‘Pretty Fire’: One-woman show delivers multitude of messages for Women’s History Month

Khadijah Rolle, right, is directing Trittney Huzzie in the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center’s production of “Pretty Fire.” (Photo courtesy of African Heritage Cultural Arts Center)

When the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center wanted to select a play for its Women’s History Month celebration, Charlayne Woodard’s NAACP award-winning, one-woman show, “Pretty Fire,” was top of mind.

“Pretty Fire” is a five-part story that moves through the discrimination and oppression experienced by African-Americans in the 1950s and ’60s. The play, which Woodard performed in its 1992 premiere in Los Angeles, is autobiographical.

In it, the actress and playwright talks about being born in Albany, N.Y., and spending time at her grandparents’ house in Georgia. It was there, as a wide-eyed, 8-year-old, that she sees a Ku Klux Klan cross burning while looking through her grandparents’ window. It is her introduction to racism.

“The play, while basically about a young girl into selfhood, is about being black in America, things that we have to go through like the rape culture in the African-American community and so many different trials and tribulations,” director Khadijah Rolle says. “Charlayne touches on the idea of taking the everyday events of her life and turning them into tales that speak on how the African-American family got through adversity. She touches on events that gave her the epiphanies in her formative years.”

For this South Florida production – set for March 13-15 at the Sandrell Rivers Theater – actress Trittney Huzzie will bring to life 15 characters, including a little girl who says she wants to be Lassie when she grows up and a grandfather who objects to his granddaughter being named Africa. (“She don’t have a hard enough time already? She a child, not a land mass,” he shouts.)

Huzzie has put her focus into differentiating the characters, not just vocally and physically, but by making them distinct in their emotions.

“I play my mother, my father, my little sister, my grandparents on both sides, a preacher, a choir director, a nurse, a doctor, and that’s just some of them,” Huzzie says.

From left, Trittney Huzzie and Khadijah Rolle rehearse a scene from “Pretty Fire,” which will run March 13-15 at Miami’s Sandrell Rivers Theater. (Photo courtesy of African Heritage Cultural Arts Center)

She related most with Woodard’s grandparents: “How her grandmother told her to do what she wanted and she became an artist. I related to that,” she says.

To emphasize the power of women and to celebrate Women’s History Month, the African Heritage Cultural Arts Center wanted a predominantly female production, from set designers to stage manager to Rolle as director – a statement to show women of color in the director’s chair. This is the Miami-raised, Chicago-based actress’ first time as director.

“It’s so rewarding to work with such dynamic women of color, and I’m honored to work with the cultural arts center,” Rolle says. “The center is a staple among the arts community and has impacted so many lives of people that look like me.”

The center, in the heart of Liberty City, was founded in 1975 to provide a place for learning, training and access for Miami-Dade County’s African-American community. The arts training institution is celebrating its 45th anniversary.

Rolle says the play can be a metaphor as well for what the center represents to the students it helps develop.

“It is a powerful story about how did you become who you are today? Who were the people who were your role models? Woodard shows a family that encouraged her and instilled in her specific core values like courage, love and how to love.”

What:  African Heritage Cultural Arts Center presents “Pretty Fire,” by Charlayne Woodard

When: 7 p.m. March 13-15; 2 p.m. March 14-15

Where: Sandrell Rivers Theater, 6103 NW Seventh Ave., Miami

Cost: $25-$35; discounts available for students, seniors, military, and groups of 10 or more; call 305-284-8872 or go to tickets.ftfshows.com

More information: ahcacmiami.org

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Miami Film Festival: Homegrown talent dedicated to telling S. Florida stories

“When Liberty Burns,” a documentary by Miami-based filmmaker Alexis Dudley, makes its world premiere at the Miami Film Festival. (Photo courtesy of Miami Film Festival)

There’s a community of filmmakers that is evolving and has put a stake in the ground in Miami – dedicated to staying put rather than leaving South Florida for New York or Los Angeles.

It’s a definite talking point this year surrounding Miami Dade College’s Miami Film Festival, said Jaie Laplante, executive director and director of programming for the annual event, which will run from March 6 through March 15.

“There are changes that have been happening in Miami,” said Laplante, who is in his 10th year as director and is an integral part of this Miami movement.

“[There is a] flourishing of creativity among Miami creators who are working in cinema, the global reach of Miami stories,” he added, emphasizing the attention to such films when “Moonlight” won the Academy Award for “Best Picture” in 2017. “There are some filmmakers in this community who are making organic stories and those from around the world that are recognizing the richness of South Florida stories. This year, too, there are about a dozen Miami-based filmmakers who are in the program that have made stories in other parts of the country.”

Two documentarians and a feature filmmaker, all from Miami, are the working example of Laplante’s statements of a resurgence in the film community – and how the city shapes their points of view from story to screen. Their films are “Reefa,” “When Liberty Burns,” and “River City Drumbeat.”

Jessica Kavana Dornbusch’s “Reefa” makes its world premiere at this year’s festival. The made-in Miami, feature-length film is based on the 2013 police Taser death in Miami Beach of 18-year-old graffiti artist Israel “Reefa” Hernandez.

Dornbusch grew up in Miami, graduated from North Miami Beach Senior High, left for Boston University’s film program, worked in New York in the independent film industry, and returned to Miami as an assistant director at television station Univision. Now, she concentrates entirely on made-in Miami films. Her first movie, 2006’s “Love and Debate,” originally written for Project Greenlight, was based on her experiences as a high school and college award-winning debater.

“I’m a Miami girl. All of my films have been based here, written for here, and I’ve shot them all here,” Dornbusch said.

Florida’s lack of tax incentives for filmmakers causes some hardships, she said. The state’s film tax credits launched July 1, 2010, and ended on June 30, 2016. Since then, bills have been introduced in the Florida Legislature, but so far, the incentives haven’t been re-instated.

Dornbusch said she had to stretch a small budget – a $1 million budget is relatively slight to  produce a full-length feature – but the filmmaker insisted she had to create “Reefa” in Miami.

“Had we gone to Atlanta or someplace, that money would have gone a longer way with an incentive. But this is a Miami story, and it was important for us to shoot it here,” she said. “The family is here, Reefa lived here, and I wanted to shoot the film on the streets where he used to roam with his friends.”

Going into the making of the film, she knew that the tight-knit film community would step in, she said.

“Whatever incentive we didn’t have would be made up in so many ways here, being part of this film community and their help.”

“Reefa” could get a different kind of incentive if it wins in two competitions. It goes up against 11 other feature-length films for a $30,000 cash prize in the festival’s Knight-funded Made in MIA Award competition. The competition is looking for the film that features a “substantial portion of its content (story, setting and actual filming location) in South Florida … and that most universally demonstrates a common ground of pride, emotion, and faith for the South Florida community.”

Clara McGregor and Tyler Dean Flores in Wynwood in a scene from “Reefa.” (Photo courtesy of Gaston Suaya)

Dornbusch’s movie will also compete for the festival’s Knight MARIMBAS Award, an international competition that awards $40,000 to the film that “best exemplifies richness and resonance for cinema’s future.”

“We capture a side of Miami in ‘Reefa’ that is rarely seen on film,” Dornbusch said. “There’s the ‘Moonlight’ side that did an extraordinary job with everything that’s Liberty City and that raw beach side that still exists in Miami. There’s the commercial [side], the ‘Birdcage’ side, the music video side with the big helicopter shots of Ocean Drive and South Beach and the glitz and all of that.”

Then there’s the rest of Miami, she said, including “Wynwood and there’s a side of Overtown and the streets and underpasses and parks. We shot all over Key Biscayne. We found a beautiful color to paint the Miami landscape.”

Another world premiere, “When Liberty Burns,” is directed by North Miami’s Dudley Alexis. The documentary examines the 40th anniversary of the Arthur McDuffie race riots in Liberty City.

“There are a lot of people that don’t want to talk about it. But you go to Liberty City and you can see the effects of the riots are still there,” Alexis said.

He was inspired to make his second documentary – his first, “Liberty Soup,” explored his Haitian roots and a Haitian Independence Day tradition – from a personally felt incident that sparked his interest in researching policing in Miami. Junior Prosper, a 31-year-old cab driver, was killed in September 2015 in a police altercation.

“A friend of mine got into an altercation with a police officer on the highway and was shot by police and died,” he said.

Three years in the making, his documentary includes first-person stories, his interviews with McDuffie’s family and close friends, and tells a piece of history that, he says, “many people want to bury.”

“I hope to draw awareness to why there is a culture like this in Miami and why Liberty City remains the way it does today. Maybe it will draw interest for more investment in that neighborhood, which I don’t feel is happening,” he said.

