you break through to intimacy?” she asks. “The camera is literally in the hands of the performer, and the director is the cinematographer. So how do you create magic? How do you make the mundane personal? How do you orient and disorient in a way that’s lovely?”

When life as we knew it took its long pause, and live theater stopped, Bravo had to shutter Juggerknot’s successful production of “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach.” At first, she didn’t feel the need to react artistically to the shutdown. But when PopUP got in touch, she became excited about creating a new version of “Long Distance Affair.”

Bravo has worked with both Woodard and Margineanu on different editions of her company’s immersive “Miami Motel Stories.”

“They’re both such amazing directors,” Bravo says. “I’ve never seen anything like the beautiful intimacy they’re able to create through a screen.”

Other South Florida theater companies are still coming up with myriad ways to engage theater-lovers. Click here to see what’s coming up in theater.

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South Florida theater-lovers have lots to enjoy online

Sara Grant and Seth Trucks will lead the cast of Florida Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” in a virtual reading. (Photo courtesy of Colleen Stovall)

South Florida theater companies are coming up with myriad ways to engage theater-lovers until live productions can resume.

Here’s a look at what’s on the horizon:

Florida Shakespeare Theater is keeping fans of the Bard happy with its “Go Big or Go Home” series of free livestreamed readings directed by artistic director Colleen Stovall. “Macbeth,” featuring Seth Trucks in the title role and Sara Grant as the calculating Lady Macbeth, is set for 8 p.m. May 23. “The Merchant of Venice” will be read at 8 p.m. June 6; “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at 2 p.m. June 20; “The Tempest” at 8 p.m. July 11; and “Hamlet” at 2 p.m. July 25. Watch on the company’s Facebook page, Facebook.com/floridashakes.

Miami’s Zoetic Stage is heading toward the championship game of its popular online quiz show, “The Spectacular Fabulous BYOB South Florida Theater Game Night,” hosted by artistic director Stuart Meltzer, with assists from scorekeeper Amy Rauchwerger, managing director Michael McKeever and musical clue-giver Jeni Hacker. Champs from the preliminary rounds – Clay Cartland, Mary Damiano, Eytan Deray, Alex Jorth and Meredith Bartmon – will face off at 8 p.m. May 25. The company is also presenting Meltzer in conversation with past Zoetic stars on its Facebook page. Catch the (sometimes booze-fueled) fun at Facebook.com/zoeticstagemiami.

Slow Burn Theatre Co.’s artistic director, Patrick Fitzwater, is hosting “In the Green Room LIVE!,” a series of conversations and performances with past Slow Burn stars. On May 24, the guests are Clay Cartland and Kimmi Johnson, stars of this season’s “Groundhog Day.” Musical director Manny Schvartzman, who most recently toured with “Hamilton,” speaks with Fitzwater on May 31. “Shrek” stars Wesley Slade and Reynel Reynaldo visit with Fitzwater on June 7. And “Priscilla Queen of the Desert” stars Michael Ursua, Kyle Laing and George Pellegrino are the guests on June 14. Catch the talk and music at 6 p.m. Sundays at Facebook.com/Slowburntheatre.

Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables – heading toward what it hopes will be the live-on-stage semifinals (Aug. 29-30) and finals (Sept. 13) of its annual Young Talent Big Dreams competition – is featuring performances from a number of its past stars on its YouTube channel. The “At Home With Actors’ Playhouse” series highlights songs from Gwen Hollander, Tally Sessions, David Michael Felty, Reggie Whitehead, Jodie Langel, Sean Patrick Doyle, Sarah Amengual, Scott Moreau, Erica Lustig, Samuel Druhora and others. Watch at Youtube.com/user/ActorsPlayhouseCG.

Miami New Drama’s “MasterMiND” series continues with new sessions, as well as archived previous programming. Artistic director Michel Hausmann will speak on “Running a Theater: The Role of Artists in Society” from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 21. Carbonell Award-winning scenic designers (and brothers) Christopher and Justin Swader will discuss their design process from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. May 25. Both sessions are free. Peter Romano and Brynne McManimie will explore the actor’s approach to classical texts from 3:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. May 26 and June 2, with fees ranging from $50 to $100. Register for these sessions and get more information at Colonymb.org/mastermind.

City Theatre, which has delayed its 25th anniversary edition of Summer Shorts until June 2021, is creating a series of Facebook Live events moderated by artistic director Margaret M. Ledford. Live Theatre +, set for May 28, will offer readings of new and favorite short plays. Director and former City Theatre artistic director Gail S. Garrisan, director John Manzelli and performer/director Elena Maria Garcia are the May 21 guests on “Small Talks” (future sessions are June 5 and June 18). “Behind the Shorts,” featuring different theater makers, will return June 14. Catch these events live at 7:30 p.m. on the company’s Facebook page: Facebook.com/CityTheatreMiami or watch later at Citytheatre.com.

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City Theatre’s 25th anniversary a perfect time to look back, despite pandemic pause

Rayner Garranchan and Irene Adjan performed Susan Westfall’s “Feel the Tango” in Summer Shorts 2013. (Photo courtesy of George Schiavone)

Next month was to have marked a milestone anniversary for City Theatre co-founder Susan Westfall and the company’s much-admired Summer Shorts festival.

The event, set for June 4-July 5 at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, would have been City Theatre’s 25th annual summer presentation of short plays and musicals. But since COVID-19 altered the worldwide arts landscape, Miami’s included, the theater’s silver anniversary celebration has been pushed to June 3-July 3, 2021.

