Karina Casiano Stars In ROOTLESS Through 5/22

Puerto Rican actress/singer Karina Casiano returns with her third one-woman show, the theatrical concert ROOTLESS: La No-Nostalgia, featuring songs about the emotional life of immigrants. The sexy, bilingual multimedia cabaret is part of the 7th Annual soloNOVA Arts Festival at P.S.122 (150 First Avenue at 9th Street in Manhattan.)

Jam-packed with humor and bittersweet moments, ROOTLESS: La No-Nostalgia contains video, dance and live piano music by Broc Hempel, playing popular songs ranging from funny to tragic, all performed live by Karina Casiano. The show includes tunes in English and Spanish from tango to rock to Broadway; from American folk to Cuban son. In the style of her previous one-woman shows, Casiano delivers a show full of theatricality and beautiful images to add spice to the traditional cabaret recital.

Casiano plays a confused immigrant who begins to forget her past, her accent and even her gender after years of living away from her native land. Her perplexity towards her ever-changing identity clashes with her unwillingness to return and the certainty that she has been transformed irreversibly.

ROOTLESS will have five non-consecutive shows during the soloNOVA Festival:
· Tuesday, May 11
· Friday, May 14
· Sunday, May 16
· Thursday, May 20 at 7pm
· Saturday, May 22 at 2pm (only matinee in the run)

Last summer, ROOTLESS was presented in Bogotá, Colombia and in July 2010, Ms. Casiano will be on tour in Mexico where she has been invited to be part of the prestigious VIII Festival Internacional de Cabaret. This November, she will premiere The Orphans, her fifth original play, at the legendary La Mama ETC in the East Village. The bilingual piece is a production of Casiano's theater company, La Criatura Theater, and her first collaboration with Puerto Rican Daniel Irizarry.
In 2003, Casiano brought us ¿Qué me trajiste?: Cabaret Boricua and, in 2004, Colonia 2007 o el cabaret de los días terribles, both sold out at HERE Arts Center. In 2006, she formed La Criatura Theater Company and produced her spine-chilling site-specific play Silence Is Health / Silencio es Salud at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center in the Lower East Side and in an abandoned bank in Queens.

What: ROOTLESS: La No-Nostalgia
Where: P.S.122 (150 First Avenue at 9th Street, Manhattan)
When: May 11, 14, 16 and 20 at 7pm and May 22 at 2pm.
Tickets: $20, now for sale online at www.karinacasiano.com or www.terranova.com, or by phone through OvationTix at (866) 811-4111.
More info: www.karinacasiano.com or www.terranovacollective.com

KARINA CASIANO (Performer, director, writer)
BA in Drama, University of Puerto Rico. In 1999, Casiano premiered her first one-woman show, Qué me trajiste: Cabaret Boricua, about the political relationship between United States and Puerto Rico, which traveled to Puerto Rico, Cuba, Ecuador, Perú, Chile, Argentina and New York.

In 2000, she obtained grants from the National Endowment for the Arts grant (through the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture) and the State Legislature to present her second solo show, Colonia 2007 o el cabaret de los días terribles, a futuristic play with music and video set in Puerto Rico, also seen in Ecuador and New York.

In 2006, with her La Criatura Theatre company, she premiered her first full-cast, site-specific play, Silence Is Health/Silencio es Salud, about the issue of public indifference towards the issue of torture.

In 2008, Casiano produced her third solo work, the theatrical concert about migration, Rootless: La No-Nostalgia, presented at chashama on 42nd Street, the Gerald W. Lynch Theater of CUNY's John Jay College and, in August 2009, in the X Encuentro de Performance y Política for NYU in Bogotá, Colombia. The show will also be a part of the VII Festival Internacional de Cabaret in Mexico City in July 2010.

In November 2010, Casiano will premiere her fifth original play The Orphans for La Criatura Theater at La Mama ETC in New York City. It contains live singing and physical theater, and it marks the first collaboration between Casiano and Puerto Rican actor Daniel Irizarry. The play, set in the near future, tells the love story of two lonely people who find each other in the middle of a world devastated by savage capitalism and climate change.

In New York, Casiano has collaborated with The Flying Machine, International WOW, Spanish Repertory Theater and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, among other New York theater companies.
In film, she has appeared in the TV series Law and Order, and, in Ecuador, in Pasado y Confeso, as well as in multiple independent short films in the United States, including The Love Bite, winner of the 2004 Galway Film Fleadth in Dublin, Ireland.

In Spain, she has trained with Juan Carlos Corazza and José Olmo. In South America, Casiano has trained with Yuyachkani (Perú) and Malayerba (Ecuador.) In New York, with Austin Pendleton (acting,) Paul Gemignani (musical theater,) Norman Taylor (physical theater,) Penny Templeton, (camera acting,) CarolAnn Page (singing,) David Mamet's Atlantic Theater Company (acting,) The Second City (improvisation) and the Michael Chekhov Acting Studio (acting,) among many others. More info of Casiano's work at www.karinacasiano.com.

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