Photo Flash: First Look at Caridad Svich's GUAPA Premiere at Phoenix Theatre

The Phoenix Theatre of Indianapolis has announced the NNPN Rolling World Premiere of a by Caridad Svich, Guapa in the Frank and Katrina Basile Theatre. Opening Thursday, January 3, and running through Sunday, January 20, 2013, with the last 2 performances in Spanish. Get a first look at the production in the photos below!

The NATIONAL NEW PLAY NETWORK (NNPN), the country's alliance of non-profit theaters that champions the development, production, and continued life of new plays. Guapa is its 30th Rolling World Premiere: Caridad Svich's Guapa will receive three productions through the Network's Continued Life of New Plays Fund in the 2012/13 season, the Network's 15th. Guapa began its Rolling World Premiere at Borderlands Theater (Tucson, AZ, October 5 - 21), followed by The Phoenix Theatre performances, then ending at Miracle Theatre Group (Portland, OR, March 22 - April 13).

In a small Texas town long fractured by class struggle and racism, a single mother named Roly works to give her makeshift family a shot at their dreams. Together they adopt a young woman named Guapa ("beautiful"), who wants nothing more than to play women's soccer. With her hallmark lyricism and political commitment, Svich has written a border-fantasy filled with magical sports dreams, graffiti, birds in flight, indigenous history, trauma, recovery, and the possibility of a better life.

Caridad Svich is a US Latina playwright, translator, lyricist and editor whose works have been presented across the US and abroad at diverse venues, including the Denver Center, Mixed Blood Theatre, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Repertorio Espanol, 59East59, McCarren Park Pool, 7 Stages, Salvage Vanguard Theatre, Teatro Mori (Santiago, Chile), ARTheater (Cologne), and Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK. She received the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for her play The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende, and has been short-listed for the PEN Award in Drama three times, including in 2010 for Instructions for Breathing. Her key works include 12 Ophelias, Alchemy of Desire/Dead Man's Blues, Any Place But Here, Iphigenia...A Rave Fable, Fugitive Pieces, In the Time of the Butterflies (based on Julia Alvarez's novel), Magnificent Waste, and the multimedia collaboration The Booth Variations. An alumna of New Dramatists, she holds an MFA in Theatre-Playwriting from UCSD, and has taught creative writing and playwriting at Bard College, Barnard College, Rutgers University-New Brunswick and Yale School of Drama.

The five-member cast of Guapa includes Patricia Castañeda (Roly), Phebe Taylor (Guapa), Guero Loco (LeBon), AdrIan Gomez (Hakim) and Magdalena Ramos (Pepi).

In addition to Phoenix Theatre Producing Director Bryan Fonseca producing and directing, the production team includes Set Designer James Gross, Light Designer Laura Glover, Sound and Video Designer Tim Brickley, Technical Director Nolan Brokamp, Costume Designer Ashley Kiefer, Stage Manager Chelsey Wood.

Photo Credit: Zach Rosing

Magdalena Ramos (Pepi), Phebe Taylor (Guapa), AdrIan Gomez (Hakim), Guero Loco (LeBon), and Patricia Castaeda (Roly)

Magdalena Ramos (Pepi) and Phebe Taylor (Guapa)

Patricia Castaeda (Roly) and Guero Loco (LeBon)

Patricia Castaeda (Roly) and Magdalena Ramos (Pepi)

Phebe Taylor (Guapa)

Phebe Taylor (Guapa), Magdalena Ramos (Pepi) and Patricia Castaeda (Roly)