This pandemic pause notwithstanding, it’s an appropriate time to look back and assess what Westfall – known as Susi to one and all – and City Theatre have accomplished.

In its 25 years, more than 300 plays and counting have been produced as part of Summer Shorts, not to mention numerous other iterations of the form: Short Cuts, Winter Shorts, Shorts 4 Kids, Undershorts, Shorts Gone Wild, Swamp Shorts, Island Shorts and Shorts on Ships, plus several full-length plays and musicals.

The seeds that became City Theatre and Summer Shorts were sown in a holiday conversation around actor Elena Wohl’s kitchen table in late 1995. Wohl, playwright Westfall and producer Stephanie Norman, all mothers of young kids at the time, thought a one-time summer festival of short plays might be a great project.

The first edition – which ran June 21-July 7, 1996, at the University of Miami’s Ring Theatre – proved them right. Presenting 18 plays (including eight world premieres) in two, nine-show programs with a light picnic dinner sandwiched in between, the event was a huge success.

“Short plays weren’t what anyone else was doing, and we didn’t want to step on anyone’s toes,” Westfall recalls, adding that she and the other founders envisioned the festival as “a unique, fun and seasonally informal event, created by a large and dynamic artistic cohort, [one that] also functioned as a showcase for regional talent and a diversity of playwrights and storytelling.”

City Theatre literary director Susan Westfall, left, and artistic director Margaret M. Ledford met at the Arsht Center’s Books & Books cafe before seeing “Hamilton” earlier this year. (Photo courtesy of Alan Fein)

Although it evolved and adapted through the years, moving from the Ring to the Arsht Center (then called the Carnival Center) in 2007, the festival has remained focused on that mission.

Wohl left the company to move to Los Angeles before the second Summer Shorts in 1997, while Norman remained until 2011. Westfall served on City Theatre’s board and moved into a staff position as literary director in 2011. Her husband, Miami Heat attorney and Miami-Dade County arts leader Alan Fein, was City Theatre’s longtime board chairman, and Westfall calls him “my biggest champion.”

The company has had a number of talented artistic directors and leaders through the years. The current artistic director, Margaret M. Ledford, as well as Gail Garrisan, Marjorie O’Neill-Butler, J. Barry Lewis, Stuart Meltzer (who subsequently co-founded the Arsht Center-based Zoetic Stage) and John Manzelli are all award-winning artists with multifaceted careers.

“In the early years, there were a lot of firsts,” Garrisan remembers. “Not the least of which was the genre itself, [which was] new to the community. Then the two programs of plays, a number of directors. A lot going on, organizing and managing a lot of people and projects, different points of view and as many personalities … It’s complex on a number of levels.”

By the time Manzelli came on board in 2010, the company was struggling financially, and the Summer Shorts lineup was slimmed down to a single program. In retrospect, he says, he tried to help re-establish Summer Shorts as a theatrical event – in 2011 bringing in original “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy” cast member Jai Rodriguez as a marquee draw; programming the Lisa Loeb family musical, “Camp Kappawanna;” working with Westfall to establish the $1,000 National Award for Short Playwriting contest and the CityWrights playwrights’ conference.

“I really enjoyed putting the show together with so many talented artists year after year and working on a formula that would create the best overall production out of eight to nine unrelated plays,” Manzelli says. “It was a magic trick of how do I support each of the short plays as their own independent piece of art with different directors and yet give the audience an intentional, dynamic show?”

Ledford directed in a number of Summer Shorts festivals before becoming festival artistic director in 2016, then joining City Theatre as its full-time artistic director. She gives Westfall the major credit for the company reaching its milestone anniversary.

“She has a terrific ear for plays, being a playwright herself. She loves actors and loves the potential of everything. She’s an outstanding community member with an encyclopedic knowledge of Miami and its history,” Ledford says. “Susi has been a great leader, a constant through many changes. The company is still here because of her determination.”

Indeed, among the ways Westfall and Fein have demonstrated their faith in the short-play concept is by contributing financially to the nonprofit company during its toughest times.

“We’ve stepped in when we needed to,” she says. “Maybe we could have put another kid through college with that money.”

A Miami native with a playwriting degree from Florida State University, Westfall has continued to write short plays and longer ones, including “The Boy From Russia,” inspired by the couple’s adoption of younger son Pete in 2000. Raising her sons and championing the work of other writers via City Theatre has claimed much of her time over the past 25 years, though she has just contributed a new play – “Quarantinis in the Time of COVID” (performed by Garrisan and directed by Ledford) – which will become part of the Arsht Center’s virtual Arsht@Home content.

The alchemy of Summer Shorts flows from several elements, including the versatility of its actors and the variety of its plays. Many of the region’s best veteran actors – including Elizabeth Dimon, Tom Wahl, Gregg Weiner, Margot Moreland, Karen Stephens, Irene Adjan and, for many years, Stephen Trovillion – have repeatedly returned to Summer Shorts to perform in the acting ensemble alongside younger artists.

Too, the shifting mixture of short comedies, dramas and musicals exposes audiences to a wide range of playwrights’ voices in a single program, with something different coming along every 10 to 15 minutes.

Creating the pieces poses a particular challenge for Summer Shorts playwrights, many of whom are celebrated authors of full-length plays or writers with burgeoning television careers. Los Angeles-based Steve Yockey, for example, has been a writer-producer for the TV series, “Supernatural,” and the upcoming thriller series, “The Flight Attendant,” but he’s also City Theatre’s most frequently commissioned Summer Shorts playwright.

