Teatro Luna Kicks Off Season 11 With CROSSED, 11/21-12/18

Chicago's All Latina Theatre Company comes back onto the scene with a brand new play, CROSSED, which opens for a main-stage run this fall. The show will launch an aggressive season entirely dedicated to discussing the various immigration, race, and U.S. border-related wars currently unfolding in the United States. CROSSED (How Going South Flipped Our Script) asks Chicago: Why does Immigrant = Mexican in the United States, when America is home to immigrants from all over the globe? CROSSED plays November 21 - December 18 at The Viaduct Theatre, 3111 N. Western Avenue, Chicago, IL 60618. Directed by Founding Ensemble Member and Luna's Director of Artistic Development Miranda Gonzalez, featuring both company members and members from The North-South Plays (the workshop that gave way to CROSSED) workshop cast. Tickets go on sale October 14, 2011 at www.teatroluna.org for $12, $15, $20, and $25.

CROSSED, Teatro Luna's eighth original play devised in an ensemble setting, seeks to explode (yes, explode!) stereotype and poetically navigate what it means to be an immigrant in the United States in an era some have ironically dubbed "post-racial." Set in a series of unknown terminals, join seven diverse performers as they share both their own autobiographical stories, as well as accounts collected from interviews, news reports, and the Lunáticas own experiences while traveling South in spring 2011--ranging from topics like: one Latina's reaction to Congresswoman Gifford's shooting, to the painful mystery of a cousin who went missing on the same day as 400 others in Mexico, to burlesque in an Airport security checkpoint set to the tune of La Cucaracha. CROSSED calls upon Teatro Luna's most notable hallmark: using wit, humor and quirky poignancy to tackle the taboo, the uncomfortable, and some beautiful and ugly truths about living in America as an immigrant today.

CROSSED is presented in English with a sprinkle of Spanish, and a dash of several other languages!

"I am excited to tell these stories in this format because what Teatro Luna has always done is attempt to deconstruct stereotypes through humor and real stories. With this play we want to defy or at least challenge the stereotypes of what an immigrant is. "This play is a direct reflection of our mission to use theatre for social change (and still making sure to truly entertain you, while asking you hard questions that make you think about yourself and the world around you)" says Director of Artistic Development and CROSSED director, Miranda Gonzalez.

"This play is particularly special to us, not only because of its timely and brutally honest nature, but because it's the little play that could!" adds Meda. CROSSED was artistically born out of the collaboration started with Bailiwick Chicago in November 2010, called The North/South Plays (which focused on border relationships between the United States, Canada, and Mexico 10 years after the tragic events of 9/11). Unfortunately, due to a variety of factors, namely losing the play's venue at the Chicago Center for the Performing Arts, Bailiwick Chicago decided it would not move forward with the project. The August 30th sold-out staged reading at the Department of Cultural Affairs (the capstone to a month-long incubation in collaboration with the DCA), and the North America Now Cultural Event at the Instituto Cervantes one week later, marked the bittersweet end to the former collaboration, announces Teatro Luna Executive Director Alexandra Meda.

These last minute changes forced Teatro Luna to regroup and strategically re-think what and how they would produce a fall show. According to Gonzalez: "We had to refocus the entire play since it is now our very specific voice telling a story instead of our two very different voices. All we knew, is that we had a commitment to our audience of presenting a high-quality production in 2011 about immigration and borders, so we went back to what we know. For two weeks straight, we started writing, and writing, and writing about our own family stories and experiences travelling along the southwest this year."

"Another hurdle was that we had commitments to actors who did not identify as Latinas and male actors who were already contracted for a full play. How is our audience going to react to that now that this isn't a co-production? We agonized over this for a few days, knowing that our decision would drastically change the play and affect the actors' and designers' livelihood" stated Meda. "We decided to keep as many actors from The North/South Plays workshop cast as we could--it actually seemed to open up the world of the play and the variety of stories we could tell in discussing this topic."

The bottom line? "We are able to take advantage of the situation and work with other actors of color outside of the Latino diaspora. We get to contemplate mixed identity in a new way. We are directly challenging, questioning, and embracing the meaning of mixed identity and the complicated notions of minorities in the US," notes Gonzalez.

 

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