National Latiné Theater Festival To Present ENCUENTRO 2024: WE ARE HERE – PRESENTE! At The LATC

Nineteen theater companies and 165 artists from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico will electrify downtown L.A. during a three-week national theater festival of dynamic, contemporary Latiné theater. Latino Theater Company will present Encuentro 2024: We Are Here – Presente!, at The Los Angeles Theatre Center from October 24 through November 10.

Featuring public performances, cross-company collaborations, and rich discussions, Encuentro 2024 will celebrate the resilience, creativity and strength of our Latiné communities, reaffirming Latino Theater Company's commitment to fostering new voices and inspiring the next generation of artists.

The work of each company will be presented on a rotating schedule, with performances running simultaneously every Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday in six different spaces within The LATC complex.

Bilingual Foundation of the Arts (Los Angeles, CA) will present La Vida es Sueño (“Life is a Dream”), a play from the Spanish Golden Age that explores themes of dreams, reality, fate and free will through the character of Segismundo, who grapples with his own identity and purpose. (Performed in Spanish with English supertitles.)

Borderlands Theater Company (Tuscon, AZ) presents Borderline Theater Company Cordially Invites You to an In-Process Showing of Antigona 3.0 Made Possible by a Very Important Grant, a postcolonial dark comedy satirizing the American theater, the border, and our generational trauma. (Performed in English and Spanish, with Spanish and English supertitles.)

Camino23 Collective (San Diego, CA) presents Stone Heart. Persecution, forbidden love, curses, rattlesnakes and suicide come together in a visceral Western drama about family and legacy. (Performed in English with Spanish supertitles.)

Cara Mía Theater Company (Dallas, TX) presents Your Healing is Killing Me, a solo show written by Virginia Grise and performed by Fayylita Hicks, about a Queer, body-positive Chicana who wrestles with modern concepts of health. (Performed in English with Spanish supertitles.)

GALA Hispanic Theatre (Washington, DC) presents The 22+ Weddings of Hugo Múltiple. Based on a true story, this hilarious, award-winning play about a serial groom explores empathy, love, hate and our common need to find refuge. (Performed in Spanish with English supertitles.)

Glass Half Full (Austin, TX) presents Yamel Cucuy. Set to an original score of indigenous percussion and blending sophisticated puppetry with live actors, this story of a girl haunted by folkloric spirits and ICE agents draws on frightening folk tales and modern horror movies to create a terrifying psychological landscape of legal and spiritual pitfalls. (Performed in English and Spanish, with Spanish and English supertitles.)

Grupo de Teatro SINERGIA (Los Angeles, CA) presents Ayotzinapa (Siutuación: Desaparecido), the true story of 43 rural student teachers who were disappeared in Mexico in 2014. (Performed in Spanish with English supertitles.)

Gabriel Diego Hernández (Jersey City, NJ) is the writer and performer of Quarter Rican, a fast-talking hip hop musical exploring gentrification, identity and parenthood. (Performed in English with Spanish supertitles)

La Vuelta Ensemble (Chicago, IL) presents Memorabilia, a solo clown show starring Boricua (Puerto Rican) performer Jean Claudio, who uses old boleros, acrobatics, juggling, dance and theater to weave a story about memory and loss that will make you laugh and perhaps cry. (Performed without dialogue.)

Latino Theater Company (Los Angeles, CA) presents Whittier Boulevard, an ensemble-devised “Chicano Noir” satire that employs the company's trademark blend of comedy, drama, music, dance and theatrical magic to explore ageism and the divine that exists within us all. (Performed in English with Spanish supertitles.)

Latino Theater Company (Los Angeles, CA) presents A Girl Grows Wings, written by Marisela Treviño and developed and devised by Mexico City's Organización Secreta Teatro, depicting the journey of a young, undocumented “Dreamer” as she grows her wings in a touchingly beautiful and imaginative style. (Performed without dialogue.)

Pitchblack Immersive (New York, NY) presents ODD MAN OUT, an immersive experience, performed in complete darkness, in which the audience hears, smells, tastes and feels the story of Alberto, a blind jazz musician traveling home from New York to Buenos Aires after decades of self-exile. (Performed in the dark in English, no supertitles.)

Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (Bronx, NY) presents The Red Rose, a HOLA and ACE award-winning musical theater tribute to foundational Afro/Black Puerto Rican writer and social activist Jesús Colón that uncovers a little-known chapter in the history of the McCarthy era Red Scare. (Performed in English and Spanish, with Spanish and English supertitles.)

ProyectoTEATRO (Austin, TX) presents CABAREX 2: RevoLUZiones, a Latinx cabaret incorporating dance, musical numbers, drag, sketch comedy and drama to explore 500 years of oppressive Latin American history. (Performed in Spanish and Spanglish with English supertitles.)

Repertorio Español in collaboration with Tantai Teatro PR (New York, NY) presents La Golondrina. Memories of a terrorist attack in a gay bar are unleashed when singing coach Ms. Amelia and her new student, Ramon, bond over a special song. (Performed in Spanish with English supertitles.)

Su Teatro (Denver, CO) presents Interview with a Mexican, a stage adaptation by Anthony J. García of the ¡Ask a Mexican! column by Gustavo Arellano that rolls up live music, video, projections, dance, satire, humor and political incorrectness into one juicy taco. (Performed in English and Spanish, with Spanish and English supertitles.)

Teatro Alebrijes (San Jose, CA) presents Carlota: Alhajero de Secretos. Carlota holds a family secret ready to burst out of her in this work that is equal parts Lorca, Ibsen and scandal, but all heart. (Performed in Spanish with English supertitles)

Teatro Público (San Juan, PR) presents Blanco Temblor. On her path to healing following a suicide attempt, a bipolar astrophysicist passes through shades of humor and darkness as she encounters her living and dead loved ones. (Performed in Spanish with English supertitles)

Water People Theater (Chicago, IL) presents The Delicate Tears of the Waning Moon, a poignant drama inspired by true events that addresses the relentless violation of human rights against journalists who strive to report the truth. (Performed in English with Spanish supertitles.)

Encuentro 2024: We Are Here – Presente! marks the tenth anniversary of Latino Theater Company's first National Encuentro in 2014. Since then, the company has produced an Encuentro every three years: in 2017, Encuentro de Las Américas brought 13 companies from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Cuba, Peru and Colombia to Los Angeles, and 2021's Re-Encuentro saw 16 Latiné companies in digital residence at The LATC during the height of the pandemic. 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 facility of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and a landmark building in Downtown's Historic Core, since 2006.

Tickets to Encuentro 2024: We Are Here – Presente! range from $10 to $48 for a single show. Packages are $80 for two shows; $180 for a six shows; and $380 to see all 19 performances.

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).

For more information and to purchase tickets, call (213) 489-0994 or go to www.latinotheaterco.org.

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