“It’s tricky to tell a full story with a beginning, middle and end in such a short time and have it feel dramatically satisfying,” Yockey says. “But if you can pick one thematic element, one core relationship and one big ‘event’ to build around, 10-minute plays can be beautiful, and you can really land the punch. And they’re great vehicles for adventurous ideas because you can do anything to an audience when they know it will be over in 10 minutes. The ride can be as wild and theatrical as you want.”

Irene Adjan, Elizabeth Dimon and Niki Fridh performed “Make John Patrick Shanley Go Home!” in Summer Shorts 2014. (Photo courtesy of George Schiavone)

Of Westfall, Ledford and Summer Shorts, Yockey adds, “They produce short plays at a level of quality that’s unmatched … And they really let me swing for the fences creatively, even when I turn in something full-tilt crazy.”

City Theatre is, of course, not the only company that produces short plays. The Samuel French Off Off Broadway Short Play Festival (for which Westfall and Ledford have served as judges) is a New York theater mainstay. Self-produced short plays and musicals make up the annual Short Play Festival at The Players Theatre in Manhattan. Benefit overnight theater festivals around the country, in which short plays are written, rehearsed and performed in just 24 hours, showcase the talents of playwrights, actors and directors.

And closer to City Theatre’s home in the Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater – where the stage is named the Susan Westfall Playwrights Stage – Microtheater Miami produces short plays year-round in converted shipping containers in the courtyard of Centro Cultural Español.

Still, City Theatre’s curated, impeccably produced Summer Shorts and other short-play programs have won the pioneering company national recognition.

“There are few other theaters that stage short plays and musicals at the level and with the care that City Theatre gives this form,” says Amy Rose Marsh, senior director of acquisitions and artistic development for Concord Theatricals, which now includes the Samuel French licensing and publishing agency. “It’s been exciting to watch the evolution of the [Summer Shorts] festival over the years. The plays have been hilarious, dramatic, poignant and revelatory … The quality of the directing, performances and design really makes for an impactful, enjoyable evening.”

Nan Barnett, executive director of the National New Play Network, has been attending Summer Shorts festivals since she worked as managing director of Florida Stage in the early 2010s, and she has vivid memories of those experiences.

What City Theatre and Summer Shorts have contributed to South Florida theater, she says, is the development of artists, “the playwrights, of course, many of whom have become national treasures, the chameleon actors who have graced their stages, the directors who got their first shot, the designers and technicians who have done some of their best work when faced with the restrictions, demands, opportunities presented by the form – these are the people who have made it all look like magic.”

As with so many events and rituals that are now on hold, having to postpone the 25th anniversary edition of Summer Shorts is a letdown. But Westfall, described by Barnett as “indefatigable,” remains driven by her devotion to playwrights and their short-form work.

“I don’t think the thrill of finding a wonderful new play ever leaves you,” Westfall says. “And nothing beats calling a playwright to say we’re going to produce their play.”

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All set for theatrical debuts, 4 South Florida films adapt to virtual cinema in coronavirus era

Michael Salzhauer – aka Dr. Miami — is a world-famous plastic surgeon best known for livestreaming his surgeries to millions of devoted social media followers. (Photo courtesy of Cargo Film & Releasing)

Overnight closures of local film festivals and regional arthouse theaters – because of COVID-19, safer-at-home orders – have been a double-edged sword for smaller, independent movies, their directors and distributors.

The pros of going virtual: Arthouses with one screen now have unlimited cinema space to host multiple screenings.

The downside: Festivals are canceled, people aren’t buying concessions, and releases that were on the verge of getting their theatrical world premieres are getting less fanfare since they’ve been reduced to the small screen.

Four movies with South Florida roots are in just that position.

“THEY CALL ME DR. MIAMI”

Ready to make its world premiere on March 12, the documentary, “They Call me Dr. Miami,” was one of the first public events in Miami to get caught in the crosshairs of coronavirus.

The Miami Film Festival, whose 37th edition began March 6, was in full swing with four more days left. The shutdown canceled showings of 21 feature films, six short films and two master classes.

March 12 was the day festival director Jaie Laplante announced the closing: “Under the advice of Gov. Ron DeSantis, Miami Dade College is canceling all special events.” The festival is part of Miami Dade College’s cultural affairs programming.

“They Call me Dr. Miami” was meant to be one of the highlights of the festival, scheduled to make its world premiere that evening with the director, Montreal’s Jean-Simon Chartier, as well as Dr. Michael Salzhauer, a.k.a. Dr. Miami, in attendance.

“[Salzhauer] is so larger than life in person,” says Lauren Cohen, the festival’s associate director of programming. “To have him and the director at the screening, and ‘Dr. Miami’ making its world premiere here because the movie is so Miami, [was going to be special]. It was one of the big disappointments.”

“They Call Me Dr. Miami” is about plastic surgeon and social media phenom Salzhauer, who has amassed 1.4 million Instagram followers. With his patients’ consent, he streams live plastic surgery procedures on Instagram and Snapchat from his  Bay Harbor Islands office. In the film, Chartier aims to show the other side of that larger-than-life media persona: In his private life, Salzhauer is an Orthodox Jew who observes the Sabbath and is devoted to his family.

Cohen says: “We chased this movie for a long time.”

Now the film will be shown on the festival’s new Vimeo Video On Demand channel at Vimeo.com/ondemand/theycallmedrmiamimff. Having “Dr. Miami” be the first online world premiere on the  channel was a no-brainer.

“At the festival, you would have a cap on how many seats you could fill in the theater, and it would be shown to a local crowd. Now the sky’s the limit as to how many people can rent this film,” Cohen says. “With his social media presence, this is the right film for this platform.”