Members of the River City Drum Corp head to a showcase in Evansville, Ind., in a scene from “River City Drumbeat.” (Photo courtesy of Owsley Brown Presents)

Documentarian Marlon Johnson sees parallels between how he grew up in Liberty City and the experiences of a group of high schoolers in Kentucky. He said he was able to draw on his own experiences for “River City Drumbeat.”

Johnson said he and co-director Anne Flatté were approached by producer/filmmaker Owsley Brown, who was born and raised in Louisville, about an African-American drum corps from a West Louisville neighborhood that thrives by being connected through music, art and the cultural traditions of their African ancestors.

The documentary follows the group’s founder, Edward “Nardie” White, who was retiring after three decades – and highlights his dedication to community drum corps and the training of his successor Albert Shumake, whose troubled life, much like Johnson’s story, was transformed by participating in the after-school arts program.

“I’m a Liberty City kid. And what a lot of ‘River City’ shows is the way the kids are like who I was. My life was saved by the arts, and a lot of these kids have the same story,” he said. “The opportunities I had to participate in performing arts programs growing up in Miami kept me, for lack of a better term, on the straight and narrow. Being part of that is a way to see the world through a different lens.”

Johnson never left Miami and went on to study film at the University of Miami.

“I wasn’t going to sew my seeds [as a filmmaker] in New York or L.A. I wanted to plant my roots right here.”

What: 37th Miami Film Festival

When/where: March 6-15 in theaters across the city; see complete schedule at miamifilmfestival.com/schedule

Cost: $13 for general admission; $12 for seniors; and $10 for Miami Film Society Members, students and veterans

More information: 844-565-MIFF (6433); 305-237-FILM (3456); miamifilmfestival.com

For more video commentary by Jaie Laplante, check out the website for Florida International University’s arts publication, Inspicio. 

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Four wives share Louis Armstrong’s story in ‘A Wonderful World’ 

Juson Williams, a New York actor, director and choreographer, stars as Louis Armstrong.(Photo courtesy of Roberto Mata)

If you’re a person of a certain age, a lover of jazz, a fan of outsized personalities, you’re probably familiar with the late Louis Armstrong.

He was the great jazz trumpeter and gravel-voiced singer whose 1964 recording of “Hello, Dolly!” dethroned the Beatles from a 14-week run atop Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. He pulled that off at the record-setting age of 62, scoring the biggest seller of his career and topping the chart for 22 weeks with a song he hadn’t particularly wanted to record.

As impactful, admired and versatile as he was during a multifaceted career that began at 13 and lasted until his death at 69, Armstrong’s life was the stuff of complicated drama.

At age 11, Armstrong dropped out of school and later was sent to the Colored Waif’s Home in his native New Orleans for taking and firing his stepdad’s gun while celebrating New Year’s Eve. He went on to have four marriages – faithful, he was not – and his first wife, Daisy Parker, was working as a prostitute when they met. For decades, he was an enthusiastic pot smoker, and he did nine days in jail after being arrested for drug possession in 1930. At several points, the mob was after him. Some of his fellow black musicians called him an “Uncle Tom” for ingratiating himself with white audiences, yet his outspokenness during the Civil Rights era earned him an FBI file.

Complicated, yes – yet so rich with interpretive artistic possibilities.

That’s what Tony Award-nominated director Christopher Renshaw and his writer friend, Andrew Delaplaine, thought when they came up with the idea for the biographical Armstrong musical, “A Wonderful World.”

With a book by South Florida native Aurin Squire, and nearly 40 Armstrong-linked songs arranged and orchestrated by Annastasia Victory and Michael O. Mitchell, the show will get its official Miami New Drama world premiere on March 14 at Lincoln Road’s Colony Theatre on Miami Beach. Previews are set to begin March 5, and the musical runs through April 5.

Taking its title from the 1967 Armstrong recording “What a Wonderful World,” the musical is Miami New Drama’s most ambitious show since it launched in 2016 with “The Golem of Havana.” With a cast of 18 and a seven-member band, the production has a $1.2 million budget, thanks in part to enhancement money from investors Tom and Renee Rodgers. A typical Miami New Drama show costs $300,000.

Told from the shifting perspectives of his four wives, “A Wonderful World” is full of Armstrong songs both well-known and obscure. But it is not, everyone involved emphasizes, a simple jukebox musical.

“This is a dangerous play. It’s not a safe, feel-good play,” says Miami New Drama artistic director Michel Hausmann, who played collaborative matchmaker between playwright Squire and director Renshaw. “It explores without restriction the life of a very complicated man. We don’t know about him in the way we know about an artist like Elvis … It’s impossible to tell the story of Louis Armstrong without telling the story of racism in America in the 20th century. And the repercussions are not finished.”

When they first got together at a restaurant near the Colony, Renshaw asked Squire about his background and his interest in Armstrong. The playwright, who grew up in Opa-Locka and co-wrote Miami New Drama’s “Confessions of a Cocaine Cowboy” with Billy Corben, is a writer-producer for the CBS series “Evil” and “The Good Fight.”

He first took a deep dive into Armstrong’s life through happenstance. When he was at Manhattan’s New School, he spent a year working as a gig coordinator for the School for Jazz and Contemporary Music. In a Secret Santa gift exchange among the musicians, there was one present left over, and it was given to Squire.

“It was a giant biography of Louis Armstrong,” he recalls. “I sat and read it and became enthralled and engrossed in it.”

Squire says he signed on to write “A Wonderful World” in part because “I’m fascinated by his life. He led the life of 20 people, compressed into one. I knew Miami New Drama would let us create it the way we wanted to.”

Renshaw – a British director whose Broadway and West End credits include “Taboo,” “We Will Rock You” and the Tony Award-winning 1996 revival of “The King and I” – has lived a stone’s throw from the Colony for the past 14 years. He notes that “A Wonderful World” progressed from idea to production in about a year and a half, a very fast developmental process for a new musical.

“The only other show I directed that came together this fast was the original ‘Taboo’ with Boy George,” Renshaw says. “It can happen when you have the right collaborators and an artistic director willing to take risks. I’m getting older and don’t want to spend years on a musical.”

A white British theater artist, Renshaw says he initially was insecure about taking on a show about “an icon of black American culture.” Squire reassured him about the value of his perspective, then created a script that the director calls “filmic” and unconventional in its style.

Playwright Aurin Squire and director Christopher Renshaw have
collaborated on the Miami New Drama world premiere of “A Wonderful World.” (Courtesy of Aurin Squire)

“For example, ‘I Can’t Give You Anything But Love’ is used for all four wives in different situations,” Renshaw says. “The music feels like it was written for the show.”

Also on the creative team with Renshaw and Squire are choreographer Rickey Tripp, set designer Adam Koch and his associate designer Steven Royal, costume designer Ari Fulton, lighting designer Cory Pattak and Tony Award-winning sound designer Kai Harada.

As for the actors, the world premiere cast is a mixture of New York- and South Florida-based performers.

Juson Williams – a New York actor, director and choreographer who appeared in the 2001 Actors’ Playhouse production of “Smokey Joe’s Cafe” – stars as Armstrong. Although he doesn’t play the trumpet, the actor is altering his natural tenor voice to speak and sing with some of Armstrong’s signature rasp. Yamin Mustafa will be performing live when Williams mimes playing the instrument

“I’m not trying to emulate him; it needs to be the essence of him, because we are doing an icon,” Williams says.

Dionne Figgins, who began her career with the Dance Theatre of Harlem, plays the first wife and anchors the New Orleans section of the show. Lana Gordon, who has played Nala in “The Lion King” and Velma Kelly in “Chicago” on Broadway, portrays second wife Lil Harden, a musician who helped transform Armstrong’s image when they lived in Chicago. Third wife Alpha Smith, married to Armstrong during his Hollywood years, is played by University of Miami grad and jazz singer Nicole Henry. Homestead-born Darlene Hope plays fourth wife Lucille Wilson, a Cotton Club singer whose marriage to Armstrong was the musician’s longest, lasting from 1942 until his death in 1971. The home she shared with him in Queens is now the Louis Armstrong House Museum.

Also in key roles are Carbonell Award winners Stephen G. Anthony as Joe Glaser and actor-playwright Michael McKeever as Johnny Collins, men who were Armstrong’s managers; DeWitt Fleming Jr. as Lincoln Perry, the actor-comedian known as Stepin Fetchit; Gavin Gregory as bandleader and cornet player King Joe Oliver; Carbonell winner Lindsey Corey as a reporter; Jamal Christopher Douglas as Banjo Boy; and Kareema Khouri as a nightclub singer.

Once cast, Williams –  who describes himself as “an R&B singer who incorporates jazz” –  started his Armstrong research and got coached on how to properly hold a trumpet. What he discovered, he says, are similarities between himself and the man known as “Satchmo,” “Satch” and “Pops.”

