This theatrical party is presented by Teatro Avante, Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, and Miami-Dade County Auditorium, and will last four weeks, with performances from Thursday or Friday to Sunday. It will perform at the Adrienne Arsht Center’s Carnival Studio Theater, Miami Dade County Auditorium’s On.Stage Black Box Theater, and the Key Biscayne Community Center.
The Festival’s Educational Program, under the direction of Beatriz J. Rizk, Ph.D., includes theater workshops and a colloquium immediately after each premiere.
The International Children’s Day poster was designed by Christopher Ricardo Romero, a brave fighter at Live Like Bella Childhood Cancer Foundation. The popular International Children’s Day will also be celebrated on Saturday, July 16 at 5:00 pm at the Key Biscayne Community Center, and on Sunday, July 17 from 2:00 to 6:00 pm at the On.Stage Black Box Theater of the Miami Dade County Auditorium.
The first show will be at the Miami Dade County Auditorium – On.Stage Black Box Theatre, on Friday, July 8 at 8:30 pm with Bette Davis, are you there? (From Uruguay).
Regarding the choice of this piece to open the curtain of the festival, Mario Ernesto Sánchez pointed out that “when a production has so many talents in its favor, it becomes a good selection to open a theater festival like the one in Miami. Author-director and actors get together to achieve a very interesting staging in an old neighborhood cinema”.
“In addition, the work has binaural sound technology, so it will have to be heard with headphones. This is something that we have never presented, and perhaps, it will be the first time in Miami”, added the director.
Sánchez began doing theater in 1968, when he joined the Carmita Riera Choir (in the Grateli choir), to work on the zarzuela Luisa Fernanda. She worked in Teatro Prometeo and independent productions, until the premiere Electra Garrigó in 1978 led to the following year registering his own theater company Teatro Avante. The festival was born in 1986, with the Hispanic Theater Festival, which in 1989 became the Miami International Hispanic Theater Festival. Since then, numerous theatrical productions in the language of Cervantes have delighted audiences in South Florida.
Although Mexico does not participate with a play, this country has the representation of two talented women who make up the program. Mexican artist Adriana Torres, who is also a teacher, designed the festival’s poster. And Adriana Barraza will be recognized for her strong career as an actress.
About this, Sánchez said that “it is pure chance. In a meeting with Adriana Torres, at the Consulate General of Mexico (since she is the director of the Cultural Institute of Mexico), I had the opportunity to see her plastic work, and I immediately invited her to dedicate her new work to us for the poster of the festival, which has just been unveiled in this city”.
For her part, “the work of Adriana Barraza, throughout her professional life, and now as a teacher, has made her our 2022 Award for a Lifetime Dedication to the Performing Arts. Her 50 years of uninterrupted and award-winning career in theater, cinema and television make her today considered one of the most respected Latin actresses in the entertainment industry in Latin America and the United States.”
As Sánchez explained, “in 2011 he founded in Miami, the Adriana Barraza Acting Studiowhich has already celebrated its 10 years of existence, and in 2013 decides to open the doors of the Adriana Barraza Black Box, a space honored three times as the seat of the Miami International Hispanic Theater Festivalto later create in 2018, Adriana theatrical company Barraza Truth Theatre”.
“His dedication to the performing arts, his participation in plays and his work in the acting training of a new generation of relief through his school, Barraza maintains a wide and recognized film career, which is why in 2018 Forbes Magazine Latin America Names her the most influential Latina movie actress and one of the 100 most powerful Latin American actors of all time. Her long career and work has also made her worthy of having her native Toluca honor her with a street and a square with her name, “she said.
Why insist on the theater? Mario Ernesto Sánchez has it very clear: “The theater, ideally, helps to dream, to think, and many times it even marks a before and after in our lives. The theater has always inspired great emotions, even the most heroic. Lorca said: ‘it is the most powerful pulpit in the world’. We believe in that, and without a doubt, it is an integral part of our mission, since we know that theater motivates and ennobles the human being. Without forgetting that it must also entertain. For all this, it shelters us from reality, not only the theater artists, but also the public, to whom we owe ourselves”.
Program
Friday and Saturday July 8 and 9 – 8:30 pm / Sunday July 10 -5:00 pm
Montevideo, URUGUAY
Bette Davis, Are You There?, written and directed by Domingo Milesi
Azucena searches for love and the meaning of life, after the loss of her mother and retirement from work. She goes through mourning, along with her friend Graciela, tracking down new signs and motivations in her daily visits to an old neighborhood movie theater that refuses to die. There they meet Aníbal, and this is the trigger for a game between reality and fiction, where supernatural elements also appear, through esoteric practices that could establish a new interpretation of the present and a line of communication with the afterlife.