The film will premiere April 25-26 on the Miami Film Festival’s Vimeo VOD channel for a 48-hour period. Tickets cost $13 for the general public and $10 for Miami Film Festival members. On April 26, Cohen will host a free question-and-answer session with Salzhauer on the festival’s Instagram page, Instagram.com/miamifilm. 

“The Infiltrators” – part documentary, part narrative – was a Sundance Film Festival Audience Award: NEXT winner. (Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories)

“THE INFILTRATORS”

After acquiring the U.S. rights to the Sundance Film Festival’s Audience Award: NEXT winner, “The Infiltrators,” distributor Oscilloscope Laboratories planned to release the movie in theaters before streaming on digital platforms.

Three of those theatrical release destinations were in South Florida: Coral Gables Art Cinema, O Cinema in Miami Beach, and Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale.

That was before COVID-19. Now Oscilloscope has had to skip the theatrical release and go straight to Video On Demand.

“We love opening films in theaters. However, this is a very strange time and we’re making the best of it by utilizing this virtual cinema model,” says Andrew Carlin, Oscilloscope Laboratories theatrical booker. “The Infiltrators” is an interesting mix of documentary and narrative. Without a doubt, a film like this is challenging theatrically. However, now that we are talking a purely virtual space, more theaters around the country are willing to sign up to screen it.”

The film is timely and especially relevant in South Florida, focusing on immigrants taken by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to the Broward Transitional Center in Pompano Beach to await deportation. The movie – part documentary, part narrative – centers around young activists who purposely get detained to infiltrate the facility. One of the detainees already there, Claudio Rojas, ended up acting as an inside source on conditions inside the center.

The film garnered national attention after Rojas was invited to attend the Miami Film Festival in March 2019 but was detained during his annual visa check-in. He was eventually deported to Argentina.

For this genre, Carlin says he’s usually dealing with arthouses that have to make decisions based on limited capacity: “Sometimes they will only have two screens, so they might have to make choices. Now the doors are wide open for them to offer 10 films to their audience via this virtual cinema platform.”

Still, he looks forward to a return to actual theaters.

“I think the indie theater space will be affected for a long time to come, but we are optimistic that things will get back to normal and have everyone be able to get back to the theater again.”

The film is opening virtually on May 1 at Coral Gables Art Cinema, O Cinema in Miami Beach, and Savor Cinema in Fort Lauderdale. The theater you select to screen the film receives a portion of ticket proceeds. Price varies by theater, as does the amount of rental time. Most of the theaters charge $9.99 for rentals, but that price is subject to change depending on movie.

“Lifeline,” a new documentary directed by Miami’s Dennis Scholl about artist Clyfford Still, is streaming on Kino Now. (Photo courtesy of Sandra Still Campbell)

“LIFELINE: CLYFFORD STILL”

Miami’s Dennis Scholl – whose documentary films focus on arts, artists and culture – had been looking forward to sharing his latest film in his hometown.

His full-length portrait of artist Clyfford Still was set to screen March 14, in partnership with the Miami Film Festival and Perez Art Museum Miami.

“The hometown guy wants his hometown premiere to be special. Well, it was canceled,” Scholl says.

Before COVID-19, Scholl had booked dozens of museum screening dates, from Stanford University to the Phoenix Art Museum, and those were canceled, too.

“My goal was, and still is, though, to have 50 screenings in museums everywhere over a year,” he says.

Until then, however, the distributor of the film, Kino Lober, has “Lifeline: Clyfford Still” available by streaming on its KinoNow virtual cinema site, under “New & Featured,” as well as for sale on DVD.

Scholl, who is president and CEO of Oolite Arts, began making “Lifeline” in 2014.

“There were 12,000 personal photos, 3,000 paintings and drawings, and over 34 hours of audiotape [previously unreleased] by the artist, so it was a long period of research,” says Scholl.

Through interviews and those unreleased recordings, the documentary focuses a lens on the enigmatic artist. Museums still vie to be the permanent home of the Still collection – if they can meet the strict demands of his will.

Says Scholl: “He was talented and cantankerous.”

The documentary is showing at KinoNow.com, under “New & Featured.” Rent it for $4.99, or purchase it for $12.99.

The 15-minute “Noche Buena” is based on writer/director Andres Rovira’s Cuban-American family. The short was shot in Miami using one camera, and all its cast and crew are from here. (Photo courtesy of Andres Rovira)

“NOCHE BUENA”

“Noche Buena” – a 15-minute short about a dysfunctional Cuban family’s holiday gathering – never made it to the Slamdance Film Festival. So writer/director Andres Rovira quickly realized he needed to get the film online.

“We were all set to get on the path of getting into festivals, but as the coronavirus began to ramp up, we were fearful of holding back, of waiting. We came to the realization that it might not be possible to screen this with an audience until 2021,” Rovira says. “When we got the notice that Slamdance was canceled, that was the catalyst. Within seven days, we decided to create a program to get some buzz and get the film online.”

That program involved he and his crew creating social media pages and posting photos and teasers to create buzz. The short is available for viewing on YouTube, as well as on the director’s personal website, Andres-Rovira.com.

Based on his own Cuban-American family, the short was shot in Miami using one camera, and all its cast and crew are from here. There are only three professional actors in the film, including Rovira’s cousin, Ray Tezanos, who stars as the protagonist and is also a producer.

“I do think people will be surprised at how well the non-actors tapped into the truth of their real characters,” he says.

Rovira – whose horror feature film, “Come, Said The Night,” was an official selection for Silicon Valley’s 2019 Cinequest Film Festival – is already working on a longer feature film that’s a continuation of sorts of “Noche Buena.”

