Ingenio 2020

Friday, September 25th

5:00pm PDT  Milagro Presents: The Play You Want by Bernardo Cubrîa

Saturday, September 26th

5:00pm PDT Baktun12 & Borderlands Theater Present: Sancocho by Christin Eve Cato

Sunday, September 27th 

5:00pm PDT Cara Mia Theatre & Teatro Vivo Present: spayce boys by Mateo Hernandez

Friday, October 2nd 

5:00pm PDT In The Margin Theatre Presents: Sabor by AnaSofîa Villanueva

Saturday, October 3rd 

5:00pm PDT TuYo Theatre Presents: Saints Go Marching by Matt Barbot

Sunday, October 4th 

5:00pm PDT Teatro Luna West Presents: City Without Altar by Jasminne Mendez

Plays & Playwrights 

The Play You Want

Fed-up by the theatre world’s desires to box him in, Mexican playwright Lucas Cubría sarcastically pitches “Nar-Cocos” a play about drug dealers on Dia de los Muertos. Much to his surprise, the Public Theatre picks it up. With financial pressures mounting and a newborn at home, this is his chance at a commercial success. But when Scott Rudin offers him a Broadway run on the condition he further exploit his identity and the headlines, he must decide just how much he’s willing to compromise in order to finally be accepted.

Bernardo Cubrîa (Playwright) was recently nominated for best playwright at The Ovation Awards, Stage Raw Awards and The Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Awards for his play The Giant Void In My Soul. The play is receiving its Regional Premiere at Stages Repertory Theatre in Houston, Texas in 2021 and its International Premiere at Foro Shakespeare in Mexico City in 2021. The play received a reading at Circle in the Square on Broadway in 2019. He was the co-writer of the short Spanish Class that won Best Comedy at The NBC Universal Shorts Awards in 2018.  He is currently working on a screenplay with Gina Rodriguez for her production company “I Can and I Will.”

Sancocho

Caridad and Renata get together to discuss their sick father’s will. They are 25 years apart from each other so talking business and family matters is not something that these sisters are accustomed to doing. To relieve some of the tension, Renata visits Caridad while she is making sancocho. The preparation of the sancocho leads the sisters through a journey of their culture, womanhood, inheritance, transgenerational trauma, family history and untold stories. All is well until Caridad’s drinking causes her to spill some beans about their father’s past, revealing a huge secret that will ultimately change the conditions of their father’s will. Sancocho is a story about legacy, what we inherit, and what we leave behind. It testifies that everything in life is Consequential.

Christin Eve Cato (Playwright) is a playwright and performer. She is currently pursuing an MFA in Playwriting at Indiana University. Having a Puerto Rican and Jamaican background, Cato’s artistic style is heavily influenced by Caribbean culture and the Afrolatino diaspora. Her plays include: Stoop Pigeons (2020 O’Neill NPC Semi-Finalist); jelly beans (Indiana University); What’s Up With Marjorie? (Teatro Vivo); From Hunts Point To Whitlock (Pregones Theater/Harlem9); Smacked-Up Love (Indiana University); and Just A Visit (“More Than Maria” Festival @ Play Your Part Seattle).

spayce boys

spayce boys is the tale of two queer, brown boys who embark on an Odyssey-esque adventure into outerspace to heal, discover their true selves, lean into community and so much more along the way. Iggy and Oñio have never spoken to each other at school but Oñio takes matters into his own hands when he sees how “small” and “squished” Iggy looks. After sneaking into Iggy’s room late at night, Oñio convinces Iggy to follow him onto the roof where the greater Queer forces take control. Once in outer space, Oñio has an itinerary to stick to in order to ensure Iggy makes it out anew by the time the sun rises. But when unspoken tensions between the boys bubble up and mix with the cataclysmic atmosphere of the adventure, both boys find new parts of themselves and a renewed purpose in their life on earth.

Mateo Hernandez (Playwright) (they/he/them/him) is a queer, Chicanx actor, writer, teaching artist based in Chicago, IL. spayce boys is their first full length play and they are so excited to continue its development. As a teaching artist he has worked with companies such as Goodman Theatre, Chicago Children’s Theatre, and Creative Action. Mateo is a company member of FYI (For Youth Inquiry), a performance company making participatory experiences around reproductive justice for young people. They hold a BFA in Theatre Studies from The University of Texas at Austin.

Sabor

Sabor is a mixed-race story of a young woman, Clara, in search of her place of belonging in the elite culinary world, and among the men in her life. After the passing of her abuelo, she makes drastic life changes; quitting the French Michelin-star restaurant in Manhattan and borrowing money from her Nuyorican father, a wealthy and emotionally detached restauranteur, to start her own catering business in Queens. With the business on the brink of failure and the deadline to pay her father back approaching, she becomes immersed in romance, sex, whiskey, and a desperate need to find her palate profile. After several visits from her abuelo’s spirit, consisting of music, home videos, historical images, and reliving the moment when he first taught Clara how to cook arroz con gandules, she and her father begin to create their own language with food.

