Latino arts season begins

Miracle Theater Group Announces Five Plays Of 09-10 Latino Arts Season
Broadway World April 16, 2009

Miracle Theatre Group, the Northwest's premier Latino arts and culture organization, today announces its 2009-2010 season featuring an extraordinary line-up of five plays with a literary bent, including a number of original and bilingual productions.

Preceding the start of the nonprofit organization's 26th season will be Festival de la luna nueva (Festival of the New Moon), a variety of staged readings of new work along with concerts and poetry nights in September to recognize and celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month (details to be announced later this summer). The Miracle then officially begins its season in October with the theatre's signature show, El Día de los Muertos Festival, its annual Day of the Dead celebration. January brings the world premiere of American Sueño, a play that will tour nationally throughout 2010, while in February the company's Spanish-speaking Teatro Español ensemble appears in the very modern Mexican comedy Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda (Between Villa and a Naked Woman).The season continues in the spring with a staged version of Julia Alvarez's best-selling novel How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, followed by a boisterous family-friendly bilingual adaptation of Cervantes' classic Don Quijote.

Also on the calendar are a number of special events, including the annual community Christmas celebration, Posada Milagro; a staged reading in Spanish for the 2010 International Women's Day; and Summer at Milagro educational activities that this year include a Spanish-immersion theatre camp for kids, a Cuban folkloric dance class for teens, and an acting workshop for adults.

Miracle Theatre Group's 2009-2010 season includes:
El Día de los Muertos Festival
A Miracle MainStage original bilingual production
October 30, 2009-November 15, 2009

Every fall, the dead are commemorated in a lively show of dance, music and theatre in Portland's longest-running Day of the Dead celebration. This year, los muertos return singing traditional tunes that harken back to another era when times were tough and tradition was one of the few things folks could call their own. Even as we shed one way of life for another, the spirit endures and we remember that the only thing to fear - in life or death - is fear itself.

American Sueño
Created by Dañel Malán and Rebecca Martínez

Directed by Rebecca Martínez
January 15-23, 2010
A Teatro Milagro original bilingual production

Hitchhiking down the interstate, heart on my sleeve.
Two years in a six by nine, waiting for a call from the outside.
Escaping from my past, living under a bridge.
Hiding behind my desk job, waiting for the call to run.

We are the outsiders - the homeless, the outcast, the gay, the immigrant - but we still dream "The American Dream" ... everybody's hope for a better job, a better life, a better tomorrow. Weaving together our real-life stories, American Sueño is our hopeful journey toward a new era of acceptance.

Entre Villa y una mujer desnuda
Written by Sabina Berman
February 12-March 6, 2010

A Miracle MainStage production presented in Spanish with subtitles in English at every performance

In this modern, romantic comedy, Gina wants more out of her casual relationship with Adrian, a liberal intellectual who's in it only for some good sex. Adrian shies away from any form of commitment - that is, until Gina takes up with a younger, sensitive lover. That's when the spirit of Mexico's most famous revolutionary rides again, appearing as Adrian's macho conscience ready to do anything to win this battle of the sexes.

How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents
A play by Karen Zacarías based on the best-selling novel by Julia Alvarez
March 26-April 17, 2010

A Miracle MainStage production in English

Uprooted from their home in the Dominican Republic, the four Garcia sisters arrive in New York City in 1960 to find a life far different from the genteel existence of maids, manicures and extended family they had to leave. As they plunge headfirst into the freewheeling American mainstream with its dizzying choices and challenges, they remain forever caught between the old world and the new. What they have lost - and gained - is revealed in this vivacious story bursting with passion.

El Quijote

A Miracle MainStage bilingual adaptation of a play written by Santiago García, based on the novel by Miguel de Cervantes

May 7-29, 2010
To see the world through the eyes of Don Quijote is to embrace life as the fullest adventure. From windmills to wenches, this knight-errant, in the company of his humble squire Sancho Panza, continues to roam the world and spark our imagination as he has for some four hundred years. This lusty adaptation of Cervantes' classic - filled with a muscular theatricality - proves the power of imagination to overcome the vagaries of life.