The filmmaker says he still plans on submitting “Noche Buena” to festivals when “things get back to normal,”  but in the meantime doesn’t regret his decision to release it online now. He says it’s a crucial time to show feel-good, funny comedies.

“Every time we watch television, even with commercials, we’re reminded of the state we’re living in. I think we all need a reprieve from that.”

Watch “Noche Buena” for free through YouTube or the director’s page. 

 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.

South Florida’s push for theater art and relief goes on

FAU Theatre Lab’s second Original Online Monologue Festival featuring multiple artists in virtual performance will celebrate unsung theater heroes at the end of April. (Photo courtesy of Theatre Lab)

It’s mid-April, a month into isolating at home, and South Florida’s theater artists and companies are busily engaged in virtual programming, classes and relief efforts. Here’s a roundup of initiatives, some new, others ongoing.

FAU THEATRE LAB

Theatre Lab’s Online Original Monologue Festival (#OOMF) in March was a hit, so now the Florida Atlantic University company is planning a slightly different April edition of its virtual effort to help the region’s theater artists.

The first festival raised more than $4,000 in direct-to-artist contributions and more than $1,000 for the South Florida Theatre League’s Relief Fund, which now totals more than $7,000. The second iteration of #OOMF will also encourage contributions to the league’s fund, but its primary purpose is to help those considered unsung, behind-the-scenes theater heroes, such as stage managers, technicians, designers, administrators and box office workers.

Matt Stabile, Theatre Lab’s producing artistic director, has just announced details of the festival’s second edition, with the first deadline coming up at 10 a.m. April 15 when those wishing to be a a beneficiary need to apply via the company’s Facebook page or send an email to theatrelab@fau.edu. Beneficiaries will be featured on Theatre Lab’s Facebook page in the leadup to the festival.

Playwrights will then write pieces on the broad theme of heroes, and actors will perform the original stories, monologues or two-character, three-page scenes.

“We’re looking for writers from Jupiter to the Keys, because we all work throughout the area,” Stabile says.

Among the workshops offered, there will be a scene-writing session on the Facebook page at 12:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. April 16. Previous online workshops on elements of storytelling and crafting a monologue are still available on the page.

Submissions of material to education director Jill Carr at carrj@fau.edu must be received no later than 10 a.m. April 20. The event will be livestreamed on Theatre Lab’s Facebook page at 7:30 p.m.  April 27, and those watching can make direct contributions to the featured heroes.

For more information, go to facebook.com/theatrelabfau.

From left, Actors’ Playhouse co-founder Dr. Lawrence E. Stein; co-founder and executive producing director Barbara Stein; artistic director David Arisco; and Theater for Young Audiences director Earl Maulding have launched a writing competition and online classes. (Photo courtesy of Alberto Romeu)

ACTORS’ PLAYHOUSE

Actors’ Playhouse at The Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables has launched a program titled, “Stories That Connect Us All.” 

The company is asking writers from Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties to create pieces about this unprecedented moment in time, either as a monologue or a third-person story (no multi-character pieces will be accepted). Each piece should run under eight minutes.

Deadline for submissions is May 1. Writers and actors expect to perform the selected pieces at a public event in The Miracle’s Balcony Theatre once it’s safe to gather again.

For more information, go to actorsplayhouse.org and click on “Stories That Connect Us All.” 

Also from Actors’ Playhouse: Earl Maulding, director of the company’s Theatre for Young Audiences, and actor/dancer Reynel Reynaldo are teaching a series of virtual theater master classes. Subjects include musical theater, jazz dance, monologues, hip-hop and vocal performance.

Students are grouped by age (7 to 12 and 13 to 18), and each Zoom class costs $20. Individual classes are available at $60 per hour.

For more information and registration, go to actorsplayhouse.org and click on “Theatre Classes.”

Contributing to Florida International University’s “60 Second Somethings for Seniors” are, clockwise from left: retired English professor Rick Schwartz; Panther Tech store manager Larry Misrahi; theater major Shayda Muvdi; and FIU Miami Beach Urban Studios executive director John Stuart. (Photo courtesy of FIU)

FIU DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE

The Department of Theatre at Florida International University has created a program titled, “60 Second Somethings for Seniors.” And in this case, “seniors” doesn’t refer to soon-to-be graduates but rather to senior citizens isolated in places such as nursing homes, independent and assisted living facilities, and Veterans Administration hospitals. 

The department – with an assist from students Shadya Muvdi, Glenda Umana, Dayron Leon and Ana Gorayeb – is seeking video submissions of about a minute each showcasing all sorts of talents, such as music, drama, juggling, comedy, magic or photography. These will then be woven together in a series of half-hour programs sent to the facilities that are home to seniors. 

Associate Professor Phillip M. Church asks would-be participants to email him at 60secondsomethings@gmail.com. They’ll then receive a Google Drive link with a password to post their videos. He expects the first episode to go out about two weeks after the semester ends in late April.

MIAMI NEW DRAMA

Miami New Drama is continuing its free virtual master classes, dubbed MasterMiND, in both English and Spanish.  

On April 16, director Javier Vidal will lead a Spanish-language workshop titled, “La firma del director” (“The Director’s Signature”). The following week, Pablo Gershanik offers “Metaforas como posibilidad de resiliencia” (“Metaphors as a Possibility of Resilience”) in Spanish on  April 20. David Schrader leads a workshop on the business of theater on April 22. And on April 24, playwright Rogelio Martinez will deliver a workshop on how to incorporate history into writing in a dynamic way. 

All the above sessions are set for 11 a.m. to 1 p.m.

