HartBeat Ensemble Presents World Premiere Of Cin Martinez's PEGAO

HartBeat Ensemble announces the world premiere of Pegao, a family drama set in Puerto Rico in the 1970s. The new work, built a round of high-stakes game of dominos, is written by Ensemble member Cin Martinez with dramaturgy by acclaimed playwright Edwin Sanchez and is directed by Ensemble member Hannah Simms. The cast for Pegao includes Yohanna Florentino, Clara Tristan, Joel Oramas, and Angelina Adam.
Performances run May 30 through June 9, 2019 at HartBeat Ensemble's Carriage House Theatre (360 Farmington Avenue, Hartford, CT). Pegao will be presented in Spanish and Spanglish with English captioning. The Saturday performances will be presented without English captions. Tickets are $25; $20 for students, seniors, and Greater Hartford Arts Councils' Let's Go cardholders. No one is turned away due to lack of funds. Tickets can be secured by calling (860) 548-9144 or visiting HartBeatEnsemble.org.

The action in Pegao takes place during a high-stakes domino game in Vieques, Puerto Rico in the late 70s. Do a Lina, the family's grandmother, is trying to pass on the skill of dominoes to a younger generation. Woven into the narrative are themes of migration to American cities like Hartford, U.S. military presence on the island of Vieques, prejudice against dark-skinned people within families, and the forced sterilization of Puerto Rican women. As with any conversation that stretches across generations in emigrant societies, there are tensions about leaving and staying, about language, and about the cultural influence of the mainland. Pegao was developed as part the HartBeat Ensemble's WTF! series and had additional readings at Bregamos Community Theater in New Haven, CT.

Cin Martinez (Playwright) is a playwright/performer from Hartford, Connecticut. Raised by her parents, who moved from Puerto Rico in the early 70s', Cin's appreciation for living a multicultural life was cemented early on. Cin landed her first acting job as a co-host in a documentary film Women in Charge alongside Adrianne Baughns-Wallace, a veteran in the television broadcasting circuit. In 2006, after receiving her Bachelor's degree in Communications with a specialization in Video Production from Southern CT State University, Cin began participating in Ensemble theatre with an emphasis on play creation and social justice theatre.

Cin, an ensemble member of the HartBeat Ensemble (HBE) for 15+ years, has acted in six of its nine original main stage plays. In 2012, Cin trained with Shakespeare & Company, a month-long actor intensive in Berkshire, Massachusetts. Cin's love for playwriting began when she co-wrote Flipside, winning Best Ensemble Award at the NYC Fringe Festival in 2012. Cin's passion for writing grew, resulting in several (documentary theatre) short plays, including the world premiere of Riding the Turnpike and Frog Hollow State of Mind. Cin became a recipient of the Connecticut Latino De Oro awards in the Arts. Shortly after, she secured a contract with Emerging Talent Agency and AAG Management out of New York landing her a co-starring role in an episode of Orange is the New Black, a popular series on Netflix.

Hannah Simms (Director) met HartBeat Ensemble on the street the first weekend she lived in Hartford in 2005, and has called it her artistic home ever since. She is the program director of HartBeat's Youth Play Institute. Hannah's directing credits include Frog Hollow State of Mind and Asylum Hill: Meet Us Where We Are (HartBeat), To Kill A Mockingbird (CCSU), Guinevere and To Fall In Love With Anyone, Do This (Ivoryton Playhouse), Eurydice, (PVPA Charter High School), Winter's Tale, Twelfth Night, and Julius Caesar (Hampshire Shakespeare), Write On! festival (Hartford Stage), New In November festival (Hartford Opera Theater). She served as the Assistant Director for FlipSide (HartBeat) and The City That Cried Wolf (59E59).

Edwin Sanchez (Dramaturg) has been writing professionally since 1989 when he won a NYFA Playwriting Fellowship for his play Trafficking In Broken Hearts. He wrote two plays while at Yale School of Drama: Unmerciful Good Fortune, which won him a 1994 Princess Grace Playwriting Fellowship and the 1995 AT&T On Stage New Play Award, as well as being produced in Chicago, New York, Seattle, and Los Angeles; and Clean, for which he was awarded the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays in 1994 and which has been produced in Connecticut, New York, Washington and Seattle.

Upon graduating from Yale he won the Berilla Kerr Foundation Award for contribution made to contemporary American theatre. In 1997 he received a National Arts Club, Kesselring Honorable Mention for his play Icarus. That was followed in 1999 by the Herbert and Patricia Brodkin Scholarship, selected by the dramaturgs at the National Playwrights Conference at the O'Neill Theatre Center for Barefoot Boys With Shoes On. n 2006 he received his third New York State Arts Foundation Fellowship, this one for playwriting for his play La Bella Familia, followed by the National Latino Playwriting award in 2007. In 2017 he received the Nuestras Voces playwriting award from Repertorio Espa ol for his newest play, The Merit System. That year also saw the publication of his first novel, Diary of a Puerto Rican Demigod. In between writing Mr. Sanchez teaches and mentors playwrights.

The creative team includes Joseph Fonseca and David Sepulveda (Set Design), Maritza Ubides (Sound Design), Nydia Simone (Costume Design), and Jon-Paul LaRocco (Lighting Design).

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