#Lorca Peress

[auditionsuggestions]

Latine/Hispanic Plays and Musicals

As if I'm not loud enough about being Latina already, but IT'S HERITAGE MONTH, FRIENDS!!!!

Here are some plays and musicals I recommend in honor of Latine/Hispanic Heritage Month. (Please, note I'm not including things set in Spain). Most of these I have seen, read, or been in (or auditioned for). Obviously there are more than I list here, but here's a starting point! Feel free to reblog with your favorites :)

Plays

Ghosts of Bogotá by Diana Burbano--Three Colombian-American siblings return to their family home in Bogotá after the death of their abusive grandfather and must face the literal and metaphorical ghosts of their generational trauma. (stage rights, buy the play)

Welcome to Arroyo's by Kristoffer Diaz--"Alejandro Arroyo owns the newest (and cleanest) lounge in New York City’s Lower East Side. His sister, Molly, has a nasty habit of writing graffiti on the back wall of the local police precinct. Officer Derek is a recent NYC transplant with something to prove. Lelly Santiago is a socially awkward college student who may have discovered that the Arroyo siblings’ late mother was one of the founders of hip-hop music" (From the synopsis on the Dramatists Play Service website).

La Gringa by Carmen Rivera-Tirado--"Mari­a Elena Garcia goes to visit her family in Puerto Rico during the Christmas holidays and arrives with plans to connect with her homeland. Although this is her first trip to Puerto Rico, she has had an intense love for the island, and even majored in Puerto Rican Studies in college. Once Maria is in Puerto Rico, she realizes that Puerto Rico does not welcome her with open arms. The majority of the Puerto Ricans on the island consider her an American – a gringa – and Mari­a considers this a betrayal. If she’s a Puerto Rican in the United States and an American in Puerto Rico, Maria concludes that she is nobody everywhere. Her uncle, Manolo, spiritually teaches her that identity isn’t based on superficial and external definitions, but rather is an essence that she has had all along in her heart." (From the synopsis on Concord Theatricals).

In the Time of the Butterflies by Caridad Svich--An adaptation of the novel of the same name by Julia Álvarez. A fictionalized version of the lives of the Mirabal-Reyes sisters. "The sisters inspired resistance cells throughout the country against the dictatorial regime of Gen. Rafael Leónidas Trujillo. The ‘butterflies’, their secret code name, were brutally murdered by the regime in 1960. With immersive video and animation dispersed across the stage, this epic production paints a visual dreamscape of the interior lives of the activist sisters, the beauty and ferocity of the natural world, and the music heard on the radio of the time." (From the show page on the Teatro Vista website).

Anna in the Tropics b Nilo Cruz--"In Florida in 1929 in a Cuban–American cigar factory, where cigars are still rolled by hand and “lectors” are employed to educate and entertain the workers. The arrival of a new lector is a cause for celebration, but when he begins to read aloud from Anna Karenina, he unwittingly becomes a catalyst in the lives of his avid listeners, for whom Tolstoy, the tropics, and the American dream prove a volatile combination." (From the synopsis on DPS)

Musicals

In The Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Algeria Hudes--Set in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York, In the Heights follows a few days of one summer in the neighborhood. The show explores themes of family, purpose, legacy, and what it means to be Latine in the US.

Temple of the Souls by Dean Landon and Anika Paris, Anita Velez-Mitchell, and Lorca Peress. (A note, this show as far as I know has only been performed at the New York Musical Festival) Set just after the Spanish conquest of Puerto Rico, Temple of the Souls follows the story of a young Taino man and the daughter of a conquistador as they become entangled in an ill-fated romance.

On Your Feet by Alexander Dinelaris Jr, Emilio Estefan, and Gloria Estefan. This is a jukebox musical about the life of Gloria Estefan following her from her childhood to the accident that nearly cost her her life and career.

West Side Story by Leonard Bernstein, Stephen Sondheim, and Arthur Laurents. I'm a bit loathe to include shows not by Latine creators, but it feels like there are so few musicals about us. WSS is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet. The noble houses of Verona have now been recast as warring street gangs of New York's West Side, the two star-crossed lovers now a best friend of one side's leader and the sister of the other.

Evita by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. A biographic musical about the spiritual leader of Argentina, Eva Peron. Following her life from a driven and ambitious teenager to one of the most powerful women in the Western Hemisphere. Narrated by Che (imagined as revolutionary Che Guevara in the original production, though really intended to simply be a stand-in for the everyday Argentinian), the show follows Eva's rise and subsequent illness and her impact on her people.