For more information, go to colonymb.org/post/mastermind-master-class-series. Previous master classes are also available on the site.

FLORIDA SHAKESPEARE THEATER

Florida Shakespeare Theater is offering a free online staged reading of the Bard’s great comedy, “Much Ado About Nothing.”

Set for 8 p.m. April 18 and directed by artistic director Colleen Stovall, the reading features Caitlin Duffey as Beatrice; Seth Trucks as Benedick; Nick Lamedica as Claudio; Susannah Eig as Hero; and Jordon Armstrong as Don John. 

Also performing are Sara Grant, Peter Galman, Nicole Minardi, Neil Evangelista, Ned Cray, Michelle Perkins, Lito Becerra, Joseph Urick, Johnbarry Green, Daniel Capote, Christopher Dreeson, Chris Cooper and Aletta Kemp.

For more information or registration to watch the Zoom reading, go to floridashakes.com. 

ARSHT CENTER

Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts keeps adding to its online Arsht@Home content, and now two offerings from the center’s theater partners are available. 

Zoetic Stage has posted a monologue from Michael McKeever’s play, “The Miamians,” performed by Gabriell Salgado at arshtcenter.org/ARSHT-AT-HOME/Miami-Monologues. 

City Theatre is providing the two-character play, “Earth Date,” by Ryan Bultrowicz, performed by Stephon Duncan and Daniel Llaca at arshtcenter.org/ARSHT-AT-HOME/Arts-Partners/City-Theatre.

For more information on Arsht@Home, go to arshtcenter.org.

ARTIST GRANTS

A massive Artist Relief effort has been launched by a group of national arts grant-making groups, including the Miami-based National YoungArts Foundation.

Begun with a $5 million grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the fund has received an additional $5 million in contributions from YoungArts, the Academy of American Poets, Artadia, Creative Capital, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, the MAP Fund and United States Artists. Those organizations will continue to raise funds on behalf of Artist Relief.

The unrestricted $5,000 grants, prioritized by financial need, will be distributed over the next six months to artists throughout the United States in a wide array of disciplines.

For  more information or to apply, go to artistrelief.org.

In addition, the National YoungArts Foundation is launching the YoungArts Emergency Microgrant program to provide unrestricted $1,000 grants to alumni from April through June.

For more information or to apply, go to youngarts.org/alumni.

NEW CITY PLAYERS

New City Players artistic director Timothy Mark Davis is continuing his 9 p.m. “Late Show Live” Instagram conversations with people from South Florida’s theater community.

This week’s lineup features City Theatre artistic director Margaret M. Ledford on April 14; actor Gregg Stuart Weiner on April 15; director Jessica Schulte on April 16; and actor Alex Joyel on April 17. 

You can also watch Davis’s previous conversations with theater artists from throughout the region.

For more information, go to instagram.com/newcityplayers.

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.

Theater artists keep body, soul and craft together in the time of COVID-19

Slow Burn Theatre has rescheduled “Ragtime” for spring 2021. (Photo courtesy of Patrick Fitzwater)

As worldwide coronavirus cases have soared past a million, with South Florida a COVID-19 hotspot, the region’s theater artists are – like all of us – confronting the questions of daily life in a temporarily remade world.

How do we pay rent, the mortgage, our bills? How do we keep food on the table? What happens when health insurance, current work or future projects suddenly vanish? How can we use creativity to keep moving forward?

What follows are snapshots of the ways some individual theater artists and couples are coping during this strange moment in time.

Clay Cartland was the trapped weatherman in Slow Burn Theatre’s “Groundhog Day.” (Photo courtesy of Rodrigo Balfanz)

CLAY CARTLAND

In February, Carbonell Award-winning actor Clay Cartland gave another richly nuanced, inventive, funny-yet-moving performance as the cynical TV weatherman in Slow Burn Theatre Co.’s “Groundhog Day.” After that show closed, he continued doing his side jobs – work as a voiceover artist, driving for Lyft and Uber – and started rehearsals for the Actors’ Playhouse production of “Camelot” at The Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables.

Then came the shutdown of shows about to open, the loss of three potential future jobs and the majority of the side-job work, and self-isolation.

Cartland, who is nominated for another Carbonell for playing the nastily narcissistic, height-challenged Lord Farquaad in Slow Burn’s 2019 production of “Shrek,” has been keeping busy in a variety of ways.

He has put up shelves for his vast collection of Funko Pop comic/superhero bobbleheads. As an avid bodybuilder who can no longer go to the gym, he’s created an outdoor gym on the patio of the house where he and musical director Eric Alsford are roommates. He’s hanging out with his dogs, visiting his mom in Hollywood every day (he stands at her front door to talk to her), and he managed to navigate Florida’s overwhelmed website to file for unemployment.

He’s also having Skype sessions with a therapist once a week, dealing with anxiety and depression, and a temporary spiral when his mother thought she had COVID-19.

On March 29, he participated in Theatre Lab’s Online Original Monologue Festival as both a performer and a playwright. The 3 ½-hour fundraising event for South Florida theater artists has now been viewed nearly 2,500 times.

“It was such a joy to get up and take a shower and put pants on!” he says.

Creatively, he’s revising his 90-minute play, “That’s My Time,” which had a staged reading as part of Jan McArt’s New Play Readings series at Boca Raton’s Lynn University in February.

Although he thinks the coronavirus shutdown will alter theater in the region, he also has faith that it will come back – maybe for the better.

“I really do believe that there will be the usual crowd, and maybe more from the younger generation,” he says. “They’re saving some money from not running around, ordering food and eating out. I think there will be a yearning to go outside.”

