Renaissance Theaterworks Presents ENFRASACADA, Now thru 11/11

Renaissance Theaterworks (RTW) celebrates the beginning of its 20th season and the 3rd year of its 3-year Diversity Series with ENFRASACADA by Tanya Saracho. Saracho will also direct this comedy featuring Yadira Correa, Annie Henk, Yunuen Pardo and locals Rana Roman and Karen Estrada.

Running tonight, October 19 – November 11, 2012 at the Studio Theatre, 158 N. Broadway, tickets can be purchased for $36 (fee & taxes not included) in person at the Broadway Theatre Center Box Office, by telephone at (414) 291-7800, or online at www.r-t-w.com. Tickets go on sale September 17, 2012.

Young professional Alicia is devastated when her boyfriend leaves her and will do anything to get him back. So she and her girlfriends seek an unusual remedy. With the help of three “brujeria” witches, Alicia and her friends explore magic recipes, age-told traditions and ancient spells -- with jarring results! ENFRASCADA spins a tale of passion, female friendships and the crazy things we will do for love. Based on real exchanges with hundreds of women and their dealings with folk magic, this play explores one of the best-kept secrets in the Latino community. A Milwaukee premiere, ENFRASCADA is performed in English with a sprinkling of Spanish.

Tanya Saracho was born in Sinaloa, Mexico. Named “Best New Playwright” by Chicago Magazine, she is a new Ensemble Member at the Tony-Award winning Victory Gardens Theater, a resident playwright emerita at Chicago Dramatists, a Goodman Theatre Fellow at the Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media at Columbia College Chicago, the founder of the Ñ Project, the producer and director of ALTA and founder and former Artistic Director of Teatro Luna: Chicago’s All-Latina Theater. Her plays have been seen at The Goodman Theater, Steppenwolf Theater, Teatro Vista, Teatro Luna, Fountain Theater, Clubbed Thumb, NEXT Theater and 16th Street Theater. She was named “Best New Playwright of 2010” by H Street Playhouse in Washington D.C. Her plays include: ENFRASCADA; El NOGALAR(inspired by THE CHERRY ORCHARD); an adaptation of The House on Mango Street for Steppenwolf; OUR LADY OF THE UNDERPASS; SURFACE DAY; KITY Y FERNANDA, and QUITA MITOS. Saracho is a winner of the Ofner Prize given by the Goodman Theater, a recipient of an NEA Distinguished New Play Development Project Grant with About Face Theatre and a 3Arts Artists Award. Her new work has been developed at: Hedgebrook Women's Playwright's Festival 2012, Ucross/Sundance 2011, Martha's Vineyard Arts Project 2011, Sundance Theater Lab 2012, Superlab with Clubbed Thumb/Playwrights Horizon, Ignition Festival at Victory Gardens, Latino Mixfest at Atlantic Theater, and XYZ Fest at About Face Theater. Saracho was named one of nine national Latino “Luminarios” by Café magazine and given the first “Revolucionario” Award in Theater by the National Museum of Mexican Art. Tanya is currently working on two Mellon Foundation commissions for Steppenwolf Theatre, a Goodman Theatre commission, an adaptation of a SOR JUANA INEZ DE LA CRUZ play for Oregon Shakespeare Festival which will premier in the 2013 season, and a historical fiction about a transgendered civil war soldier titled THE GOOD PRIVATE for About Face Theatre. Directing/Co-Directing credits include: ENFRASCADA, NO ROOSTERS IN THE DESERT, JARRED, LUNATIC(OS), S-E-X-Oh!, MARIA CHRONICLES, GENERIC LATINA, SOLO LATINAS, SOLO TU Y DEJAME CONTARTE.. Tanya is a proud working actor (she played the featured role in Renaissance’s production of FAT PIG in 2008) and a long time member of SAG/AFTRA.

CAST

Yadira Correa (Yesenia)

Karen Estrada (Lulu)

Annie Henk (Señora)

Yunuen Pardo (Carolina)

Rana Roman (Alicia)

Production Team: Julie Swenson (Producer), Brandy Kline (Stage Manager), Rachel Finn (Set Design), Mac Vaughey (Lighting Design), TBD (Costume Design), Sarah Ramos (Sound Design), Nikki Kulas (Prop Design).

Michelle Lopez-Rios (director) is a professional voice/dialect coach, actor, director, and teatrista. Co-founder of the Royal Mexican Players, she has directed A Trip Through the Mind of a ‘Crazy’ Mexican; Nuestra Voz, Nuestra Historia; Bienvenidos a Milwaukee; and One Hot Texican Summer (or the summer I found out I was Mexican). Together with playwright Alvaro Saar Rios, she has devised original works for Texas A&M University, the University of Wisconsin – Milwaukee, and the United Community Center in partnership with Milwaukee Repertory Theatre. She directed Decaffeinated Tragedy (winner of the 2009 Spirit Award at the Prague Fringe Festival) for Bad Soviet Habits and has directed several productions at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee where she is an Associate Professor of Voice and Speech.

Tickets to ENFRASCADA are $28 for previews and $36 for regular performances (taxes and fess not included). Tickets are available through The Broadway Theatre Center box office by calling (414) 291-7800 or online at www.r-t-w.com. All performances are at The Studio Theatre, 158 N. Broadway. Monday, October 29, 2012 will be the Pay-What-You-Can performance at 7:30 p.m. (Tickets for the October 29 performance will be available at the door at 6:30 p.m. No phone-in orders or advanced sales will be accepted for the Pay-What-You-Can performance.)

The mission of Renaissance Theaterworks is to create moving theater that awakens our recognition of what it is to be human – from classics to world premieres – with attention to women’s roles onstage and off. Founded in 1993, Renaissance Theaterworks is, presently, Milwaukee’s only women-founded and women-run theatre company.

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