Latino Theater Company Opens Spring 2024 Season With GHOST WALTZ Next Month

Latino Theater Company will open its Spring 2024 season with the world premiere of an innovative and daring new play with music. Ghost Waltz by Oliver Mayer (Blade to the Heat, Members Only), which features a cast of exceptional actor/musicians under the eyes of director Alberto Barboza and music director Alberto López, will run May 4 through June 2 at The Los Angeles Theatre Center in downtown Los Angeles. Six low-priced previews are scheduled April 25 through May 3.

Commissioned by Latino Theater Company and developed in the company’s Circle of Imaginistasplaywriting group, Ghost Waltzis a boldly original recovery of Juventino Rosas, one of Mexico’s most significant classical composers — an Indigenous musician whose life story has gone untold and whose works have been attributed to Europeans. Following Rosas from his father’s early death to his friendship with ragtime genius Scott Joplin, Mayer mixes music, magic, drama, passion, spirituality and dance in a celebration that explores the lives of people of color during the emerging Americas of the late 19th century, and their ghost-like impact on our own lives today. 

“Rosas was an important composer who’s been forgotten by history, and whose most famous work, Sobre las olas (Over the Waves), has been credited to Johann Strauss,” says Mayer. “It's high time to free him from beneath the whitewash and let him live again. This is one of the most challenging plays I've ever written, and I think it breaks new ground in the ways that dramatic text and live music coexist on stage.”

Actor, multi-instrumentalist and composer Quetzal Guerrero, best known as QVLN and a classically trained violinist, stars as Rosas. Pianist extraordinaire and Steinway artist Ric’key Pageot, who has toured with Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Cher and Cirque du Soleil, takes on the role of Scott Joplin. And Latin Grammy nominee rising star soprano Nathalie Peña-Comas plays Ángela Peralta, the “Mexican Nightingale,” who was the first Mexican to sing at the La Scala opera house in Milan. Fictional characters include Rosas’ father, Don Jesus, portrayed by actor and composer Eduardo Robledo, known for his work with El Teatro Campesino and the San Francisco Mime Troupe; Professor Zeiss, a music teacher at the Mexican conservatory, played by Cástulo Guerra (Terminator 2, The Mexican, and Star Trek: The Next Generation); Joplin’s young companion, Bethena (Adzua Ayana Asha Amoa, recently seen as LaRonda in ART/NY staged reading of Fish by Kia Corthron); and Creole clairvoyant Marie Leveau (Monte Escalante, Robey Theatre Company’s The Talented Tenth).

Cameron Jaye Mock and Emily Anne McDonald are the production designers, including set, lights, costumes and projections. The assistant director is Giovanni Ortega. Production stage manager Yaesol Jeong is assisted by Mikayla Bettner.

Ghost Waltz marks the company’s second full production, following last season’s Tacos La Brooklyn by Joel Ulloa, to emerge from the Circle of Imaginistas. The Latino Theater Company is dedicated to providing a world-class arts center for those pursuing artistic excellence; a laboratory where both tradition and innovation are honored and honed; and a place where the convergence of people, cultures and ideas contribute to the future. Now in its 39th year, LTC has operated The Los Angeles Theatre Center, a landmark building in Downtown’s Historic Core, since 2006. This month, the company was honored with six Stage Raw awards for four different productions in 2023. 

Ghost Waltz opens on Saturday, May 4 at 8 p.m., with performances thereafter on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at 4 p.m. through June 2. Six preview performances take place April 25 through May 3 on the same schedule. Tickets range from $10–$48, except opening night which is $75 and includes a post-performance reception.

The Los Angeles Theatre Center is located at 514 S. Spring St., Los Angeles, CA 90013. Parking is available for $8 with box office validation at Los Angeles Garage Associate Parking structure, 545 S. Main St., Los Angeles, CA 90013 (between 5th and 6th Streets, just behind the theater).
 

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