Will Geer Theatricum Botanicum presents a touching, powerful, laugh-out-loud funny election year satire by Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle award-winning playwright and Topanga resident Bernardo Cubría (Crabs in a Bucket, The Play You Want, The Giant Void In My Soul). Cubría and Theatricum associate artistic director Willow Geer co-direct The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latiné Vote for an August 24 opening, the fifth and final play to join Theatricum’s rotating summer repertory season through October 20.
Xochitl Romero stars as university professor Paola Aguilar, who is drowning in debt from years of fertility treatments. So when Kaj Luken (Steven C. Fisher), Nicola Ramirez (Emily Jerez), Rebecca Feldman (Laura Schein) and Bernard Robinson (Max Lawrence), political strategists for THE political party, offer Paola a substantial paycheck to help them understand the “Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latiné vote,” she reluctantly takes the job. Can Paola help these pundits understand all the nuances of her varied community to save the election? Or will her own journey ultimately be more important than who controls the White House?
“In 2016 when Trump got elected, I started getting all these text messages from friends of mine, most of whom were white Americans, and they were like, ‘Dude, how could 30% of Latinos or Hispanic people vote for Trump?’” says Cubría. “I was offended by their question; why would they expect every single Latino or Hispanic person from Tijuana to Buenos Aires to think and vote the exact same way? Why do they see us as one single entity? No wonder so many people don’t even feel like they want to participate in voting.”
Originally commissioned by Florida’s Studio Theatre in collaboration with Portland, Oregon’s Milagro Theatre, The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latiné Vote will have productions later this fall at Milagro Theatre, Houston Stages and TuYo Theatre in San Diego as part of a National New Play Network rolling world premiere. It received a staged reading earlier this year at The Old Globe. The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latiné Vote will run in rotation every weekend with four other plays: two by Shakespeare, The Winter’s Tale and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Wendy’s Peter Pan, a re-telling, by Ellen Geer, of the 1904 play by J.M Barrie; and Tartuffe: Born Again, adapted and translated from the Molière by Freyda Thomas — each of which is already up and running. Unlike most theaters in the L.A. area that stage continuous runs of a single play, Theatricum will perform all five plays in rotation each weekend throughout the summer. The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latiné Vote opens on Saturday, Aug. 24 at 7:30 p.m. and continues to run in repertory through October 20.