“His story lines up with mine,” Williams says. “I fight hard for the things I believe in. I don’t get things easily. I hide things by being so joyful – Louis did that too … This is a beautiful show. I feel it was crafted for me. I’m exercising muscles I didn’t know I had. Everything I can do, I do in this show … This is all the universe feeding into it. When it’s right, it’s right.”

For Figgins, creating the role of Daisy Parker, whom she describes as “very complex, violent, not educated but with a lot of heart,” has involved a certain amount of freedom because the only descriptions of her came from Armstrong, who was also a prolific writer.

“This has changed my perspective about sex work. It’s hard, violent and dangerous,” Figgins says. “This has been a surprising journey. There are layers to Daisy, including loving a man you can’t go with when he’s ready to move on with his career. Yet she never thought marriage was a possibility, never expected to find a love who would see her and accept her.”

Gordon identifies with the passion that pianist Lil Harden brought to her music and her makeover of the man she initially saw as “a country bumpkin.” Of Williams, she says, “He has such an infectious personality, such charisma. You just want to hug him.” She also appreciates the way Armstrong’s music and Squire’s writing are intertwined, and the combination of narration and scenes.

“I’ve never experienced this as an actress. There’s a flow. It keeps the audience leaning forward,” she says.

Henry, who moved to New York from Miami three years ago to kickstart her acting career, read Laurence Bergreen’s 2012 Armstrong biography, “An Extravagant Life,” as she researched Alpha Smith – who was, she points out, “the only wife who left Louis.”

Acting, she says, is a challenge she’s appreciating: “I love the psychological investigation of it. I thought acting would bring me closer to [understanding] myself … Alpha is still evolving. I tell myself I can do this. We are our own worst critics,” she says.

Hope, who grew up in Orlando, earned her bachelor degree from the University of South Florida and a  master of fine arts degree from Florida State University and Sarasota’s Asolo Repertory Theatre. She took the subway to Queens to research Lucille Wilson, looking through archives and memorabilia Armstrong’s widow donated to the city of New York as well as touring the couple’s home.

She is a writer as well as a performer, and she has a deep appreciation for Squire’s work on “A Wonderful World.”

“The book could stand on its own as a play. I was impressed with how complex it is,” she says. “You get smart, fun, sometimes serious and dark commentary on the state of the human soul. I hope it does go to Broadway.”

That’s a hope shared by everyone involved, though Hausmann is pointed about the musical’s South Florida debut.

“This is a black empowerment show written by an African-American member of this community. Aurin is a Miami-Dade guy in all of his writing,” he says. “I think this has extraordinary potential. But before that, I want it to resonate profoundly in this community.”

What: Miami New Drama production of “A Wonderful World,” by Aurin Squire

When: Previews 8 p.m. March 5-7; 2 p.m. March 7; 3 p.m. March 8; 8 p.m. March 12-13. Opens 8 p.m. March 14. After opening, performances are 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays, through April 5. The March 5 show is sold out, according to the website.

Where: Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach

Cost: $39-$85

More information: 305-674-1040; colonymb.org

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‘As Much As I Can’ at Little Haiti center tells a touching, vital story

Marquis Johnson and James Watson in “As Much As I Can.” (Photo courtesy of Harley & Co.)

Almost five years ago, multiplatform storyteller Sarah Hall looked at an ethnographic report that showed HIV rates were falling for most segments of the population but remained steady or rose for gay, black men. The question was why.

The answer comes to Miami in “As Much as I Can,” a multiple award-winning theater performance set for March 12-15 at the Little Haiti Cultural Center.

This is theater built on hundreds of hours of oral histories from gay, black men in Baltimore and Mississippi – and the mega-stories contained in so many of the individual ones. It is theater arising from a partnership with ViiV Healthcare and its ACCELERATE! Initiative, which supports community projects to improve HIV outcomes for gay, black men.

This is theater committed to the community out of which it grew, returning to those cities as the play was revised and reworked, finetuning its message with feedback from doctors, community stakeholders and the men themselves. This is theater setting out to reduce the stigma these men face.

Hall puts it this way: “Ultimately, the play shows us the power that we have over ourselves and over each other – and the tremendous capacity that community support  has to create meaningful change.”

Hall recalls an audience member telling her, “This play is about love.”

Marquis Johnson stars in “As Much As I Can,” which plays March 12-15 at the Little Haiti Cultural Complex in Miami. (Photo courtesy of Harley & Co.)

The audience lives through a day in the life of four gay, black men. One has just discovered that he is HIV-positive. We watch as he wrestles with what this means to him, and how this news affects his friends and lover, as well as  their wider community.

Hall organizes her play around a series of rooms that audience members visit along with the actors, including a clinic, a barbershop, a living room, a bedroom, a local gay bar featuring a drag show performance, and a church. These are rooms where the men have felt most accepted, most rejected, most afraid.

In explaining why she organized the play this way, she refers to neurological studies that suggest that, when lingering in a detailed environment, the brain can’t tell whether the action it witnesses is real or stagecraft.

“The potential for fostering empathy is quite real,” she says.

Among the stories that kept repeating in the men’s oral histories were those having to do with church.

“This was a place of powerful experience for many of the men,” Hall says. “This was the place of important early childhood memories. Many of the men want to return but don’t know how. In some cases, they can’t.”

Hall created a scene in which the audience sits in pews hearing the same message far too many of the men heard in their lives. Yet Hall is quick to emphasize how many of the themes of these stories are ones each of us wrestle with.

Cory Gibson in “As Much As I Can,” which takes the audience through a day in the life of four gay, black men. (Photo courtesy of Harley & Co.)

“They are questions of how to negotiate power in an intimate relationship, of whether I am even worthy of taking care of my own health, of whether my parents and my wider community can accept my true self,” she says.

One of the high points of the production for Hall is the spinning of a love story with no dialogue, “a dance that manages to find the physical correlatives to emotion, a dance that has everything and nothing to do with sex.”

It’s not surprising that Hall wanted to bring her production to South Florida, since new HIV infection rates here are among the highest in the nation. When she started this project, she says, studies indicated that if the incidence of infection didn’t decline, by 2020 one out of every two sexually active gay, black men would contract HIV in their lifetimes.

“It’s 2020,” she says.

“As Much As I Can” was conceived, co-created and produced by N.Y.-based creative studio Harley & Company, with guidance and sponsorhip from ViiV Healthcare.

Admission to the play is free. Hall set out to make it easy for members from every sector of the community to come for the play and the varied discussion groups that she is arranging. She welcomes anyone interested in “connecting men to care,” or offering them fellowship.

“As much As I Can” comes to Miami after a soldout run at Joe’s Pub, a program of New York City’s celebrated Public Theater. The audience there “was wonderfully raucous,” Hall says.

Don’t disappoint, Miami.

What: “As Much as I Can,” by Sarah Hall

When: 7 p.m. March 12-15, and 3 p.m. March 14-15

Where: Little Haiti Cultural Complex, 212 NE 59th Terrace, Miami 

Cost: Free, but call for reservations, or go to Eventbrite.com 

More information: 305-960-2969

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Review: Arsht Center’s ‘Hamilton’ lives up to its reputation, in every way

Bryson Bruce plays a cocky Thomas Jefferson in “Hamilton” at the Arsht Center. (Photo courtesy of Joan Marcus)

Last season, undisputed honors for the hottest theater ticket in town went to Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Hamilton” in its regional debut at the Broward Center for the Performing Arts.

This season, the “Hamilton” love continues unabated, albeit with a different touring company of the same show. Fresh from three weeks at the Kravis Center in West Palm Beach, the “Angelica” cast has begun a four-week run at Miami’s Arsht Center. The actors are different from the ones in the “Philip” cast who played Fort Lauderdale last season, and of course each brings his or her interpretive skill set to these now-famous roles.

But as the silent attentiveness to specific moments and the appreciative roars at the end of multiple numbers so clearly demonstrate, the play (or musical, in this case) is resoundingly the thing. Everyone from diehard “Hamilfans” to first-timers in the audience is there to experience the groundbreaking vision of Miranda and his creative collaborators.

From its sold-out debut at New York’s Public Theater in 2015, “Hamilton” has been a piece of wildly inventive yet carefully crafted theater and a cultural phenomenon.

MacArthur “genius” grant winner Miranda, director Thomas Kail, musical director-orchestrator Alex Lacamoire and choreographer Andy Blankenbuehler set out to tell the story of the “ten-dollar Founding Father” by bringing a great man’s history to life, flaws and all, from a 21st-century perspective.