#musicals #plays #latino heritage month #latine heritage month #hispanic heritage month #musical theatre #broadway

[caroleditosti]

Romy Nordlinger is Alla Nazimova in 'Garden of Alla'

Romy Nordlinger is Alla Nazimova in ‘Garden of Alla’

Romy Nordlinger in ‘Garden of Alla’ 7:30 pm, Thursday October 21st, The Cutting Room-44 E 32nd St. (6:00 pm doors for live jazz cocktail hour) I had seen Romy Nordlinger in her solo show PLACES! at 59E59th’s East of Edinburgh Festival and thought she was marvelous. Evolving her presentation before and after the pandemic, once again she is stepping out to bring to life the amazing Nazimova who…

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#Alla Naimova #Garden of Alla #Lorca Peress #Romy NOrdlinger

[atlaswasapuertorican]

The Taíno's of Puerto Rico Are the Subject of a New Musical

MULTISTAGES is pleased to announce the new musical by award-winning Anita Velez-Mitchell, platinum-winning composers Dean Landon and Anika Paris, TEMPLE OF THE SOULS, with musical direction by Bruce Baumer, Enrique Brown, choreographer, and directed by Artistic Director Lorca Peress.

 TEMPLE OF THE SOULS will play a limited engagement as part of the New York Musical Festival at Off-Broadway's The Acorn Theatre at Theatre Row (410 W. 42nd St., NY, NY 10036). Performances begin Wednesday, July 19 and continue until Sunday, July 23.

TEMPLE OF THE SOULS is a time-traveling love story set in the mystical El Yunque rain forest, caves, and valleys of Puerto Rico. We open on a present-day tour through an ancient cave known to be inhabited by Taíno Souls, the indigenous people who once ruled the island. Two tourists become entranced by a Taíno cave drawing of legendary lovers, and are magically transported back in time to the 16th Century as the lovers, Guario, a young Taíno runaway, and Amada, the daughter of a Conquistador. They meet by chance during the raucous San Juan Bautista Fiesta, but their union is thwarted by the intolerant world around them. To escape, they run to the Temple of the Souls where nightmares and dreams come true. With a forbidden love that is stronger than death and the blending of two worlds, they change the face of Puerto Rico forever.

#puerto rico #tainos #taino #theater #temple of the souls

[vileart]

Places Dramaturgy: Romy Nordlinger @ Edfringe 2017

** ROMY NORDLINGER’S PLACES – THE STORY OF THE MOST FAMOUS BROADWAY AND SILENT FILM STAR YOU’VE PROBABLY NEVER HEARD OF - ALLA NAZIMOVA - TO HAVE ITS WORLD PREMIERE AT 59E59 THEATERS as part of EAST OF EDINBURGH BEFORE TRAVELING TO EDINBURGH FRINGE **

NEW YORK, NY (June 13, 2017)

Yonder Window Theatre Company and

Parity Productions are thrilled to announce that writer/performer Romy Nordlinger’s Places is among the selected performances for this year’s East to Edinburgh at 59E59 Theaters. 

At the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Places is playing at the New Town Theatre (Venue 7).

The performance dates are August 3rd -14th and 16th -27th at 5 pm. 

Places will play 6 performances in July before traveling to Edinburgh, Scotland for the 2017 Fringe Festival where it will have 25 performances over the month of August (4th - 27th). 

Places, a tour-de-force one-actor multimedia show, tells the story of Alla Nazimova, the rule-breaking lesbian Broadway and Hollywood legend. From a Jewish immigrant fleeing Tsarist Russia to Hollywood’s first female director and producer, Nazimova was a trailblazer who wouldn’t be silenced. 

What was the inspiration for this performance?

I was performing a short piece that I wrote about Alla Nazimova in a collection of pieces about great actresses from our past who might otherwise be forgotten. I was absolutely awestruck by Nazimova, her character, her harrowing and triumphant story and her amazing accomplishments. 

 She was at one time the highest paid actress in Hollywood’s silent movies and had a Broadway theatre named after her. She was also the first female writer, director and producer in Hollywood.

 A trailblazer who was incredibly outspoken and openly bisexual, her mansion on Sunset Boulevard coined ‘The Garden Of Allah” became the watering hole for the great luminaries of literature and the performing arts such as F. Scott Fitzgerald and Greta Garbo and a haven for intellectual liberty and freedom. It also was the setting in which the term the ‘Sewing Circle’ was born; an acronym for her all women’s lesbian gatherings. Where did her story go? 

