Theater for the New City Will Present the World Premiere of MARIQUITAS, Beginning 4/27

Theater for the New City (Crystal Field, Executive Director) will present the world premiere of Eduardo Machado's play Mariquitas, directed by Michael Domitrovich, beginning April 27th and continuing through May 19th only. Opening Night is set for Sunday May 5th (7pm).

Set in a gay-friendly bed and breakfast in Old Havana, Mariquitas focuses on a group of Cuban jineteros(hustlers) and their older European clients as they satisfy the desires of their bodies, minds, and souls in a country with limited resources. In the last 5 years, LGBT Cubans have experienced unprecedented freedom of expression due to the support of sexologist, psychologist, and politician Mariela Castro Espin. Still, the country's history of marginalizing, persecuting and interring homosexuals makes faith in this new period of growth tentative at best. Mariquitas uses the struggles of a specific slice of contemporary Cuban life to illuminate a larger historical dynamic - the continued tradition of cultural and sexual imperialism between Cuba and its former colonizers.

Featured in the cast will be Omar Chagall, Matthew d'Amato, Ricardo Dávila, Oscar Hernandez, Begonya Plaza, Liam Torres, Ed Trucco, Carlos Valencia, and Ana Valle. Mariquitas will have set design by Mikiko Suzuki MacAdams, lighting design by Alex Bartenieff, costume design by Michael Bevins, and sound design by Betsy Rhodes.

Eduardo Machado was born in Cuba and came to the United States when he was nine. He grew up in Los Angeles. He is the author of over forty plays, including The Cook, Havana is Waiting, The Modern Ladies of Guanabacoa, Fabiola, In the Eye of the Hurricane, Broken Eggs, Once Removed, A Burning Beach, and Stevie Wants to Play the Blues. His plays have been produced at Seattle Repertory Theatre, Goodman Theatre, Hartford Stage, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Mark Taper Forum, Long Wharf Theatre, Hampstead Theatre in London, American Place Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, INTAR Theatre, Theater for the New City, and Repertorio Español, among many others. Mr. Machado wrote and directed the film Exiles in New York, which played at the A.F.I Film Festival, South by Southwest, Santa Barbara Film Festival and Latin American International Film Festival in Havana, Cuba. He has taught playwriting at Columbia University (where he was the Head of Playwriting from 1997-2007), The Public Theatre, Mark Taper Forum, Sarah Lawrence College and the Playwrights Center. From 2004-2010 he was the Artistic Director of the off-Broadway INTAR Theatre in NYC. Mr. Machado is a member of The Actors Studio, The Ensemble Studio Theater, and an alumnus of New Dramatists, and has served on the boards of TCG, New Dramatists and Theater for the New City. Mr. Machado is currently the Head of Playwriting in the Goldberg Department of Dramatic Writing at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home, a food memoir by Eduardo Machado and Michael Domitrovich, was published by Gotham Press in 2007. A new collection of his plays entitled Havana is Waiting and Other Plays was published by TCG in Spring 2011.

Michael Domitrovich's work was last seen at TNC in February 2010, when he directed the world premiere of his play, Lotus Feet. Before that, in 2007, his play Artfxxers had its world premiere at TNC before moving to an Off-Broadway run in 2008. In the summer of 2010, he directed his first bilingual production, in English and French, of two plays in Bonnieux, France. His work as a playwright has been performed at 59E59, EST, Galapagos, the Bowery Poetry Club and La Mama ETC, as well as the Avenue Theater in Denver, CO. His short play Dirtfag was published in the 2009 New York Theatre Review and he is co-author of Eduardo Machado's critically acclaimed food memoir Tastes Like Cuba: An Exile's Hunger for Home (Gotham Press). He was a guest speaker at the Chautauqua Institution's Literary and Scientific Circle and a guest columnist inPAPER Magazine's "Beautiful People" issue. Mr. Domitrovich is a professional chef, food poet, psychic, medium, and spiritual healer who holds a BFA in Cinema Studies from NYU Tisch School of the Arts.www.ediblespirit.com

THEATER FOR THE NEW CITY (TNC) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning community cultural center that is known for its high artistic standards and widespread community service. One of New York's most prolific theatrical organizations, TNC produces 30-40 premieres of new American plays per year, at least 10 of which are by emerging and young playwrights. Many influential theater artists of the last quarter century have foundTNC's Resident Theater Program instrumental to their careers, among them Sam Shepard, Moises Kaufman, Richard Foreman, Charles Busch, Maria Irene Fornes, Miguel Piñero and Academy Award-winners Tim Robbinsand Adrien Brody. TNC also presents plays by multi-ethnic/multi-disciplinary theater companies who have no permanent home. Among the well-known companies that have been presented by TNC are Mabou Mines, The Living Theater, Bread and Puppet Theater, and the San Francisco Mime Troupe. TNC seeks to develop theater audiences and inspire future theater artists from the often-overlooked low-income minority communities of New York City by producing minority writers from around the world and by bringing the community into theater and theater into the community through its many free Festivals. TNC productions have won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and over 40 OBIE Awards for excellence in every theatrical discipline. TNC is also the only Theatrical Organization to have won the Mayor's Stop The Violence award.

According to Machado, "Theater for the New City is where I've always been allowed to do the dangerous and daring, and one of the first places in NYC where my plays were produced. I have been developing this play for some time, and it is a project I feel passionately about. I am thrilled that it has found a home at Theater for the New City, a place I have always admired for its commitment to new voices and its history of producing challenging, uncensored work."

Performances will be Thursday through Saturday evenings at 8pm and Sunday evenings at 7pm, with additional performances Wednesday May 8th and Wednesday May 15th at 8pm. Tickets are $15, and can be purchased by calling 212/254-1109 or online at www.theaterforthenewcity.net

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