“LOS ILLEGALS” INITIATES TEATRO BRAVO’S 9TH SEASON

Teatro Bravo initiates its 9th season with “Los Illegals,” a play written by Los Angeles-based playwright, Michael John Garces, and to be directed by Andres Alcala.

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Flyer by Carlos Ramirez

Immigrants at a day labor center fight for the right to seek work while a swirl of controversy around them gets anti-immigrant advocates calling for the closing of the center. When one of the workers gets arrested for an unrelated charge, the closing is imminent until the workers rally around the right to keep the center open.

Garces is the Artistic Director of the L.A.-based Cornerstone Theater where he developed the play using actual members of the community of immigrant, mostly Spanish-speaking workers as well as professional actors. He was inspired by the classic Spanish play, “Fuenteovejuna” by Lope de Vega, in which a small town rises against the tyranny of a local lord.

The play is written in a unique blend of English and Spanish, and it will be a fully bilingual production.

Teatro Bravo has assembled a large cast from members of the acting community in Phoenix, AZ, which includes some actors who have worked with Teatro Bravo previously, including Nuvia Enriquez, Barbara Acker, Johanna Bustos, Obed Hurtado, Arturo Martinez, as well as (to us) newcomers Xiomara Alvarez, Jennifer Duran, Mariela Gomez De Ell, Ian Gray, Tomas Karmelo, Tanya Magallanes, Scott McNulty, Eduardo Montalvo, Lisa Pan, Santiago Rosas, Alejandro Sanchez Vega, and Jose Zarate.

The play will be directed by Andres Alcala who starred in past Teatro Bravo productions such as “Places to Touch Him” and “Men on the Verge 2.” Alcala is an artistic associate with Childsplay where he s doing a two-year residence thanks to the prestigious NEA/TCG Grant for Directors.

Teatro Bravo will produce two additional plays through the season, “Blood Wedding” (in Spanish) by Federico Garcia Lorca in April 2009, and a world premiere comedy, “Little Queen,” by Artistic Director Guillermo Reyes, in June 2009.

WHAT:

John Paul Theater
Phoenix College
1202 W. Thomas Road
Between 15th Avenue/Thomas Road in Central Phoenix

$15 GENERAL ADMISSION
$12 STUDENTS/SENIORS
$11 GROUPS OF 8 OR MORE
(The September 5th performance is a pay-what-you-can preview, and it's on a first-come, first-served basis. There's no need to make reservations and we don't sell tickets ahead of time for that show. In the past, it has sold out, so we encourage people to get there early enough to get their tickets and choose seats.)

Mission Statement

Teatro Bravo! seeks to produce plays in either English or Spanish that promote a complex portrait of the U.S. Latino/Latin American populations of Arizona. We seek to entertain and enlighten.

We also seek to develop the talents of Latino actors, directors, playwrights, and designers. Complex, diverse, unpredictable, sometimes confrontational, but always caring and engaged, we seek a theater for all audiences.

Funded In Part By

City of Phoenix: Phoenix Office of Arts and Culture
Arizona Commission On the Arts
American Express
Latino Perspectives
Radio Campesina