Why was she virtually erased from the history books and how could we forget such a giant? In writing my solo show about Nazimova, I was determined to set the record straight and to tell her magnificent story. We are all the stories we tell and an artist is only dead when the last person to remember them dies.

Is performance still a good space for the public discussion of ideas? 

To me theatre will always be the most powerful of all medias. The immediacy of being together in one room at one time and sharing our humanness, our stories, is a transformative experience. I’m not saying theatre is always good, but the very act of assembling together and telling our stories live is cathartic. 

Abstract ideas and news are very important of course, but in theatre one is able to feel, to empathize, and most importantly to share the human condition out loud and together. In our increasingly polarizing society, theatre is more important than ever – telling our stories out loud and live.

How did you become interested in making performance?

I am interested in the human condition. I feel less alone when I can express my feelings, and hear other’s feelings expressed. I feel most alive when I write, when I act. This propels me to make performances – the sharing part of it.

Is there any particular approach to the making of the show?

I read everything about Nazimova that I possibly could. Watched her movies, read her journals, looked at her pictures. I isolated quotes that she’d said that particularly struck me, moved me, and made me feel that I understood her.

 In the end, her story is an amalgam of herself and myself. As she was not here to interview, her story is told through the lens of my perspective.

Does the show fit with your usual productions?

I’ve primarily been an actress in my life and in the past six years began writing plays. The productions of the plays I’ve had are vastly different. This story is unique as it is a solo voice and it is multimedia. The characters I am writing about dictate the landscape of the play.

What do you hope that the audience will experience?

I hope the audience feels hope. I hope they feel less alone knowing that others long before them have triumphed over adversity, have spoken their truths, and have found strength even when they’ve been beaten down. I hope they feel jazzed to be alive knowing that every day is a chance to begin anew.

What strategies did you consider towards shaping this audience experience?

I wanted the audience to see this not as a ‘museum’ piece but a piece that was very relevant today. Nazimova was fighting the things in the 19th century and early 20th century that we are still fighting today, but alone and without a twitter account: sexism, racism, homophobia, ageism. I made sure to juxtapose her life through the lens of her being an all seeing ghost who is able to peer into the life of the 21st century and reflect on the past and present simultaneously.

 As Nazimova says, “By opening our eyes to the past, we are better able to see our present.” I also wanted to include the cinematic look of her life with the multimedia elements of the play. As she was a film star and director and so much of her life was on screen, it was vital to use the same mediums to tell her story – the story and visions that were brushed under the rug because they were so ahead of her time.

Nordlinger’s solo performance reimagines one of the most daring and censored artists of the 20th century who tells it like it was… and still is.

Long before innovative and outspoken performers such as Madonna and Lady Gaga, the world was enamored of Nazimova. 

“Telling Alla Nazimova’s story is relevant now more than ever as we face a new age of civil liberties being under attack, a backlash against women, against the LGBTQ community, and against immigrants. If Nazimova could have faced those kinds of obstacles and still flourished, then it gives me faith that we can do the same,” says director and co-developer Katie McHugh adds, “If we could call the voices of our past to come back and speak to us, Nazimova would be on the top of the list. What is happening now in our world is an opportunity to listen to the predecessors who paved the way for us as we strive for equality. ”

Nazimova was born Adelaide Yakovlevna Leventon, the daughter of an abusive father. Facing persecution for her Jewish heritage and having lived in foster homes, she finally found her true home with the Moscow Art Theatre and Stanislavsky. She adopted the name Alla Nazimova and became a major star in Moscow and Europe before fleeing to America in 1905. Her Broadway premiere in November 1906 was in the title role of Hedda Gabler. Nazimova became a major success and box office draw, helping to launch the careers of Ibsen, Strindberg, and Chekhov as well as inspire the careers of others including Tennessee Williams.

Nazimova was open about her sexual preference, often to the chagrin of the New York entertainment establishment. She ultimately fled to Hollywood where, by 1917, she wielded considerable power and became the highest paid actress there. Not to be beaten by the ‘boys club,’ she formed her own production company—Nazimova Productions—to become the first female producer, director, and writer in Hollywood. Her production of ‘Salome,’ helmed by an all-gay cast, ushered in the birth of art cinema. But the homosexual themes and experimental filmmaking proved too forward for the 1920s, leading her to a reputation as box office poison and to her artistic demise.

