Latino Playwrights Featured in Songs From Coconut Hill Theater Festival

Nine playwrights with new works in tow will take center stage at the SONGS FROM COCONUT HILL Latino Playwrights Festival, which kicks off its fourth year March 7th in New York City at Teatro La Tea.

Festival founders and producers Cyn Cañel Rossi and Alex Rossi (Cynalex Productions), Veronica Caicedo (Caicedo Productions) and Jesse Mojica again raise the curtain at Teatro La Tea for a two-week run of new works by Latin playwrights from across the country. As has been the Festival tradition for the triumvirate of production companies, the roster of plays explores universal themes with that unique Latino sentiment and flavor.

The 2005 Festival line-up introduces the following full-length plays: Snowmen, by Frank Algarin, a finalist in the 2004 Repertorio Español Metlife Nuestras Voces Competition, explores three generations of Puerto Rican father and son relationships; Faded, a new work by Daily News columnist Robert Dominguez, is about a down and out reporter who tries to revive her career at scandalous supermarket tabloid; The Undoing of Berta, by Cyn Cañel Rossi, is the story of an unstable, foul-mouthed New York attorney who checks herself into Bellevue's Psychiatric Ward after suffering a manic episode; and Frida Vice Versa, a one-woman show written by Marian Licha and R. Dennis Green, flourishes on the conceit that the audience might be among Frida Kahlo's first students at La Esmeralda School for Painting in Mexico City. Also this year, Obie recipient Carmen Rivera presents a staged reading of her newest work, Ghosts in Brooklyn, which features actress Kelly Coffield (formerly of In Living Color).

Additionally, the Festival will present a quartet of provocative shorter works: SEMPER FIdel, by Fernando Mañon, has Cuban dictator Fidel Castro disappearing from a United Nations conference on poverty, only to reappear at a bodega in Spanish Harlem; Yo, Moms!, by writer-actor Danny Gonzalez, is a moving and humorous account of a grown man facing the news that his devoted mother has been diagnosed with the AIDS virus; Branches, by A.B. Lugo, author of Banjee, explores what happens when one is faced with temptations of street life and the search for family unity; and The Teacher's Lounge, by Vincent Toro, is a dramedy about the realities of teaching in the NYC public school system. "My colleagues and I continue to have the opportunity to work with wonderful writers who take tremendous risks with their storytelling. Their work pushes the cultural and dramatic boundaries of standard mainstream theater. It's exciting," says Festival Director Cyn Cañel Rossi. "We hope to continue growing so that we may showcase more works in the years to come."

The Songs From Coconut Hill Latino Playwrights Festival will run from March 7th to March 20th @ La Tea Theater, 107 Suffolk Street, in New York City. Tickets are $15 and available through www.smarttix.com. For additional information, call 212.591.0496 or visit www.songsfromcoconuthill.com.