Edred Utomi stars as Alexander Hamilton. (Photo courtesy of “Hamilton”)

Inspired by Ron Chernow’s weighty biography “Alexander Hamilton,” composer-lyricist-book writer Miranda used a richly varied musical vocabulary – dizzyingly quick hip-hop and rap, ballads tender and aching, razzle-dazzle Broadway numbers and more – to illuminate the stunning rise of an orphaned, illegitimate Caribbean immigrant to the center of power in the brand-new United States of America.

The warts-and-all success story, which frequently pits the baldly ambitious Hamilton (Edred Utomi) against his more cautious rival Aaron Burr (Alexander Ferguson), is told largely by actors of color. Miranda, whose roots are Puerto Rican, originated the title role. Beyond casting lead roles with actors whose triple- threat talents get showcased in a theatrical phenomenon, the choice reinforces the evolution of the country Hamilton and his revolutionary contemporaries helped establish.

In terms of touring Broadway, each element of “Hamilton” is of the highest caliber: from David Korins’ massive brick-and-wood set to costume designer Paul Tazewell’s alluring interpretation of revolutionary style; from the hurricane-summoning and mood-underscoring lighting by Howell Binkley to the clarity of Nevin Steinberg’s sound design. Conductor Patrick Fanning leads a superb eight-piece orchestra. At certain moments, the simple accompanying sound of keyboard and strings makes the massive Ziff Ballet Opera House feel positively intimate.

Part of the joy of seeing different casts perform “Hamilton” is appreciating the way the chemistry changes as performers interpret the roles. Director Kail and choreographer Blankenbuehler don’t force carbon-copy performances, so even for those seeing “Hamilton” multiple times, there are fresh discoveries to be made.

Alexander Ferguson is a standby actor for five characters: Hamilton, Burr, John Laurens/Philip Hamilton and King George. (Photo courtesy of “Hamilton”)

In Miami, Utomi’s Hamilton is at first the unpolished newcomer, then a quick study who ingratiates himself into the circles of power. The actor is a wonderful singer and dancer who slays in his critical (and comical) rap battles with Bryson Bruce’s cocky Thomas Jefferson. And his seduction scenes with Olivia Puckett’s Maria Reynolds – he’s dressed in vibrant green, she in fallen-woman red – positively sizzle.

Ferguson, a standby actor for five characters (Hamilton, Burr, John Laurens/Philip Hamilton and King George), performed as Burr at a considerably hotter temperature than Broadway original Leslie Odom Jr. Playing the show’s sometime narrator and the man who ended Hamilton’s life at 49 in a duel, Ferguson is a great singer-dancer, and his work on “The Room Where It Happens” is a study in ravenous ambition.

As the Marquis de Lafayette in the first act, Bruce is difficult to understand, perhaps because of the too-heavy French accent he uses. Once he switches to playing Jefferson in the second, the actor oozes confidence, calculation and charisma, and his look-at-me rosy frock coat is just right for a performer who seems to dance with goofy abandon.

Tall and deep-voiced, Paul Oakley Stovall is a literally commanding George Washington, moving as he sings the nostalgically bittersweet “One Last Time,” and funny as he appropriates the style of a wrestling announcer to referee the Jefferson-Hamilton rap battles.

As King George, who can’t quite believe that his rebellious colony is slipping away, Peter Matthew Smith combines bemusement with menace. On Broadway, the wonderful Jonathan Groff played the king as controlled if somewhat silly, pleasantly smiling even as he threatened to kill the colonists’ friends and families. Smith’s king more obviously struggles to maintain a deceptive decorum, and he’s all the funnier for it.

Zoe Jensen plays Eliza Schuyler Hamilton as a loving wife who encourages her workaholic husband to engage more with the family. (Photo courtesy of “Hamilton”)

Then there are the two loves of Hamilton’s life: one actual, the other exaggerated by Miranda for dramatic effect. Zoe Jensen is a sweetly besotted Eliza Schuyler Hamilton, a loving wife who encourages her workaholic husband to engage more with the family and then transmits the sorrow of her broken heart as she sings “Burn.” Stephanie Umoh plays her elder sister, Angelica Schuyler, Hamilton’s mental match, though she keeps her attraction unrequited for Eliza’s sake.

The other key players in the fine “Angelica” company are Tyler Belo as Hercules Mulligan/James Madison; Jon Viktor Corpuz as John Laurens/Philip Hamilton; Joshua Rivera as Philip Schuyler/James Reynolds/the Doctor; Patrick Garr as Samuel Seabury; Robbie Nicholson as Charles Lee; and Taylor N. Daniels as George Eacker. Along with the selectively used turntable, the production’s superb ensemble of singer-dancers keeps “Hamilton” in dynamic motion.

In every way, “Hamilton” lives up to its reputation. The musical is enlightening, deeply touching, thoroughly engaging. It’s the work of creators at the top of their game. If you love great theater, don’t throw away your shot while the show is in town. Whether you buy a ticket or enter the daily #HAM4HAM digital lottery, you need to be in the room where “Hamilton” happens.

What: “Hamilton,” by Lin-Manuel Miranda

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 1 and 7 p.m. Sundays, through March 15

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

Cost: $79-$449; the #HAM4HAM digital lottery offers 40 tickets at $10 each to every performance; use the official app hamiltonmusical.com/app or visit hamiltonmusical.com/lottery to register

More information: 305-949-6722; arshtcenter.org

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Review: ‘Miami Motel Stories: North Beach’ tries something different

June Raven Romero’s performance as Madge, a 1930s undercover reporter in “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach,” is the highlight of the blue track – and arguably the entire production. (Photo courtesy of Pedro Portal)

“Miami Motel Stories,” Juggerknot Theatre Co.’s immersive gift to a theatrically diverse South Florida, is back for another round. This time, resident playwright Juan C. Sanchez has interwoven historically inspired short plays with an overarching concept, pushing boundaries yet remaining true to the immersive style that has won Juggerknot so many loyal fans.

Titled “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach,” the show begins in the inviting lobby of The Broadmoor Hotel on Miami Beach’s Ocean Terrace.

Before its Feb. 8 opening, the company kept the conceit of this edition of “Motel Stories” under wraps, but the idea is so deeply integrated into the production that it’s impossible to review the four-part show without going into particulars. So, spoiler alert: They’re making an indie movie about North Beach and we, the audience, are “volunteers” who have come to watch the final rehearsal before shooting begins the next day.

With 2017’s “Miami Motel Stories: Little Havana,” 2018’s “Miami Motel Stories: MiMo” and 2019’s “Wynwood Stories” under its belt, Juggerknot is better than ever at organizing and intricately timing the four different themed tracks of the show’s short plays, which are performed simultaneously. The pieces in the yellow track are dubbed “home,” the pink track is “glamor,” the orange track “outsiders” and the blue track “crime.”

The fun begins when Lenny (Alex Alvarez), the excited director of the “movie,” bustles into The Broadmoor’s lobby to greet the “volunteers.” Theatergoers are divided into color-coded groups of 18 each, with each color further divided into three groups. Sometimes, you experience the action with everyone in your group; sometimes, just the six in your subgroup enter a hotel room to watch a play.

Jeff Jean plays a teen bused from Overtown to North Beach in Juggerknot’s “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach.” (Photo courtesy of Pedro Portal)

Actors playing production assistants (PAs) lead each group outside and a few doors down to the old Ocean Terrace Hotel, which almost looks boarded-up and abandoned, except for the colored lights visible in the upper windows. Then the PA knocks, the wooden planks standing in for proper doors swing open, you pass through a tiny lobby where several characters are dancing, and you’re taken to your color-coded area to be guided through 90 minutes of plays and encounters.

In its physical setup, “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach” is reminiscent of the first edition at Little Havana’s Tower Hotel. You walk or squeeze through narrow hallways to go from room to room, and once you enter to watch one of the 15-minute plays, you grab a seat or stand, trying to stay out of the way of the actors.

This time, though, the more improvisational-interactive part of the experience, which usually followed watching the plays, is woven throughout. Thus, as a fictional volunteer, you might be asked to place props around a room before a scene begins or to carry sponsor Perrier’s drinks from one room to another. (Truth? Not only are you not getting paid for the get-involved gimmicks, you’re actually paying almost $70 a ticket to serve as free “labor” – not that anything is burdensome or strictly required.)

Some of the improv is fun, particularly if you wind up in the hilarious clutches of the yellow track’s PA, Robert (Jeff Quintana), who has decided he should be called Axel. Quintana is quick and funny and impossible to resist when he tells you to read for a replacement casting and gives you ridiculous direction.

Even some of the scripted scenes involve bits of improv, as actors playing actors break out of their formal characters to ask the volunteers for advice on career choices, how to end a scene and more.

