ZOETROPE Comes to Abrons Arts Center in September

Following accolades in Los Angeles, Cuba, and throughout the Latine theater community, Abrons Arts Center is proud to present the New York premiere of Zoetrope, a celebrated work by the bilingual theatrical ensemble Caborca that tackles the painful effects of U.S. colonialism on the Puerto Rican diaspora through the stories of one family. Written and directed by Caborca's Artistic Director Javier Antonio González, Zoetrope is scheduled to run September 14, 2023–October 8, 2023, at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street, Manhattan) as a centerpiece of Diasporico, the curatorial focus of Abrons' Fall 2023's season, which recognizes the role of New York City as a critical site for the Caribbean diaspora. The production is set to open on Wednesday, September 20. Tickets are currently on sale at www.abronsartscenter.org.

Zoetrope tells the story of an underdog military postal officer with a dream. Until he dies. Then it tells the story of his ex-wife, her sister, his lover, their son, the playwright René Marqués, and El Grito de Lares­––Puerto Rico's one full day of independence. Live-feed video and dance carry the play from Lares, Puerto Rico to Harlem, New York and back as it flips between Spanish and English with supertitles in both languages throughout.

Inspired by a found box of letters from the author's grandfather in New York to their grandmother in Lares during the first wave of Puerto Rican migration, Zoetrope is a polyphonic work about several generations of a leftist working-class family on an island without political agency. Written in 2011, the work has been embraced and celebrated at showcases in the Bronx at Pregones, Los Angeles, and Cuba. In many ways, the play was ahead of its time by tackling Puerto Rico's history of colonial extraction before subsequent tragic events catapulted the territory into the public eye. Zoetrope is finally making its overdue New York premiere alongside other works from the Puerto Rican diaspora.

Since that time, Puerto Rico has undergone the ravages of Hurricane Maria, the federal government's inept response, a debt default resulting in the imposition of draconian austerity measures, and a popular uprising that deposed a corrupt governor. In recent years, politicians such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nydia Velázquez have introduced legislation to address the unmet needs and unresolved colonial status of Puerto Rico. These recent events underline the prescient themes found in Zoetrope in new ways, making the ground-breaking work even more relevant than a decade ago.

Playwright and director Javier Antonio González remarked, “At the heart of Zoetrope lies the story of a family torn by migration and reunited in art. Audiences can expect a refreshing take on how imposed ideology brought to Puerto Rico by our two invading empires shapes and destroys personal relationships.”

“González is one of our only playwrights actually working in the epic form,” declared critic Helen Shaw of the 2015 showcase in the Bronx. “Zoetrope is huge, byzantine, adventurous, stylishly staged and forcefully political.” “The actors slid between languages with ease,” said Stephen Leigh Morris in American Theater of the Los Angeles production, adding “conceptually, I can't think of a better way to show the divides at the heart of this absorbing and beautifully enacted saga.” In the celebrated Latin American theater journal Revista Conjunto, Rosa Luisa Márques called it “one of the most complex works of Puerto Rican theater I have seen in years.”

The scholar Irma Mayorga in her book Encuentro: Latinx Performance for the New American Theater (Northwestern University Press, 2019) wrote, “Javier Antonio González and Caborca's creative capaciousness reconceives the Latinx family drama, and in this way, they expand the aesthetic horizons of Latinx theater in extraordinary new directions even as their bold experimentation takes up an important theatrical discourse that ardently attends to Puerto Rico's embittered history of colonization and possession.”

Abrons Arts Center's 2023–2024 line-up marks a shift in the Center's curatorial approach. Each season will now be framed around a unifying curatorial focus. Diasporico, the curatorial focus of Abrons' Fall 2023's season, recognizes the role of New York City as a critical site for the Caribbean diaspora. Since the 1950s, when waves of Puerto Ricans moved to New York City to seek greater opportunities as part of “Operation Bootstrap,”  NYC has been one of the most important and influential cultural and demographic centers for Puerto Ricans outside of the archipelago.

“This year, Abrons Arts Center is experimenting with a unified curatorial focus for each season, offering a conceptual throughline with all of our projects,” says Ali Rosa-Salas, VP of Visual and Performing Arts. “The goal is to offer everyone a common entry point for engaging with the programming presented at the Center, with the intention of increasing accessibility and sustaining curiosity about works presented in our season. Zoetrope is a theatrical highlight of Diasporico, which features works by artists of the Puerto Rican diaspora. This production from Caborca connects so exquisitely with the theme in both content and form.”

A rotating bilingual ensemble of twelve alternate and perform the eight roles in Zoetrope including Laura Butler Rivera, Yaraní del Valle Piñero, Kairiana Núñez Santaliz, Javier Antonio González, Kevin Emilio Pérez, Pelé Sánchez Tormes, Gabriela Saker, Veraalba Santa, David Skeist, Susannah Hoffman, Christopher Cancel Pomales, and Nicole Bentacourt.

The creative team includes Jian Jung (set design), Cristina Agostini Fitch (costume design), Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (lighting and video design), Hao Bai (sound design), Veraalba Santa and Javier Antonio González (choreography), Alejandra Maldonado and Brooke Bell (stage managers), and Nicole Greene (producer).

Twenty-one performances of Zoetrope will take place September 14, 2023–October 8, 2023 at Abrons Arts Center, located at 466 Grand Street in Manhattan. Critics are welcome as of Saturday, September 16 for an opening on Wednesday, September 20. The performance schedule is Wednesday–Sunday at 7pm with additional performances on September 17 at 2pm, September 24 at 4pm, October 1 at 4pm and October 7 at 3pm and 8pm. Performances on September 23 and 30 will take place at 5pm and the evening performance on October 7 will take place at 8pm. The anticipated running time is two hours, 30 minutes, plus one intermission. Tickets are $21–$31 and can be purchased at www.abronsartscenter.org. Standard ticketing fees apply.

Alongside performances of Zoetrope, Abrons Arts Center will host the panel discussion U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico and Beyond on September 26, 2023 at 6pm. In recognition of the 125th anniversary of the Hispanic-American War of 1898, this conversation will focus on the largely unspoken legacy of U.S. imperialism in Puerto Rico and former colonies. The panel will be moderated by Alana Casanova-Burgess (co-creator, host, and producer of WNYC Studios' La Brega: Stories of the Puerto Rican Experience) and includes Javier Antonio González (CABORCA Artistic Director), Melissa Calderón (Visual Artist) and Matthew Nicdao (Research Associate at CENTRO). They will reflect not only on the shadow of colonialism, which looms over some of the bloodiest events on U.S. soil, but the traces of political, cultural, and artistic resistance made manifest across generations and diasporas. Co-presented with CENTRO, The Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College.

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