At Nazzy’s mansion on 8080 Sunset Boulevard - dubbed the “Garden of Allah” - she hosted parties frequented by such luminaries as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Marlene Dietrich, Dorothy Parker, and Tennessee Williams. There she created her all women’s “sewing circle,” a term she coined to describe her infamous meetings of lesbian and bisexual actresses in Hollywood. Eventually, with the public and studios turning against her, Nazimova had no choice but to turn her Garden Of Allah into hotels and was eventually forced into obscurity. Her contributions to the film industry have since been recognized with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Places is a co-production between Yonder Window Theatre Company and Parity Productions and is made possible in part by the support of Jack Sharkey.

RomyNordlinger (Actor/Playwright) Selected credits: “Edna Hoffman” (VO role) in Florence Foster Jenkins dir. Stephen Frears, WOMG and The Ruthless Spectator (Web Series), Lancelot by Steven Fechter (The Woodsman) of which she is also in pre-production for the feature film & “A Separation”. Co & Guest starring roles on Law & Order CI (Officer Talbor), All My Children, Gotham, One Life To Live, plus numerous indie films. Selected theatre: "Rose"/ Shakespeare's Slave @ Clurman with Resonance Ensemble; Between Here and There @ New Perspectives; The Woman On The Bridge workshop dir. Ludovica Villar-Hauser; January dir Lorca Peress/Multi Stages, R Culture by Cecilia Copeland @ IRT, Stage Struck helmed by Mari Lyn Henry and The Society For The Preservation Of Theatrical History @ Snapple Theatre, The Players Club, Metropolitan Playhouse. Regional credits include Actors Theatre of Louisville, Wilma, Fleetwood Stage, Emelin. Playwriting credits include Liptshick @ FringeNYC , The Feeling Part with LoNyLa & The Playwriting Collective, Broadville @ Manhattan Theatre Source & her solo show Sex and Sealing Wax @ MITF. Romy is also an audiobook narrator and voice-over artist with over 200 titles to her credit as well as numerous international voice-over spots. Romy has also been a theatre-teaching artist for the past 15 years working with underserved communities in every borough of New York City. Member of The League Of Professional Theatre Women. Member of NY Madness, Resonance Theatre Ensemble, Flux Sundays and The Playwrights Gallery. B.F.A University Of Arts. 

Katie McHugh (Director) is a New York-based director, teacher and producer of theatre with an MFA in Directing from The New School for Drama. She is the Founding Director of the Southeastern Teen Shakespeare Company, Co-Founder of the Teen Shakespeare Conservatory at the Actors Movement Studio, and Artistic Director of Yonder Window Theatre Company. Katie is an award-winning director who specializes in devised and experimental theatre. Selected New York directing credits: Euripides’ Medea at the New School for Drama’s New Visions Festival, and The List by Jennifer Tremblay in the New York International Fringe Festival 2012 (Winner of Overall Excellence in a Solo Performance). The List was chosen to perform internationally in the first Mexican Fringe Festival of San Miguel de Allende. After directing her second production in Mexico in February of 2015, Waiting for Goddreau preceded by Shut up Kathleen, Katie was named an Artistic Ambassador of the Mexican Fringe Festival San Miguel. She spent two months last winter in Mexico working on the third annual Fringe Festival as well as co-producing Enemy, an adaptation of Ibsen’s Enemy of the People directed by Emmy award winner, Dorothy Lyman at the San Miguel Playhouse Theatre. Her new theatre company, Yonder Window, made its maiden voyage this year with a multidisciplinary, multi-cultural, bi-lingual international production called The Dream Project, premiering at Muv arte, San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Katie is a five-time director for the Writopia World Wide Plays Festival sponsored by David Letterman, as well as a regular guest director with the NYU dramatic writing program. She also runs a program for young actors focused on auditioning for college called the Audition Prep Intensive and is a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women. http://ift.tt/2suSmD6

On Places, Adam Burns is the creative force behind the graphic and video elements. Nick T. Moore is the sound designer and composer. Places is production managed by Tamara Geisler and assistant directed by Jason Beckmann.