Tai Thompson and Ana Margineanu split directing duties, but the plays and performances in all four tracks are cohesive. Each track has haunting pieces and ones that don’t quite land, so it’s tough to recommend one over the others.

Susie K. Taylor plays a Hasidic woman navigating a life-altering move in “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach.” (Photo courtesy of Pedro Portal)

In the yellow track, Susie K. Taylor is heartbreaking as Deb, a Hasidic woman in 1980 who has left her community and, unwillingly, her children. Making a video for her beloved children to watch when they’re older, she radiates love and copes with life-shattering loss.

In another yellow-track play, Jeff Jean plays Leroy, a black student in 1972 who is bused from Overtown to attend a North Beach high school. He is studying at the home of his naive white classmate David (Pedro Urquia), and as their conversation progresses, it’s clear their differences haven’t yet been bridged by physical proximity.

Then there are 2018 squatters Patrick (Roderick Randle) and Jorge (Laurie Tanner), who are living in the most horrifying two rooms at the Ocean Terrace – scenic designer Li Milian went crazy on this one – and are locked in perpetual war. And the other yellow-track PA, Danny (Rayner Garranchan), is hamstrung as he scurries around, worrying and waiting for his wife to go into labor.

The glamorous pink track features a disparate crew. Sandi Stock plays a makeup artist named April, a talented woman who’s so incensed that Lenny hasn’t cast her in the movie that she proceeds to complain for a good hour before she comes up with a dramatic solution. Real-life spouses Robert Fritz and Amy Coker play 1956 honeymooners Harold and Marion, fussing in their kitschy pink-dominated room about whether to relocate to Miami Beach.

In another pink space, Luckner Bruno is Gibbs, a magical soul whose gift for restoring shoes is layered over his lifelong insight into North Beach’s racist past. The award for creepiest play of “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach” goes to the one about Gianni Versace assassin Andrew Cunanan. Set in 1997, the play about a killer’s unraveling features Charles Sothers as a man whose soft-spoken attempts at charm and his clear ego give way to an action that will send you fleeing from the room.

The orange track, overseen by likeable assistant director Ramona (Liana Martell), is devoted to people who have found their way to North Beach without quite fitting in. A 1960 domestic worker named Mary (Maggie Maxwell) kneads pie dough as she spouts a series of cliches about her nice white Jewish employers, then the actor drops her character in frustration as she wonders why she couldn’t have played a more glamorous role.

J.C. Gutierrez as a bartender has an encounter with Kevin Veloz as a young Hasidic man in “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach.” (Photo courtesy of Pedro Portal)

Circa 1991, a charismatic South Beach bartender named Emilio (J.C. Gutierrez) and a quiet, young Hasidic man named Jacob (Kevin Veloz) are having an awkward yet enlightening morning-after conversation in Emilio’s room. As 1995 Argentine exes Ricardo and Cecilia, Mitch Lemos and Hannah Ghelman loudly perform a frequently vulgar two-level play about the sex-crazed former couple and how actors at odds deal with intimacy in a scene.

The highlight of the blue track – and arguably the entire production – is June Raven Romero’s performance as Madge, an impassioned undercover reporter in 1933. She’s a tough Southern gal crusading against vice, and when Romero drops that character to become the actor playing Madge, she’s a presence wherever she goes.

The other blue track plays feature Fernando Guillen as a menacing mob guy in the 1960s; Aubrey S.  Kessler and Phillip Andrew Santiago as a pair of 1991 thieves waiting to go through suitcases of stuff they’ve taken from someone notable; and Stephen Kaiser as a man whose horrific 1995 beating in a park has left him unable to go on with life. Also in the blue track, Alvarez as director Lenny is crazed because it’s not at all clear if he’ll have a camera on set by the time the shoot is supposed to begin. But he has been given little to do but storm around, scream and drop f-bombs, a severe underutilization of a fine actor’s abilities.

Juggerknot’s all-woman team – producers Tanya and Natasha Bravo; scenic designer Milian; lighting designer Ana Maria Morales; sound designer Sarah Vingerhoedt; props designer Stephanie Debrecht; costume designer Lee Harrison; and choreographer Sandra Portal-Andreu – has accomplished the monumental task of transforming the spaces within the Ocean Terrace into distinctive worlds that help tell the stories. Stage manager Michelle M. Lavergne and her four assistants keep the action flowing precisely – not one but two times each night.

The let’s-play aspect of immersive theater, plus the regular post-show party, makes “Miami Motel Stories” a draw for younger audiences more likely to end up in a club than a traditional theater when they’re making weekend plans. Because the idea has been around for a bit now, it’s no longer novel, and this batch of plays has fewer clear standouts.

Yet what Juggerknot reliably delivers – a dramatic deep dive into a neighborhood’s changing character throughout time – shines through again.

What: “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach” by Juan C. Sanchez

When: 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays, through March 28

Where: Juggerknot Theatre Co. production starts at The Broadmoor Hotel, 7450 Ocean Terrace, Miami Beach

Cost: Separate orange, yellow, pink and blue tracks cost $69.99 each (orange track is accessible to theatergoers with disabilities)

More information: 866-441-9962; miamimotelstories.com

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Review: M Ensemble’s ‘Ain’t Misbehavin’’ doesn’t fully hit its stride

From left, Deana Butler-Rahming, Don Seward, Asher Makeba, Vlad Dorson and Paulette Dozier sing the music of Fats Waller in “Ain’t Misbehavin’” at the Sandrell Rivers Theater. (Photo courtesy of Deborah Gray Mitchell)

Thomas Wright “Fats” Waller was a prodigious composer, a great entertainer and a plus-sized pianist whose life ended way too early when he died of pneumonia on a cross-country train trip in 1943. He was just 39.

Thanks in part to the 1978 Tony Award-winning revue, “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” Waller’s musical legacy lives on. His wit (and that of his frequent lyricist, Andy Razaf), joy and famous stride piano style have been enjoyed by generations born long after Waller’s Harlem Renaissance heyday.

Miami’s Carbonell Award-winning M Ensemble, South Florida’s oldest continuously producing professional theater company, is taking 21st century audiences on an imaginary trip back in time to a Harlem nightclub with its new production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” Directed by Jerry Maple Jr. – with musical direction by onstage conductor Christina Alexander and choreography by Keith Wilson – the production has notable virtues and frustrating flaws, sometimes within the same number.

One example: Wilson has a non-speaking part as the nightclub’s waiter. He sometimes joins in the dancing or performs brief solos, adding some razzle-dazzle to the movement. But he way too frequently appears with “drinks” for the cast or comes out to clear glasses from the set’s two tables, pulling focus from whoever is singing. Just no.

The cast – three women, two men – perform on Rachel Finley’s elevated nightclub set. The show’s title, spelled out in large letters, hangs above the stage, and black-and-white photographs of famous black entertainers adorn the front of the stage at floor level. Guy Haubrich’s color-changing lighting is even part of the wood barrier separating the actors from the six-piece upstage band led by Alexander.  Shirley Richardson’s costumes make the gals look chic and the guys look sharp, though the wigs on the men seem an unnecessary nuisance.

Paulette Dozier, Asher Makeba and Deana Butler-Rahming all have a rich, powerful tone when they’re singing full out; these women can belt with the best of them. Don Seward, whose glorious bass-baritone was made for Waller’s music, becomes the star of the show by virtue of his performance skills and wondrous voice. Vlad Dorson, an engaging dancer, has problems with volume (he sounds almost muted compared with the other singers) and articulating lyrics. The latter makes his showcase solo, “The Viper’s Drag,” an underwhelming number – yes, the singer is sleepily celebrating the virtues of weed, but if you can’t clearly get what he’s saying, the humor goes up in smoke.

From left, Deana Butler-Rahming, Paulette Dozier and Asher Makeba deliver the peppy “Off-Time” in The M Ensemble’s “Ain’t Misbehavin’.” (Photo courtesy of Deborah Gray Mitchell)

Highlights are dotted throughout the show. Makeba delivers a come-hither “Squeeze Me” and a memorable “That Ain’t Right.” Butler-Rahming slays on “Keepin’ Out of Mischief Now.” Dozier navigates the tricky “Cash for Your Trash” and sings an aching “Mean to Me.” Dorson has fun with Seward as the guys sing “Fat and Greasy,” and Seward kills on the comic novelty number, “Your Feet’s Too Big.” He’s great, too, as he sings “I’m Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter” – he’s the show’s Waller stand-in, though he’s tall rather than hefty – and his voice enriches the group numbers.

The show’s most intensely emotional number is the powerful “Black and Blue,” delivered by all five singers as a haunting lament about the disconnect between how they feel about themselves and the injustices visited upon them because of their race.

