#GRACED Premieres At The Adrienne Arsht Center in May

#Graced, written by Vanessa Garcia and directed by Sarah Hughes and Victoria Collado will be presented by Zoetic Stage and Adrienne Arsht Center in collaboration with Abre Camino Collective. Performing May 4 - 21. Tickets: https://www.arshtcenter.org/tickets/2022-2023/theater-up-close/graced/

Catherine, sponsored by Monteverde Moonshine, searching for something authentic, embarks on a trip across the United States with her new lover and colleague, Lewis. She wants to understand, essentially, what it means to be "American" ...right now. But this trip is also a personal journey to find her own roots in this country. Cat and Lewis don't go it alone. They pick up a wayward nun named Rosalie and a queer homeschooled teenager named Blake. Catherine travels along the bumpy road of what it means to be an "American."

"America (prior to the 2016 election) and my life felt like it was both going through a breaking point that could either tear it up for good or lead to a new light," says playwright Vanessa Garcia. "Even the Nobel Prize Committee was leary of what American art had to offer," she continued. "What the world sees as America isn't the real America, or rather, only just a part of it," she concluded. She wrote this new turning-point tale and developed it at Thinking Cap Theatre, WP Theater, South Florida Theater League, and the Playwright Development program of Miami Dade Cultural Affairs. Thanks to a grant from BOLD Ventures, development toward production culminated in NYC in December 2022, also at WP Theater.

This will be the World Premiere.

Abre Camino Collective is an award-winning entertainment company comprised of visual, theatre, literary, and performing artists redefining the American narrative through radical storytelling. Together as artists and collaborators, Victoria Collado and Vanessa Garcia, co-founders of Abre Camino, have worked in theatre, TV, journalism, the visual arts, academia, radio, the literary arts, and film. They have Masters degrees, doctorates, and have worked on Broadway. Most recently, they created The Amparo Experience, the immersive hit play that People en Español called "Miami's Hottest Ticket" and had a sold-out 8 month run in 2019. Abre Camino has received numerous residencies and honors including, Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor; The Wassaic Project Residence; The Orchard Project; and the Sanctuary of the Arts in Miami. In February 2023, ACC is receiving the inaugural George Cabrera Award (which is given to those who show Excellence in the Arts in the Miami Community. It is presented by the 4ward organization.
The website: https://www.abrecaminocollective.com/
The Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abrecaminocollective/
#Graced Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gracedplay/

Zoetic Stage (Presenting Company) was founded in 2010 to create fresh, bold interpretations of contemporary plays and musicals, and is dedicated to enhancing South Florida's national artistic profile by producing regional premieres and developing new works to become part of the American stage repertoire. Zoetic Stage is a proud Arts Partner with the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. The website: https://www.zoeticstage.org/index.php

Adrienne Arsht Center For The Performing Arts Of Miami-Dade County is a performing arts center located in Miami, Florida. It is one of the largest performing arts centers in the United States. The center was partly built on the site of a former Sears department store; an Art Deco building constructed in 1929, pre-dating the Art Deco hotels on Ocean Drive. www.arshtcenter.org

Vanessa Garcia (Writer/Producer of #GRACED) is a Cuban-American multidisciplinary writer -- screenwriter, playwright, novelist, and journalist/essayist -- who has written and worked for Sesame Street, Caillou, We Are Family, and Dora the Explorer. She's the author of the novel, White Light, which won an International Latino Book Award and was one of NPRs best books of 2015. Her first Picture Book for children, What the Bread Says, launched October 2022. Theatrically, her work has been produced around the world. She's the author of The Amparo Experience, an immersive hit that People en Español called "Miami's Hottest Ticket." Other plays include: Sweet Goats & Blueberry Señoritas, which she co-wrote with Richard Blanco, and #Graced. As well as her radio play, Ich Bin Ein Berliner, about the fall of the Berlin Wall and what it meant to her. Her journalism, essays and thought pieces have appeared in The LA Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, National Review, ESPN, The Hill, Catapult, Narrativel.ly, and numerous other publications. www.vanessagarcia.org

Victoria Collado (Co-Director/Producer of #GRACED) is a Cuban-American director creating exciting and adventurous storytelling experiences on-stage, on-screen, and in your ears! Named Best Director of 2020 by the Miami New Times, Collado is well-known for her direction of the hit immersive theatre piece, The Amparo Experience written by Vanessa Garcia, which had a sold out 8-month run and named "Miami's Hottest Ticket" by People en Español. She also directed the Inaugural Anthem Award-winning digital piece Black Feminist Video Game written by Darrel Alejandro Holnes. Most recently in her film, Victoria directed the Social Media version of The Amparo Experience (@theamparoexperience) which was an honoree of the Webby Awards in 2021 and is currently working on multiple documentaries; one of which is based on the life of legendary actor, Ruben Rabasa. Victoria has directed for Repertorio Español, GableStage, WP Theatre, The Civilians, Miami New Drama, MCC Youth Company, Sheen Center, IATI theatre, Microteatro Miami, Columbia University and others. Her production El Burlador de Sevilla received various nominations from the ACE awards, and won for Outstanding Ensemble. She was a Van Lier Directing Fellow with Repertorio Español, part of the Directing Corps in the Williamstown Theatre Festival, and a recipient of the SDCF Observership. She was also a fellow a fellow of the WP Theater's 2018-2020 Lab. Victoria was the assistant director to Tony Taccone in the Tony-Award Nominated Latin History For Morons on Broadway by John Leguizamo. www.victoriacollado.com

Sarah Hughes (Co-Director of #GRACED) is a director and producer of theater and new media. Her work embraces limitation, values accidental discoveries, and is deeply collaborative, employing unexpected choices in casting, staging, and tone to create medium-specific, inclusive, sustainable, shared experiences that aim at truth rather than at the effect of reality. Sarah has collaborated as a director on new plays, performance art pieces and devised works with Eliza Bent, Julia May Jonas / Nellie Tinder, MJ Kaufman, McFeely Sam Goodman / Limited Liability Theater Company, Chana Porter, Deepali Gupta, Julia Izumi, Zarina Shea, Eli Nixon, Pablo Helguera, Corinne Donly, Cara Scarmack, Alaina Ferris, Superhero Clubhouse, and more. Her work has been presented throughout NYC with Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Abrons Arts Center, BAM Next Wave, The Bushwick Starr, New Ohio, Japan Society, The Tank, Caveat, The Segal Center, Columbia University, The Brick, Prelude, and CATCH, among others. www.sarahcameronhughes.com

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