Karen Stephens starred in Thinking Cap Theatre’s production of Samuel Beckett’s “Happy Days.” (Photo courtesy of Nicole Stodard)

KAREN STEPHENS

Karen Stephens had one of the most challenging, rewarding roles of her career in February – playing Winnie in Samuel Beckett’s absurdist “Happy Days” at Fort Lauderdale’s Thinking Cap Theatre. The Carbonell-winning actor is also a talented hairstylist with her own West Palm Beach salon, and for the first part of March, she was serving her regular clients.

“I rely on my salon business to tide me over,” she says. But now she’s at home with her two dogs and three cats, out of work for the foreseeable future, except for unemployment benefits.

“When things are stressful, I don’t expand. I curl up,” she says. “Emotionally and financially, I’m trying to cope. I just paid off the mortgage on my salon, so I don’t want to saddle myself with more debt. I don’t want to decimate my rainy-day savings. But if this lasts much past May, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

Still, she believes some good can come of this socially distanced time.

“This allows us to rid ourselves of all the things that didn’t serve us, without all the distractions we usually have,” she says. “Will we be left with residual fear because of this? I’d hope people will be happy when theaters eventually reopen. I’m praying the layoff is not too long. I hope that people don’t get out of the habit of going and supporting live theater.”

Alex Alvarez played the harried director in Juggerknot Theatre’s “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach.” (Photo courtesy of Daniela Piantini)

ALEX ALVAREZ AND SAHID PABON

Miami-based partners Alex Alvarez and Sahid Pabon are busy working actors with several side survival jobs. Both do voiceover work (though not much since studios in the region severely cut back or shut down).

Carbonell winner Alvarez, who played the harried director in Juggerknot Theatre Co.’s immersive now-on-hiatus “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach,” is also an adjunct theater professor whose three classes at Nova Southeastern University have all moved online.

“To survive as a performer in South Florida, you have to have several things going,” observes Alvarez, who has been depending on his next scheduled theater job in City Theatre’s annual Summer Shorts festival to reactivate his Actors’ Equity health insurance.

Pabon was delivering for Shipt, driving for Lyft, and getting ready for a busy professional period. He was about to open as Bobby Strong in the Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts (PPTOPA) production of “Urinetown.” Then he was to go back to another edition of “Rock Odyssey” at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center; play Cliff in “Cabaret” for the Kravis Center-based MNM Theatre Co.; then move on to playing Che in “Evita” for PPTOPA.

Shalia Sakona and Sahid Pabon were getting ready to open “Urinetown” for the Pembroke Pines Theatre of the Performing Arts. (Photo courtesy of Ron Pollack Photography)

Those opportunities have evaporated, at least for the time being, and Pabon says that he “stopped both of my survival jobs. I thought shopping for Shipt was very dangerous, nerve-wracking and terrifying. I’ve been trying to get online jobs, like recording audiobooks or teaching English to kids in China.”

Pabon was one of the performers in Theatre Lab’s Online Original Monologue Festival, and the contributions he received helped him pay some bills. He had been hungry for an artistic outlet and was grateful to join in a community-supportive project with hope-themed pieces.

“With all of us shut in, it’s easy to lose hope,” he says. “But we can pave the way and show the value of art. Without the arts, we’d all be going crazy.”

Carbonell Award nominee Rita Cole was rehearsing for the starring role in Thinking Cap Theatre’s “Fefu and Her Friends.” (Photo courtesy of Joe Wesley)

RITA COLE

Rita Cole, Carbonell-nominated for her performance as Ruth Younger in New City Players’ “A Raisin in the Sun,” had one day of rehearsal for her next project. She was to play the lead role in Maria Irene Fornes’ “Fefu and Her Friends,” which had been set to run at Thinking Cap Theatre from April 2 to 19.

But rehearsals were paused so that she could go to Atlanta to attend unified auditions for multiple theater companies there, something she had previously scheduled.

She had paid the membership fee and ordered new headshots – and then the auditions were indefinitely postponed, as are “Fefu” and a reading she was set to do at Palm Beach Dramaworks.

“I don’t have a plane ticket home yet,” says Cole, who has been staying with friends and a cousin in Atlanta. “I’m playing it by ear. I’m choosing to stay here for my safety. I’m not coming back to anything.”

Cole works often at theaters in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties, but her survival job is as an interim teacher replacing teachers who have taken extended leaves.

She, too, is concerned about what the theater experience will be like when social distancing is no longer necessary.

“There will be a period when you’re not sure if you have it, when even regular coughs will be scary,” she says. “Actors have to be so in each other’s space … Maybe we can have go-live gatherings broadcast on the internet, and socially condition people, so we slowly return to normal.”

Nicole Stodard, left, and Bree-Anna Obst run Fort Lauderdale’s Thinking Cap Theatre. (Photo courtesy of Ian Dawson)

NICOLE STODARD AND BREE-ANNA OBST

Nicole Stodard, founder and artistic director of Thinking Cap Theatre, and Bree-Anna Obst, the company’s managing director, are partners who are isolating at home with Stodard’s three children.

Obst is also the manager of theatrical and early childhood experiences for the Miami Children’s Museum, and she continues to lead her team in creating virtual projects.

The women are also supervising the online middle school, third-grade and pre-K classes that Stodard’s kids are taking.

“We started working with them in shifts, because we were feeling fried,” Stodard says. “The name of the game around here is structure – normal bed times and routines. But we’re also trying to do what we can to make this fun, like eating outside by candlelight.”