By rights, “Ain’t Misbehavin’” should be a slam dunk for The M Ensemble. But the sound balance between the band, which is visible but sitting lower than the playing area, and the actors sometimes obscures lyrics. Tonally, the performances range from straightforward to caricatured. Adjustments can and should be made so that the talent involved can soar.

What: The M Ensemble production of “Ain’t Misbehavin’,” by Richard Maltby Jr., Murray Horwitz and Fats Waller

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays; through Feb. 23

Where: Sandrell Rivers Theater, 6101 NW Seventh Ave., Miami

Cost: $31 admission; $26 for students and seniors

More information: 786-320-5986; themensemble.com

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‘Miami Motel Stories’ looks dramatically at a diverse North Beach

Playwright Juan C. Sanchez and directors Ana Margineanu and Tai Thompson are the creative team behind “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach.” (Photo courtesy of Daniella Piantini)

Beginning with “Miami Motel Stories: Little Havana” in 2017, Juggerknot Theatre Co. has continued to create immersive theater in an idiosyncratic, widely embraced way.

Led by founder and artistic director Tanya Bravo, the company has no set performance space. Instead, it partners with developers to turn makeover-ready motels, hotels or special places (The Tower in Little Havana; the Gold Dust in MiMo in 2018; the former Wynwood Yard in 2019) into site-specific playgrounds for creators, actors and theatergoers.  

From Feb. 8 through Feb. 29, it’s the North Beach neighborhood’s turn to get the Juggerknot treatment, starting at The Broadmoor Hotel on Miami Beach’s Ocean Terrace, then shifting over to the old Ocean Terrace Hotel, where most of the action happens.

Juggerknot’s resident playwright, Juan C. Sanchez, has written every one of the dozens of short plays for the three iterations of “Miami Motel Stories” as well as “Wynwood Stories.” 

He’s collaborating for the fourth time with director Tai Thompson, who is working alongside New York-based director Ana Margineanu, co-founder of the immersive company PopUp Theatrics. A number of the 28 actors in “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach” have also been involved with the earlier Juggerknot productions, honing their immersive skills, getting accustomed to doing the same short show repeatedly each night for tiny audience groups in close quarters.

“It’s actually harder to write one of these now,” Sanchez says in a production office nestled inside the Ocean Terrace Hotel, its outside adorned with several “No Trespassing” signs. “You have to be mindful of not repeating yourself, not falling into a groove and doing it by rote.”

To that end, Sanchez has come up with a meta layer for the new production – one that everyone involved wants to keep secret until the opening. The theatrical stories he’s telling in his latest short plays take place over a period of nearly nine decades, from 1933 to the present, reflecting the area’s diversity throughout its history.  

The characters this time include: a hard-boiled undercover woman reporter; a Hasidic woman and Hasidic young man on the cusp of change; an Argentine couple with a tumultuous relationship; a mobster; black and white classmates; a honeymooning New York couple; a domestic worker; the victim of a vicious mugging; squatters; and a certain notorious killer. Inside the Ocean Terrace, 18 rooms will be filled with plays and activity.

To create the plays, Sanchez did his now-customary deep dive into North Beach’s history and its different areas. He did research at the HistoryMiami Museum, spoke with the museum’s resident historian, Dr. Paul S. George, and Miami Design Preservation League historian Jeff Donnelly. He spent time at the North Shore Library near the beach and interviewed longtime residents who wanted their stories represented. Then, the playwright – who so often writes as he’s traveling by bus to and from his home on the mainland – did something different.

Amy Coker and Robert Fritz play a honeymooning couple circa 1956 in the latest Juggerknot Theatre Co. production. (Photo courtesy of Pedro Portal)

“I did talk to a lot of strangers this time. I came here every couple of days, and I’d ask what it’s like to live here. One or two of those interviews became stories,” Sanchez says, citing a play about squatters at the Ocean Terrace Hotel.

What began to coalesce for him were images of North Beach as a welcoming place of refuge and as the less glamorous stepsister to sizzling hot South Beach.

“One of the first things I found out about was the Biscayne House of Refuge, which was built in [1876] as a life-saving station and home to aid sailors lost at sea,” he says. “Then this became a family neighborhood for Jewish people, then Cuban Jewish people who had services in Spanish, then Argentines … welcoming became the spark.”

The North Beach vs. South Beach notion came from seeing “film crews every time I showed up. So I wondered: Is North Beach becoming the new South Beach? Is it winning the duel?” he says. “North Beach still has a bit of a hometown feel; I think the past is still here. So how can we theatricalize that? I’ve gambled with structure this time, but it’s important to take risks, especially with immersive work.”

Thompson and Margineanu are the directors tasked with bringing Sanchez’s creative vision to vibrant, precisely timed life. “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach” is told in four separate tracks, identified with color-coded “keys” – pink, orange, yellow and blue. Each runs 90 minutes, with 18 theatergoers per track divided into three groups of six each to be ushered in and out of the rooms where the stories get told. That’s a lot of simultaneous activity, for the actors, crew and audiences.

“Working together as directors is not the most common thing,” says Margineanu, a Romanian theater artist who has worked all over the world. “There are huge advantages, yet the ego gets hurt because you’re not the only shining star … But my philosophy is that this is how it should be in the mainstream more, because theater is the art of collaboration.”

Thompson adds, “There are some compromises … There’s a great amount of trust involved in making one cohesive show. We’re using each other’s actors, and they all have to be in a certain place at a certain time … It all has to be timed to the minute.”

Margineanu calls the immersive experience “a marathon,” in which theatergoers can choose their level of involvement.

“[Some] people are scared of ‘interactive’ theater, but what they’re really scared of is being put on a stage and having 100 people laughing at them,” she says. “People love to play, to be part of it for a couple of hours, to leave their problems behind and just go down the rabbit hole.”

Two of the actors who will take audiences down the rabbit hole are Susie K. Taylor and June Raven Romero. Taylor has performed in two previous Juggerknot productions, as the effervescent hostess Mrs. Wade in “Miami Motel Stories: MiMo” and as a chic, fuming gallery owner in “Wynwood Stories.” Romero, a transgender actor, gave a memorably intense performance as a trans woman who fought back against her attacker in “Veronica,” part of “Miami Motel Stories: MiMo.”

This time, Taylor is playing Deb, a woman who has made the life-altering decision to leave her Hasidic community in 1980. Romero is Madge, a tough reporter who has gone undercover to expose vice at the Jungle Inn in 1933. Both artists say that working in this kind of theater has made them better actors.

“I’ve become obsessed with immersive theater,” Taylor says. “When I’m doing [traditional] theater, my brain is bored, operating on one cylinder. This tickles your brain. It brings new people to the theater. This is so quick and close. People are on their screens all the time, and this is a bridge. A lot of people feel seen in this kind of theater.”

J.C. Gutierrez as a bartender has an encounter with Kevin Veloz as a young Hasidic man in “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach.” (Photo courtesy of Pedro Portal)

Romero, who describes her past experience of playing Veronica multiple times per night as “90 minutes of full-on panicking,” says that at times she has felt tokenized when she was called in for certain casting opportunities. But working with Juggerknot, a company in which the leaders, directors, designers, crew and many actors are women, has been different.

“I’m just another individual here,” she says. “You look at all of us and say, ‘Yeah, they’re diverse.’”

Bravo, who has been spearheading the production of “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach” for the past three months, acknowledges that she and her collaborators have reached the point in the process where they’re feeling exhausted. Producing such a large, complex show on a limited budget is tough and would be impossible without partner companies, cities and institutions – in this case, Perrier, Ketel One, Café La Llave, the city of Miami Beach, The Salvation Army, Dragonfly Thrift Boutique, Don Bailey, Ace Hardware and the Welcome Channel. And, of course, Ocean Terrace Holdings, which made space at The Broadmoor and the Ocean Terrace Hotel available.

Developer Sandor Scher explains why his company finds value in giving space to Juggerknot.

“Ocean Terrace Holdings is committed to preserving the heritage that existed in the 1950s and ’60s along upper Collins Avenue and Ocean Terrace, and is looking to the past to inspire our future redevelopment plans for the block,” he says. “‘Miami Motel Stories: North Beach’ is the perfect opportunity to share our neighborhood’s story and provide the community a venue to engage in this unique, immersive theatrical experience, while underscoring our commitment to promoting the arts.”

Bravo is a firm believer in the future of immersive theater, a form she has played a major role in establishing in South Florida.

“It’s a trend now. It has great flexibility. You can do it anywhere. We’re planning to take it to Coconut Grove and Overtown,” she says. “There’s an immediate party feeling to it. And people in Miami want to go to an event.”

