PORTLAND, ORE.: Latino theatre company Milagro (known in English as Miracle Theatre Group) has announced its 2015–16 season, the company’s 32nd. The slate will include three world premieres and a play from Cuba.
“Our 32nd season heralds a new era for Milagro,”said Olga Sanchez, Milagro’s artistic director, in a statement. “We’re thrilled to create work in collaboration with great Latino artists from all over the country who will challenge us to forge our most compelling work to date.”
First up is Milagro’s annual La Luna Nueva Multidisciplinary Arts Festival (Sept. 18–26). The festival will celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month with live music, dance, theatre and (for the first time) workshops for children.
Next will be the world premiere of Día de Muertos: La Muerte Baila (Oct. 15–Nov. 8), a bilingual musical celebration of the Day of the Dead, written and directed by Rebecca Martinez. Martinez previously created and directed American Sueño for Milagro in 2010.
Following will be the world premiere of Broken Promises (Jan. 14–23, 2016), written by Sanchez and dealing with sex trafficking in Portland. Frequent Milagro collaborator Francisco Garcia will direct the show, presented in partnership with OYE, a Latino sexual health coalition. Following its premiere, Broken Promises will tour nationwide.
Milagro will present Héctor Quintero’s 1962 Cuban tragicomedy Contigo Pan y Cebolla (Feb. 11–March 5, 2016), about family life in Havana at the dawn of the revolution. Yvonne López Arenal—who is Cuban American and who serves as artistic director of the Miami-based Akuara Teatro: Sala Avellaneda—will direct. The play will be presented in Spanish with English supertitles.
Next is the world premiere of Into the Beautiful North (April 28–May 21, 2016) by Karen Zacarías, based on the novel by Luis Alberto Urrea. The play follows a young woman from a small Mexican village devoid of men, who travels north to the border to gather men to protect her village. Artistic director Sanchez will helm the play. Zacarías’s play How the García Girls Lost Their Accents was produced at Milagro in 2010.
In addition to the mainstage season, there are also two children’s productions: Sueños de Fútbol, about a young girl who dreams of playing soccer, and Super Ana!, about a girl who becomes a superhero to battle the monster that lives in her closet at night. Both shows will tour elementary schools, with Sueños de Fútbol touring through May 2016 and Super Ana! touring through May 2017.
The season will also include the annual Christmas celebration Posada Milagro, and the one-night cabaret of bilingual performance, Mujeres, in celebration of International Women’s Day in 2016.
