Playwright/Director

The story of Sylvia Méndez and her family’s struggle to desegregate the schools in 1940s California is told by Sylvia’s classmate and best friend, Rosita. The two girls meet at Hoover School, a two-room shack designated for children of Mexican descent. The Méndez, along with four other Mexican-American families, fight to integrate the public schools so that Sylvia and the other Mexican children can receive the standard public-school education.

10-year-old Pilar travels with her grandmother from the north of Guatemala to the capital. Pilar wants to meet her idol, Rigoberta Menchú, who will be in Guatemala City after she receives the Nobel Peace Prize. Why does Pilar want to meet Rigoberta Menchú? Pilar wants to ask Rigoberta a question, but she doesn’t know yet what it will be. She does, however, intuit that whatever the question, Rigoberta will have an answer. Why? Because Rigoberta Menchú is the voice of the people.

A multi-layered play about the life and times of Pablo Picasso. The play includes music from different periods, dancing, puppets, a bullfight, and art lessons! Picasso was sold out by the end of its run.

A brother and sister telephone each other while she is in El Salvador and he is in Washington, DC. The magical cadejos (ancestral dogs of the volcanoes) help them navigate their complicated journey from Washington to El Salvador and back again. The songs, dances, and stories in the play echo their immigration issues.

This second production of Las aventuras de Don Quijote celebrates the dichotomies inherent in the novel: madness/sanity; hero/anti-hero; reality/fantasy; chivalric romance/romantic parody—all through dual language exchanges, music, dance, and extreme physicality (as when Don Quijote fights the windmills). We laugh at Don Quijote’s exploits, and we applaud them. As Don Quijote tells us: “We are each the child of our own deeds.”

An adaptation of Juan Ramón Jiménez’s lyrical story about a poet and his donkey as they travel through Spain. In this adaptation, the setting is more universal. The songs and games are from all over the Spanish-speaking world. Platero y yo was nominated by DC Theatre Scene as one of the top ten children’s plays in 2012.

As directed by GALA’s artistic director Hugo Medrano, this technically synergistic GALita version is positively enchanting. Don Quijote makes public his mission: “I am chivalry’s most valiant knight. I am here to set a thousand wrongs to right.” Yet our hero sounds disoriented and confused: “Am I fiction? Am I real? How do I know?/Who are you? La voz de mi imaginacion?/…. You are I and I am you. Eres yo; soy tu.” Throughout Cornelia Cody’s bilingual adaptation of Patricia Suarez’s play, passages in Spanish alternate with passages in English. Hearing Don Quijote speak two languages adds to the dimension of where we are. We’re inside a split-mind. We are out-of-touch with reality. In his opening soliloquy, the madman admits: “I am speaking in a language not my own.” And the teasing questions he has raised linger and keep all eyes and ears glued to the stage.

DC Metro Theatre Arts, 2013

A five-actor bilingual adaptation of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Bodas de sangre. Written and performed for high schools in the Washington, DC/Maryland/Virginia area. Blood Wedding was underwritten by a grant by The Smithsonian Institution. The adaptation included flamenco music and dance.

Now titled The Danger of Writing Defiant Verse: The Life and Words of Dorothy Parker, the play is a one-woman show about Dorothy Parker. The script uses the writer’s poems, short stories, reviews, letters, and quips to showcase the writer’s life and times. Mongrel was produced off-Broadway at the York Theatre. The play was considered for production at both Arena Stage (Washington, DC) and Temple Theatre (NC).

An edgy, darkly-comic one-woman performance piece about life and death. Breath was performed at New York University and Dixon Place.

Produced by Baltimore’s Children’s Theatre Association, the play presents three of Geoffrey Chaucer’s stories: The Wife of Bath, The Pardoner’s Tale, and The Nun’s Priest’s Tale—edited for children. The play includes a smattering of Middle English and a lot of medieval music and dance.