What: “Miami Motel Stories: North Beach” by Juan C. Sanchez

When: 7:30 and 9:30 p.m. Thursdays-Sundays; running from Feb. 8-29

Where: Juggerknot Theatre Co. production starts at The Broadmoor Hotel, 7450 Ocean Terrace, Miami Beach

Cost: Separate orange, yellow, pink and blue tracks cost $69.99 each (orange track is accessible to theatergoers with disabilities)

More information: 866-441-9962; miamimotelstories.com

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Review: ‘The Cubans’ marks debut of playwright with a voice worth experiencing

Old wounds are addressed as the characters played by, from left, Ashley Alvarez, Caleb Scott, Andhy Mendez, Adriana Gaviria, Ruben Rabasa, James Puig, Jezabel Montero and René Granado face off in “The Cubans.” (Photo courtesy of Justin Namon)

An observant, funny, moving slice of Miami life is occupying the stage of Miami Beach’s Colony Theatre just now, thanks to Miami New Drama’s world premiere of Michael Leon’s “The Cubans.”

A New York-based actor who grew up in Miami and graduated from Florida International University, Leon has said he wrote “The Cubans” in part because he didn’t see his community and culture represented in the complex family plays that spoke to him so powerfully.

Now, his first produced play is adding a Cuban/Cuban-American “sabor” (flavor) to the genre, a point of view that is deeply specific yet universally resonant in its exploration of intergenerational conflict and the challenges that test us as we move through life.

Working with director Victoria Collado, who earlier staged Vanessa Garcia’s long-running hit play “The Amparo Experience,” Leon lets the audience eavesdrop on members of an extended Cuban-American family and their friends – first as they gather in Westchester for a celebratory meal, then during a fraught “Nochebuena” (Christmas Eve) dinner.

We meet Martica (Vivian Ruiz), the family’s matriarch, as she’s cooking pork and “frijoles negros” (black beans) for a get-together celebrating son Mati’s graduation from the University of Florida.

Daughter Christy (Ashley Alvarez), who has spent the past nine years in New York struggling to get her acting career off the ground, has come home for the party – and, concurrent with the cooking, mother and daughter continue their long-running battle over Christy’s life choices.

Patriarch Jesus (James Puig), who adores his daughter, is a man forever in motion, unsuccessful at playing peacemaker but clearly in love with the strong woman who is his wife.

Then the guests arrive: first, Ramoncito (Andhy Mendez), Christy’s cousin; then Ana (Jezabel Montero), Martica’s attention-seeking younger sister, with her new younger Anglo boyfriend, Eric (Caleb Scott); then family friends Vero (Adriana Gaviria) and Pepe (René Granado), who have an uncomfortable history with Ramoncito; and finally, Manolo (Ruben Rabasa), Jesus’ memory-challenged older friend who is like an “abuelo” (grandfather) to Christy and her brother.

James Puig as Jesus and Vivian Ruiz as Martica share a playful moment in Michael Leon’s “The Cubans.” (Photo courtesy of Justin Namon)

As in life, the conversation in the first act ranges from the mundane to the profound, with Leon’s characters revealing their beliefs and very natures. For the members of the older generation, the aching loss of life as they knew it in Cuba is omnipresent; as Martica says to Christy, “We had to build this new life over the ruins of our grief.”

Born in Miami, the younger family members struggle to break free of parental expectations, determined to carve out their own lives. For Christy, that means living elsewhere, focusing on career, putting marriage and family on hold, maybe permanently. For Ramoncito, it means living an authentic life, though coming clean with his father about his sexual orientation has led to their estrangement.

For all the serious issues underpinning the first act, much of it is buoyantly funny, thanks to Leon’s writing, Collado’s deft way of balancing tone, and the actors’ considerable skill. One particularly priceless moment happens when a clueless Eric says, “You guys must be thrilled about the lifting of the embargo.” The statement goes over like a lead balloon or something unspeakable being dropped in the proverbial punch bowl.

Because of a life-altering event that happens at the end of the first act, the second is far more somber in tone, a shift that is even reflected in the palette of Caroline Spitzer’s costumes. The metaphors grow heavier and more vividly expressed. As a rainstorm pounds, the old Westchester house is literally falling apart.

Further change is on the horizon, and an openly mournful Martica can’t bear it: “I’m stuck. Stuck in a cycle of saying goodbyes, finding my footing, pushing forward, forgetting the past to just have my world demolished again. I’m tired. So tired of this endless tumble towards nowhere. I have to make it stop. I won’t, I can’t say goodbye again.”

New play development is never easy, and as impressive as Miami New Drama’s production is in many regards, some elements don’t yet work as they’re intended.

As with some of its past productions, the company is utilizing its space at the Colony in a fresh way. Carbonell Award-winning set designers Christopher and Justin Swader have created a living-dining-kitchen area that lies between some onstage seating and the regular audience chamber – a traverse arrangement that puts the actors between the two sections of theatergoers, who then watch each other watching the play.

Collado and the performers therefore must be mindful moment to moment of actors not turning away from one section of the audience when key lines are delivered, creating an extra level of challenge in the staging and in the work by sound designer Abigail Nover and lighting designer Yuki Nakase Link.

The set itself, a tidy space with tile floors and lived-in details (props are by Jameelah Bailey), is another metaphor. In the second act, it transforms in a way that symbolizes what is happening to the family. Very dramatic, except that Nover (at least by opening night) couldn’t always overcome the difficulties of balancing sound effects and certain significant speeches by some actors.

Adriana Gaviria’s Vero embraces Andhy Mendez’s Ramoncito in the Miami New Drama world premiere of “The Cubans.” (Photo courtesy of Justin Namon)

Incorporating script changes throughout the rehearsal process, which comes with the territory in world premieres, the actors have brought a stage full of memorable characters to life.

Alvarez’s Christy is a dynamo, a young woman who curses too much for her mother’s taste, a restless 30-year-old who speaks English the way the older generation speaks Spanish – “rapidamente” (rapidly). Her hurt at the ongoing disconnect with Martica, her sense of her mother’s perpetual disapproval, is palpable.

Ruiz convincingly journeys from in-charge matriarch to a woman mourning yet more change. Her explosive second-act reckoning with her hurting husband is potentially among the play’s most powerful moments, but likely because of the extent of her lines and changes in the text, she’s still struggling in certain speeches.

Puig’s Jesus is strong, loving, a family leader who knows when to defer to his wife. Granado’s Pepe is the macho Latino male – bombastic, controlling, opinionated – while Gaviria as his wife, Vero, is warmer, more conciliatory. Rabasa is touching as the elderly Manolo, struggling to cope with the loss of home, memory and the world as it used to be, though the actor is sometimes quite hard to hear.

Montero is spot-on as the free-spirited Ana, while Scott gives two impressively differentiated performances as Ana’s ill-suited boyfriend and Ramoncito’s significant other, Anthony. Speaking of Ramoncito, Mendez is mesmerizing as a man who is fighting just as hard as Christy to live in his truth.  The scene in which the cousins reunite, share secrets and have a dance is one of the loveliest moments in the play.

Though the play and production are still coalescing, “The Cubans” marks the debut of a playwright with a voice worth experiencing. Leon’s story speaks, with affection and understanding, to anyone determined to find or return to the comforting embrace of home in an ever-changing world.

What: Miami New Drama production of “The Cubans” by Michael Leon 

When: 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays and 3 p.m. Sundays, through Feb. 16

Where: Colony Theatre, 1040 Lincoln Road, Miami Beach

Cost: $39-$95

More information: 305-674-1040; colonymb.org

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Review: ‘Mamma Mia!’ at Actors’ Playhouse is escapist theater of the best kind

From left, Jim Ballard, Mark Sanders, Meredith Pughe and Ed Kemper play out a hidden agenda in the Actors’ Playhouse production of “Mamma Mia!” (Photo courtesy of Alberto Romeu)

Feeling joyous is not so easy these days, given the country’s toxic politics, global climate change, potential pandemics – well, pick your anxiety-producing crisis.

But at least temporarily, joy can be experienced for the price of a theater ticket.

Anyone who helped make “Mamma Mia!” a $4 billion global behemoth would probably tell you that the 21-year-old jukebox musical, which pairs hits from the Swedish pop supergroup ABBA with a silly plot, is pretty much a sure thing when it comes to mood boosting. That doesn’t mean “Mamma Mia!” is great theater – it isn’t – but it works as an escapist oasis.

Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre in Coral Gables has just opened a “Mamma Mia!” that is bright, bouncy and beyond broad.

Artistic Director David Arisco’s production features plenty of first-rate vocal talent; skillfully enthusiastic dancers to execute Ron Hutchins’ athletic choreography; and a pop-adept, eight-piece band led by musical director Caryl Fantel.

