INGENIO Milagro 2017

SHOE
Marta gave up college and life outside her family’s double-wide trailer in Texas to take care of her manipulative mother. In fact, none of her siblings have been able to escape their mother’s grasp. A new online relationship reignites Marta’s dreams and curiosity about the world outside, but her younger sister Ileana will do anything to escape home life—even if it means sacrificing Marta’s happiness.

MARISELA TREVIÑO ORTA is about to begin her third year of study at the Iowa Playwrights Workshop. Her plays include: American Triage; Braided Sorrow (2006 Chicano/Latino Literary Prize in Drama, 2009 Pen Center USA Literary Award in Drama); Ghost Limb (2017 Brava Theater world premiere); Heart Shaped Nebula (2015 Shotgun Players world premiere); and Woman on Fire (2016 Camino Real Productions world premiere). Marisela is an alumna of the Playwrights Foundation’s Resident Playwright Initiative, a founding member of the Bay Area Latino Theatre Artists Network, and a member of the Latinx Theatre Commons. Currently she’s working on a cycle of fairy tales inspired by Latinx mythology which includes The River Bride (2016 Oregon Shakespeare Festival world premiere), Wolf at the Door, and Alcira.

I KISSED CHAVELA VARGAS
A memory play with music that revolves around three generations of Chicanas. A performance piece about performing, aging, healing, female sexuality and about grace. Vivacious 70 year old Rosa struts around her world in a black slip and heels proving to her over-protective daughter Petra she’s not your ordinary retiree. Petra’s daughter Blue is at the start of her singing career and has a deep connection with her eccentric grandmother. A tragic event brings Nurse Chavela into the trio’s mix allowing Rosa to reveal her true colors. Mother, daughter and granddaughter struggle with their relationships with one another and with life. They sing, they dance, they fight and ultimately they find love.

MONICA PALACIOS is the creator of solo shows, plays, screenplays, short stories, stand-up comedy, poems, essays featuring the Latinx LGBTQ experience. National and international scholars have critically engaged her work in academic journals, books, dissertations and conference panels. Palacios has received numerous awards for her positive contributions to the Latinx LGBTQ population. Monica received a Postdoctoral Rockefeller Fellowship from UCSB allowing her to write, direct and produce her play Sweet Peace. Monica’s play, Say Their Names, is traveling throughout the U.S. with After Orlando, an international theatre action in response to the Pulse Nightclub shooting. This summer Monica presented her solo shows, San Francisco Mi Amor! and BROWNER QUEERER LOUDER PROUDER. I Kissed Chavela Vargas is being developed with scholar and director Jorge Huerta. 

VALENTINO AND THE CHILEAN HEIRESS
A wealthy Chilean heiress, Blanca DeMille, meets Rudolph Valentino in New York in the 1910s when he was a vulnerable, impoverished Italian immigrant struggling to survive as a dancer with almost no hint of the legend of superstardom that will one day greet him. His relationship to Blanca forms part of Valentino’s early rumor and legend and it is presented in a highly stylized, tango-infused, fictionalized version. This play illustrates that aspect of the legend and the real-life tragedy that surrounded Blanca, who shot her husband to defend her family told through the eye of Junior, her son.

GUILLERMO REYES has produced and published a variety of plays including Men on the Verge of a His-Panic Breakdown and Mother Lolita as off-Broadway productions with Urban Stages, Chilean Holiday and Saints at the Rave at the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville, among others. Men on the Verge debuted in L.A. at the Celebration Theater and won the L.A. Ovation Award for Best World Premiere Play which went on to win the New York Outer Critics’ Circle Award for Best Solo Performance for Felix Pire during its off-Broadway run. In 2010, he published Madre and I: A Memoir of our Immigrant Lives with the University of Wisconsin Press. He’s a professor at Arizona State University in the School of Film, Dance and Theater.

LOS DREAMERS
Scoobi, a “Dreamer” who came to the US without papers since childhood, is finishing school. She lost her boyfriend at war and got a marriage of convenience. We discover how this once fixed marriage becomes love over time. It is a mother daughter story that focuses on the relationship between the mother’s past and the child’s understanding and acceptance of the present. This story grips immigration, education, and fighting for what you believe.

MÓNICA SÁNCHEZ has followed her bliss, towards a life in the theatre and the theatre of life. She’s honed the craft of professional actor; written and developed work collaboratively and independently for the stage; directed a handful of productions small and large; and enjoyed a myriad of assignments as a teaching artist and community engagement facilitator. After 20+ years in San Francisco and Los Angeles, working with inspired and inspiring contemporary theatre artists, the prodigal daughter has returned to New Mexico where she is currently dreaming and scheming as a cultural warrior and MFA candidate at the University of New Mexico. Writing credits include: From the Chronicles of Odisia Sanchez, No Swamp Like Home, The Gentry: Ten Minutes For Alex Nieto, Rubi X and Los Dreamers.