Obst is thankful that her full-time museum job is virtual for the time being, though it sometimes means that she starts her day at 5:30 a.m., “and I am not a morning person.”

“But the more we share, the more we write, the more people who see the content justifies keeping the part-time staff on,” she adds.

As for Thinking Cap, this is the company’s 10th anniversary season, and Stodard is determined to press on once it’s safe to return to The Vanguard, a former church space that is the company’s home.

“We have five mainstage shows and a co-production with City Theatre. We’re hoping to use a portion of funds from a grant project to adapt and record ‘Coming Out Stories,’ then open that up to people – to the world – online,” she says. “June would have been the official anniversary of our first production. We were going to have a gala to try to raise $25,000 … Our goal is to resume as planned, in sequential order.”

Stodard and Obst remain focused on the nonprofit Thinking Cap’s mission. But they’re also ready to embrace the possibilities for whatever comes next.

“Too much worry keeps us on the path of panic and resisting change,” Stodard says. “Change is here.”

Real-life spouses Robert Fritz and Amy Coker played honeymooners in Juggerknot Theatre’s “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach.” (Photo courtesy of Daniella Mia)

AMY COKER AND ROBERT FRITZ

Amy Coker and Robert Fritz, actors married just over a year, were playing honeymooners in Juggerknot’s “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach” when the show and South Florida theater shut down.

The couple, who live in North Miami Beach, had health insurance through Coker’s job at Lush Cosmetics on Miami Beach’s Lincoln Road, and she was able to continue working there until March 22, when the business closed down the day after her birthday.

Fritz, a member of the Miami Children’s Museum Theater Troupe, is continuing to work part time virtually on projects for the museum. Both participated as performers in Theatre Lab’s Online Original Monologue Festival.

“It felt good to have something to do,” Fritz says. “I saw people performing who I’ve known, but I’ve never had the chance to see their work before.”

The pair are applying for unemployment and awaiting stimulus checks to make it through. They’re also looking forward to when they can return to playing the honeymoon couple tempted to stay in North Beach for good.

“It was a really sad close to the show. It had extended once and was going to extend again, so we were only halfway through the run,” Coker says.

Leah Marie Sessa played a lonely single woman in Slow Burn Theatre’s “Groundhog Day.” (Photo courtesy of Rodrigo Balfanz)

LEAH MARIE SESSA

In Slow Burn’s “Groundhog Day,” Leah Marie Sessa played a pretty, lonely woman who has a fling with the stranded TV weatherman during his endless loop of repeated days. Then she went into rehearsals for the Actors’ Playhouse production of “Camelot.”

Once that show shut down before it could open, she thought she could get by with her survival job as a Monday-night bartender. But the restaurant where she worked also shut down. Now, like so many of us, she’s living her own “Groundhog Day.”

“I’m in two industries where a lot of people live paycheck to paycheck,” Sessa says. “I can get by for a month, but I don’t know how long this will last.”

Sessa participated in the Online Original Monologue Festival, which allowed performers to show links where those watching could make direct donations to them. That part wasn’t easy.

“I’m very proud. It’s hard to admit you have to raise money for yourself. But you have to have income,” she says.

Even so, Sessa dedicated a Facebook birthday fundraiser to Slow Burn and raised $600 for the company. She’s a member of the 1940s-inspired musical group The Victory Dolls and is brainstorming ways to help the community with her fellow performers. She’s also making a video of herself singing a song to benefit MNM.

“Theater people don’t know how to sit around and do nothing,” she says. “We’re so used to a life that is go, go, go … It’s hard not to have a creative outlet.”

Slow Burn Theatre was in rehearsals for “Ragtime,” with Anna Lise Jensen Arvelo (back row, center) set to play Mother for the second time. (Photo courtesy of Patrick Fitzwater)

ANNA LISE JENSEN ARVELO

Before the pandemic, Anna Lise Jensen Arvelo was about to open as Mother in Slow Burn’s production of “Ragtime.”

Eerily, the musical’s Tony Award-winning book writer, Terrence McNally, died March 24 of coronavirus complications. And the New York City suburban community where Arvelo’s character lives with her white, upper-class family – New Rochelle – was an early virus hotspot, one of the first areas to be locked down to try to stop the spread of COVID-19.

The Lynn Ahrens-Stephen Flaherty-McNally musical, based on E.L. Doctorow’s sweeping novel about white, black and Jewish immigrant families whose lives intertwine in the early 20th century, is a show Arvelo first performed in New York in 2009.

“Two things are different now,” Arvelo says. “I am different, and the world is very different.”

For the time being, Slow Burn has rescheduled “Ragtime” for spring 2021.

After “Ragtime,” Arvelo was to have performed in and served as dialect coach for the Actors’ Playhouse production of “Murder on the Orient Express,” now postponed to an indefinite date.

Instead, when her husband leaves their Miami Shores home to go to work as a systems engineer for ChenMed, Arvelo teaches online classes to high school freshmen as a New World School of the Arts adjunct and also teaches English to children in China.

In thinking about what South Florida theater may look like once it resumes, Arvelo cites one of Mother’s songs from “Ragtime,” which says: “We can never go back to before.”

“We often get stuck in a cycle of production,” says Arvelo, a Carbonell winner for her performance in Slow Burn’s “The Bridges of Madison County.”

“We’ll do ourselves a disservice if we don’t see this as giving us a gift of clarity. I hope we start seeing new and interesting things.”

***

The South Florida Theatre League has established a fund to help theaters pay staff and performers, a fund that has doubled in a week. For information, visit southfloridatheatre.org/south-florida-theatre-league-relief-fund.

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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.