AnaSofîa Villanueva (Playwright) AnaSofía Villanueva is a writer-producer-director-activist. AnaSofía is the author of the Power Dynamics Series for MinnesotaPlaylist, a member of The Performance Collective with the Center for Performing Arts, and creative producer for ALMA-Alliance of Latinx Minnesota Artists. AnaSofía has had a reading of her play, Sabor, with ALMA and, TENGO VOZ, at Mixed Blood Theatre. While in residency at the University of Idaho, three of her plays were produced: Amor del Alma, EXOTIC, and POLLUX, to which she received a certificate of merit in playwrighting from the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival for EXOTIC.

Saints Go Marching

Jo’s grandfather—a decorated veteran—has died, leaving emotional wreckage and unpaid debts in his wake. As she prepares for the funeral, Jo’s heart is set on keeping grandpa’s burial flag; to get it, she’ll have to deal with her despondent mother, an attempted exorcism, and competition from a secret aunt young enough to be her little sister. It won’t be easy, but nothing an aspiring saint like Jo can’t handle.

Matt Barbot (Playwright) is a writer from Brooklyn, NY. His play EL COQUÍ ESPECTACULAR AND THE BOTTLE OF DOOM received its world premiere at Two River Theater in January of 2018. PRINCESS CLARA OF LOISAIDA and SAINTS GO MARCHING were selected to feature on Steppenwolf’s The Mix list. THE VENETIANS was a winner of Roundabout Theatre Company’s 2019 Columbia@Roundabout New Play Series. Matt’s first play for young audiences, STOO’S FAMOUS MARTIAN AMERICAN GUMBO, was commissioned by Peppercorn Theatre and produced in Summer 2019. Matt received his MFA from Columbia University, and was a New York Theatre Workshop 2050 Fellow and a member of The Civilians’ R&D Group.

City Without Altar

City Without Altar is a two-act play in verse which seeks to amplify the voices and experiences of victims, survivors and living ancestors of the 1937 Haitian Massacre that occurred along the northwest Dominican/Haitian border during the Trujillo Era. The play follows the chronological timeline of events that occurred before, during and after the massacre. Using monologues, montages and vignettes, the chorus of voices, created and imagined from interview transcripts, news articles, and scholarly books, tell the stories regularly omitted and erased from this often ignored history. The role/voice of the Machete acts as a very complex antagonist we are not sure whether to hate or feel sorry for. Maria’s journal entries seek to represent the voice of innocence and those left behind who though not physically harmed are left to grieve their losses and make sense of the scars that endure.

Jasminne Mendez (Playwright) is a Dominican-American award winning author, poet, playwright and actress. She’s an MFA creative writing graduate from the Rainier Writing Workshop. Mendez’s plays include the one-act Chronic Brevity which received a staged reading at The Globe Theatre’s New Playwrights Festival in Odessa, TX and the choreo-poem play City Without Altar which was selected as part of the Stages Theatre Sin Muros Latinx Theatre Festival. She recently directed a staged reading of Adrienne Dawe’s new play Teen Dad and is currently the Program Coordinator for the Young Artists Conservatory at Stages Theatre.

ABOUT TEATROS UNIDOS

Teatros Unidos is an emerging and growing collective of Teatros and BIPOC Theatre organizations that uplift and give voice to their historically silenced communities by producing plays, multicultural and multigenerational community programs.

The coronavirus pandemic has shed light on prevailing inequities in all facets of American life. Facing uncertainty and loss of earned income, Milagro reached out to Latinx theatres from across the country to come together to share their experiences and challenges and promote each other’s work. Through this initiative, Teatros Unidos was born. The group includes 14 Latinx theatre ensembles who share resources, information, and creative work. Since May 2020, Teatros Unidos has been meeting bi-weekly and is committed to expanding the circle through and beyond the immediate aftermath of the pandemic. Although there are resources for individual Latinx artists to come together, this is the only National Teatro collaboration that exists.

The group includes Baktun12 (Salinas, CA), Borderlands Theater (Tucson, AZ), Cara Mía Theatre Company (Dallas, TX), In The Margin Theatre (Sacramento, CA), Milagro (Portland, OR), Teatro Alebrijes (San Jose, CA), Teatro Bravo (Phoenix, AZ), Teatro Luna West (Los Angeles, CA), Teatro Nagual (Sacramento, CA), Teatro Visión (San Jose, CA), Teatro Vivo (Austin, TX),  TuYo Theatre (San Diego, CA), and UrbanTheater Company (Chicago, IL).