Charise Castro Smith, Rogelio Martinez, and Abel Gonzalez Melo are among the Cuban and Cuban-American playwrights represented in this year’s Crossing Borders Festival at Two River Theater.
In case you didn’t know, New Jersey is second only to Florida among states in its number of Cuban-heritage residents. So when relations between Washington and Havana took a turn toward normalization this year, Jerry Ruiz saw an opportunity to dedicate this year’s Crossing Borders Festival to a genuinely historic milestone.
For the director and curator of the annual event – a free, multi-day celebration of new works by Latino creatives at Red Bank’s Two River Theater – the “Crossing Borders” brand already carried multiple layers of meaning, and with the figurative crossing into Cuba comes a chance to fulfill a mission that Ruiz has described as “creating a new audience, by building a bridge to a community.”
Now in its fifth season, the festival spotlights the voices and cultural flavorings of the Cuban and Cuban-American communities, beginning with Wednesday’s now-traditional “neighborhood party” on the theater’s outdoor plaza area – a 5 p.m. keynote of Cuban music (by guitarist David Oquendo) and food (by Asbury Park’s CubanCafé) that’s followed at 7 p.m. by an indoor discussion of Cuban history and theatrical tradition with scholar and translator Yael Prizant.
Then, from Thursday on to Sunday, it’s the playwrights’ turns to shine. Here’s the lineup:
COCKTAIL TIME IN CUBA (Thursday, August 6 at 7:30 p.m.) – Rogelio Martinez, a dramatist who came to this country during 1980’s Mariel Boatlift, offers a political thriller in which an American journalist travels to Cuba in 2006 with the hope of interviewing Fidel Castro, who has recently disappeared from public view. As he waits for his interview, navigating the labyrinthine bureaucracy and slowly falling under the country’s spell, he begins to realize that nothing in Cuba is quite what it seems.
ANESTHESIA/ ANESTESIA (Friday, August 7 at 7:30 p.m.) – Performed both in Spanish and in English translation (by Rogelio Martinez), the short play by Havana-based Agnieska Hernández Díaz looks at the complicated class dynamics and deep divisions within contemporary Cuban society, through the story of a successful (and philandering) plastic surgeon, and a violent incident visited upon his family.
CHAMACO (Saturday, August 8 at 3 pm and 7:30 p.m.) – Director Jose Zayas (Two River’s Pinkolandia) returns to Red Bank for this one-act drama in which an innocent game of chess has tragic repercussions for two boys and their families. The short play by Abel González Melo is performed in English at 3 p.m., and in Spanish at 7:30. The 3 pm reading will be followed by a conversation with artists from the festival, including Leyma López, Abel González Melo, Yael Prizant, Rogelio Martinez, Jerry Ruiz, and Jose Zayas.
THE HUNCHBACK OF SEVILLE (Sunday, August 9 at 3 p.m.) – Jerry Ruiz directs the closing entry in the festival; a “Monty Python-esque comedy” by Miami-based Charise Castro-Smith of Queen Isabella’s hunchbacked adopted sister, a royal visitation, farcical complications and “bad news from the New World.”
There’s no charge to attend any of the events in the 2015 Crossing Borders Festival, but reservations are recommended for each of the play readings, as well as the Wednesday evening party. Call the box office at (732) 345-1400, or take it here to RSVP.