The work has binaural sound technology, so it will be heard with free headphones. Co-sponsored by the Ministry of Education and Culture. MDCA’s On.Stage Black Box Theatre, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami. Tickets: 305.547.5414 MiamiDadeCountyAuditorium.org
Thursday, Friday and Saturday July 14, 15 & 16 | 8:30 pm
Muratica Theatre, Badajoz, Extremadura, SPAIN
Alacrán or The ceremony of José Antonio Lucía, directed by Román Podolsky.
It emerges from all its gypsy splendor bleeding its history between the pulla, the zambra and the thorn. This scoundrel gets together every night with himself, starts with a flamenco quejío, takes courage and goes out to interpret “La Cangrejo”, the one who was his love and who is no longer there. Alacrán comes to remember her while she settles into the black, funny and absurd tragicomedy that is her life. Love story, love triangle in the world of sordid Spanish taverns.
MDCA’s On.Stage Black Box Theatre, 2901 W. Flagler St., Miami
Entries: 305,547,5414 www.MiamiDadeCountyAuditorium.org
Friday & Saturday July 15 & 16 | 8:30 pm / Sunday, July 17 | 5:00 pm
Fundación Festival Internacional Teatro a Mil, Santiago, CHILE
Brief Encounters with Repulsive Men, adapted and directed by Daniel Veronese.
Over the course of eight brief, independent encounters, two actors interact and exchange roles. The themes are various, but they all point to a common point: the contemporary masculine condition that appears when meeting a woman, in love, sex and even loss.
Saturday 16th of July | 5:00 pm – Key Biscayne Community Center
International Children’s Day
Society of Educational Arts, Inc., New York, USA & Conecta Miami Arts, Miami USA
The colors of Frida, written and directed by Manuel Morán.
A bilingual show about the great Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo, combining music, visual art, storytelling, puppetry, and audience participation. Three Fridas on the scene -the painter, the singer and the storyteller-, will transport the young audience on a biographical journey where colors heal. The show contains puppets (glove, finger and rod), projections of Frida’s most emblematic works, combined with animations of the illustrations from the storybook, Los Colores de Frida. As the story plays out, children will also see the creation of a painting in the scene. The expressions, the folklore, the music and the color of the Mexican culture, will be the main protagonists to tell the story of one of the great artists of America.
Bilingual. Free admission and parking. Co-sponsored by Key Biscayne Community Foundation, Village of Key Biscayne, United Aliens Artists Foundation, Toy, Full Gospel, Live Like Beautiful Childhood Cancer Foundation.
Sunday July 17 | 2:00 – 6:00 pm – MDCA’s Mid-Stage Theater
International Children’s Day
Society of Educational Arts, Inc., New York, USA & Conecta Miami Arts, Miami USA
The colors of Frida, written and directed by Manuel Morán.
2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. | Arts and crafts, entertainment, face painting, and snack distribution.
3:00 – 4:00 pm | Talleres: Painting & Puppets
4:00 – 5:00 p.m. | Workshops: Music & Percussion
5:00 – 6:00 p.m. | Show: The Colors of Frida (See Saturday, July 16)
Friday and Saturday July 22 and 23 | 8:30 pm / Sunday, July 24 | 5:00 pm
The balcony of Meursault, Caba, ARGENTINA
Broken, by Natalia Villamil. Directed by Mariano Stolkiner.
A work that challenges us as a society, through a mother who must rebuild her existence around the death of her son, who commits suicide after committing a femicide. A theme, unfortunately current, but with a different approach, where the plot will not focus on the figure of the femicide or her victim, but on the voice of this woman who had to raise that son alone. She will try to get some love, understanding, like any other woman deserves.
Friday and Saturday July 22 and 23 | 8:30 pm / Sunday, July 24 | 5:00 pm
Educational Entertainment, Inc., San Juan, PUERTO RICO
Quintuples, by Luis Rafael Sánchez. Directed by Emineh de Lourdes.
The work alludes to a Puerto Rico and a world whose period ranges between 1950 and 1984. It serves as a historical document for new generations to get to know their country and the world in which their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents grew up, to get to know the worldview of the different environments in which this work is embodied. An excellent example of this reality, a national classic of universal character that transcends time. It is the most watched play written by a Puerto Rican playwright living in Puerto Rico in the world.
Thursday, Friday and Saturday July 28, 29 and 30 | 8:30 pm / Sunday July 31 | 5:00 pm
ADVANCE THEATER | Miami, USA.
I better shut up (World Premiere), by Abel González Melo. Directed by Mario Ernesto Sánchez.
The prestigious family business Paris Cosmetics has been a leader in the production and sale of beauty items for years. The business seems prosperous, but the sudden appearance of a cunning computer scientist, to whom the owner has granted exceptional permissions, threatens to shatter the prevailing harmony. The behavior of the intruder unleashes unexpected conflicts and the members of the family must join forces to avoid the debacle.
(In Spanish with English supertitles)
For more information about the Miami International Hispanic Theater Festival, visit teatroavante.org.
–