Set designer Sean McClelland and set dresser Jodi Dellaventura, lighting designer Eric Nelson and costume designer Ellis Tillman create the inviting, sun-kissed fictional Aegean Sea island of Kalokairi, where clothing worn by the buff younger inhabitants tends toward the skimpy. Sound designer Shaun Mitchell cranks up the volume so that this “Mamma Mia!” is part-theater, part-concert.

As for Catherine Johnson’s drop-an-ABBA-hit-here plot, which is set in a “not so distant past,” the show centers on the upcoming nuptials of 20-year-old Sophie Sheridan (Meredith Pughe). Sophie has been raised by her never-wed mom Donna (Jodie Langel), a former singer who has carved out a nice life for the two running an inn on the island.

From left, Mandy Striph, Margot Moreland, Drew Arisco, Meredith Pughe and Jodie Langel gather for a Greek island wedding in “Mamma Mia!”, playing at the Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables through Feb. 23. (Photo courtesy of Alberto Romeu)

As her wedding to Sky (Drew Arisco) draws near, Sophie discovers her mother’s diary from 1979 and figures out that one of three guys who were Donna’s lovers in quick succession – American architect Sam Carmichael (Jim Ballard), British banker Harry Bright (Mark Sanders) and Aussie writer Bill Austin (Ed Kemper) – is probably the father she has never known. Without saying anything to her mom, she invites all three to the wedding.

Once the guys show up, it seems to take an inordinate amount of time for the older generation to figure out what’s going on (we have the advantage, since we’ve seen the “Mamma Mia!” movies starring Meryl Streep).

Does it matter? Not really. “Mamma Mia!” is all about the tunes written by ABBA’s Benny Andersson and Björn Ulvaeus, and whether or not (sometimes not) they fit tidily into the plot, they’re belted or crooned with aplomb in the Actors’ production.

Langel, a dark-haired beauty with an amazingly toned figure and Broadway chops, delivers the vocal goods whether her Donna is singing dramatic solos or singing as Donna and the Dynamos with her backup besties: Tanya (Mandy Striph) and Rosie (Margot Moreland).

Striph gets a nice showcase moment with Reynel Reynaldo’s smitten Pepper on “Does Your Mother Know,” and Moreland goes all-out (and then some) in comic pursuit of Kemper’s flummoxed Bill as they sing “Take a Chance on Me.”

Ballard, who also played Sam in the Maltz Jupiter Theatre’s memorably fine production of “Mamma Mia!” a year ago, tonally matches Langel in terms of exasperation as the two sing “S.O.S.” to deal with past wounds and present misunderstandings. Sanders’ Harry is the buttoned-up banker on holiday, a man determined to release his inner goofball.

As Sophie, Pughe gets the show going with a lovely “I Have a Dream,” and she sings well with her “dads” and her beloved Sky, who is more than a little miffed that she has undertaken this finding-my-father thing without confiding in him. Actor Arisco, son of the show’s director, has performed at various regional theaters and toured nationally in “Something Rotten!,” and his warm voice and comfortable dance style are suited to Sky.

From left, Mandy Striph, Jodie Langel and Margot Moreland relive their performing glory days as Donna and the Dynamos. (Photo courtesy of Alberto Romeu)

Kaléa Leverette as Lisa and Lauren Horgan as Ali, Sophie’s pals and bridesmaids, manage to sing “Honey, Honey” with her while executing sometimes-awkward moves. Conor Walton as Eddie and Reynaldo as Pepper remain charming even as they’re literally being pushed around by Donna.

Alex Jorth, also among several cast members who did “Mamma Mia!” at the Maltz, radiates unflappability as the wedding officiant who can cope with a major change at the last minute.

In sensory terms, the Actors’ Playhouse production can be an overwhelming experience. Some of the performers push so hard they might as well be in their  final moments in a hospital delivery room. The rock concert-style sound is rarely subtle – quite the opposite – and at least on opening night, some performers were fleetingly a tiny bit off in terms of pitch.

“Mamma Mia!” is not, obviously, a musical theater masterwork, nor is it in the same league with a great jukebox musical like “Jersey Boys.” It serves up escapist fun largely via its ABBA earworms, which gets some in the audience singing along even during the overture and turns most theatergoers into dancing queens by the time the concert-style curtain call comes around.

What: “Mamma Mia!” by Benny Andersson, Björn Ulvaeus and Catherine Johnson

When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Saturdays, 3 p.m. Sundays (additional matinee 2 p.m. Jan. 29); through Feb. 23

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

Cost: $30-$75

More information: 305-444-9293; actorsplayhouse.org

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‘Feos’ tells a love story with puppets

Chile’s Aline Kuppenheim with the two puppet protagonists from her most recent directorial work, “Feos.” (Photo courtesy of Elio Frugone Piña)

The Greeks knew a thing or two about theater. In their works – meditations on the deepest of human emotions, plays that became nothing less than the cornerstones of Western culture – the actors wore masks. The Greeks understood that somehow the masked actors, rather than alienating an audience, mysteriously brought the audience closer to them.

Flash-forward several millennia: A well-known actress hungry to deepen the theatrical experience of her audience begins to work with a “cousin” of the masks the Greeks used. Chile’s Aline Kuppenheim begins to explore theater where puppets take the stage. Her most recent directorial work, “Feos,” will be presented this weekend by FUNDarte at Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s On.Stage Black Box Theatre.

The work comes to Miami immediately after being performed in New York City’s Public Theater, where it received standing ovations, not a few tears, and a rave review in the New York Times.

While Kuppenheim sometimes writes and directs work for children, “Feos” most certainly is not meant for that audience. It is the story of an accidental meeting, a love story.

The piece is based on a short story by acclaimed Uruguayan novelist and poet Mario Benedetti. Powerhouse Chilean dramatist Guillermo Calderon worked with Kuppenheim on the script.

A man notices a woman waiting in line to buy a ticket for a movie. Her face is badly disfigured, as is his. After the movie, he invites her for coffee. She hesitatingly agrees.

In the piece, based on a short story by novelist and poet Mario Benedetti, a man notices a woman waiting in line to buy a ticket for a movie. (Photo courtesy of Elio Frugone Piña)

Slowly over 50 minutes, each puppet tells the other her/his story. The conversation is sometimes comical, sometimes a rumination on beauty and wounds, on desire and longing. Finally, the couple exit the coffeeshop and, in a dialogue so lyrical as to become almost a song, the two make their way to the man’s apartment. Ah, but what happens next?

Remember that all this feeling is conjured by wooden puppets. Well, not exactly.

Kuppenheim’s puppetry is in the tradition of the Japanese art of Bunraku. Actors dressed hand to foot in black are on stage with the wooden creatures, moving them at their various joints. Sometimes a single puppet – they are nearly life-sized – will have more than one puppeteer at its beck and call. Actors also give voice to the puppets.

According to Kuppenheim, this work in a supportive role can cut through many of the usual preoccupations of actors, enabling an actor “to be present to her/himself in a new way, one more at a distance from ego.”

And then there are the truly mysterious moments that sometimes occur during rehearsals early on in a production. Sometimes, as the puppets are being moved, an expression or a gesture appears as if by accident.

“These moments,” Kuppenheim says, “ can feel like a revelation, as if the puppet is showing us the way towards possibilities. We had yet to see that deepen our own understanding of the text, its contradictions and complexities.”

There is still another layer to the relationship between the puppets and their handlers. During the production, there are times when the black shapes that are the handlers/actors, seem almost to be embracing the puppets, to be offering their story strength from another dimension.

Slowly, over the course of “Feos,” each puppet tells the other her/his story. (Photo courtesy of Elio Frugone Piña)

Small wonder then that Kuppenheim calls her company, Teatro y Su Doble (Theater and Its Double).

Kuppenheim not only directs this presentation, she also has designed the puppets. They are done by hand, which takes months. Each puppet is composed of myriad parts, allowing for ample expression. The props in all of Kuppenheim’s plays – miniature tables and chairs, bus-stops – also are handmade in the company’s small studio.

Slow-motion animation, also done by Kuppenheim, adds to the scenes. And lighting completes them. In its review of the show, the New York Times described it as the “gloaming of a sustained, velvety night.”

“Here in the United States,” Kuppenheim says, “the public has been surprised and moved by the depth of emotion these pieces of wood bring.” Indeed.

What: “Feos” by Teatro y Su Doble (adult content; age recommendation is 14 and older)

When: 8:30 p.m. Jan. 25, 3 p.m. Jan. 26

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

Cost: $30 for adults; $25 for students and seniors with ID; $20 for groups of 10 or more

More information: 305-547-5414 (auditorium); 786-348-0789 (FUNDarte); fundarte.us

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