Yonder Window Theatre Company is a New York-based theater company focused on platforms for cultural conversations and exchange. Committed to connecting with artists around the world, each production is inspired by a specific culture. Stories are explored through workshops and laboratories, where artists can begin to experiment with their talents and ideas. Upcoming productions:  The House on Poe Street by Fengar Gael, 14th Street Y, October 2017 and The Dream Project, Mexico 2018.

Parity Productions is the theatre company with a dual mission to create new work while ensuring that all its productions are comprised of at least 50% women and transgender directors, designers, and playwrights. The company has several lauded advocacy platforms specifically aimed at creating more opportunities for women and transgender artists. Upcoming productions: Teresa Lotz's She Calls Me Firefly and Gregory Murphy’s Household Words.

The Drama Desk Award-winning 59E59 is dedicated to bringing the best new work from around the country and across the world to premiere in New York. Their annual East to Edinburgh highlights North American companies and productions before they make the journey across the pond in the closest thing to Festival Fringe this side of the Atlantic.

Civil Disobedience is an international producing team and the on-the-ground producers of Places in Edinburgh. With a passion for ensuring that world-class acts find their place in the UK market and internationally, Civil Disobedience brings the finest talent from around the world to global stages, arts festivals, and events.

Places will run at 59E59 Theater (59 East 59th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues) on Friday, July 21st at 8:30 pm; Saturday, July 22nd at 6:30 pm; Sunday, July 23rd at 4:30 pm; Friday, July 28th at 8:30 pm; Saturday, July 29th at 8:30 pm; and Sunday, July 30th at 4:30 pm. 

from the vileblog http://ift.tt/2rZW9oB

#Theatre #Blogger #visual art #Edinburgh Fringe #Experimental Critique

[photoetenjeuxinternationaux-blog]

La photographie c’est...

Photography is a very lonely medium. There’s a kind of beautiful loneliness in voyeurism. And that’s why I’m a photographer.    Alec Soth (photographe)

Pour moi, la photographie est une discipline profondément antispectaculaire. Portative. Située quelque part entre beaux-arts et littérature.      Arnaud Class (photographe)

In respect to photography, the term documentry properly refers not to a claim on moral truth but to an artistic style, based upon the illusion that the photograph is a transparent window on reality.        Peter Galas (Conservateur Moma)

Photography is a foreign language everyone thinks he speaks.   Philip-Lorca diCorcia (photographe)

I also have a strange notion as to what is a picture. I see that an image has several authors: there is yourself; there is the camera (because I think that photography through each camera speaks in a different way); there is reality, because reality speaks very forcefully through photography; and then there is the viewer, which is a person who looks at the image, makes his own interpretation of what's happening. And I do think that photography is very much "open text," where half of the text is in the reader.       Gilles Peress (photographe)

 Il y a dans la photographie documentaire, cette possibilité intéressante de parevenir à une forme de poétique.    Luc Delahaye (photographe)

La photographie participe, malgré tout, de l'image méditative... C'est un temps de pause et, de ce point de vue, une réhabilitation du regard libre et responsable, individuel.

Le coté mythique est dans sa fixité, qui solennise l'événement et s'inscrit plus facilement dans les mémoires. La photo donne à ce qui fuit et s'effiloche un côté monumental irrémédiable.

Pourtant, ce qui vous fascine dans la photographie c'est que, précisément, elle fait échec à la parole?

La photographie aide les mots mais ne les remplace pas.

Regis Debray, (Écrivain et Philosophe)

 For him, photography was an act of transformation and revelation demanding emotional involvement.   Bob Shamis on the work of Leon Levinstein: His life and photographs

Photography is a gamble with beauty and meanning. It comes down to being in a dark room, changing the significance of reality.

All photographs are about structuring, putting things together.

Joel-Peter Witkin (photographe)

[dramasmith]

Fun interview!  Click to read!

#AAPEX #The Island Of No Tomorrows #Fengar Gael #Lorca Peress

[caroleditosti]

Interview With Director Lorca Peress About 'Temple of The Souls'

Interview With Director Lorca Peress About ‘Temple of The Souls’

After attending the last performance of the superb Temple of the Soulsat the  New York Musical Festival, I had the opportunity to conduct an email interview with its director/producer/writer Lorca Peress who discussed how she and her team evolved the Broadway quality, award-winning production which was honored in its competitive acceptance at the New York Music Festival. (see my review of the…

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#El Yunque #Lorca Peress #Multistages Script Development Series #New York Musical Festival #Puerto Rico #Spanish Colonialism #Taino Indigenous People #The Temple of the Souls