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ONE-WOMAN PLAYS
ROOTLESS: La No-Nostalgia

    

         An ardent, insightful look at the emotional life of migrants through music.


¿Qué me trajiste?: Cabaret Boricua
       Written, directed, produced and performed by Karina Casiano 
         San Juan, Puerto Rico, May and June 1999 
     Café-Teatro Delirio Habanero, Teatro Nacional, La Habana, Cuba, January 2000 
       Ecuador, Perú, Chile, Argentina, January - May 2001 
                                                                            
     WATCH THE VIDEO!

                                                                     
     ......

                         A bold play about the issues of identity and sovereignty of the Puerto Rican people, it was inspired by the cultural and 
                        ideological shock Casiano received as a Latin U.S. citizen on her one-year trip to diverse South American countries in
                        1998. The play raises the question of the role of Puerto Ricans in their country's political and social destiny with bittersweet
                        humor. A deceived and jaded prostitute leads the audience through the travels of a young wide-eyed girl who leaves her
                        country in search of a more ideologically fulfilling life. A disturbingly practical flight attendant and an enigmatic nightclub
                        employee test the reasons of the Little Red Riding Hood who fled her land only to find and envious, fed up "third world." The
                        astonishment of coming face to face with the dilemma of her identity and nationality as a Puerto Rican makes her realize
                        how fragile dignity can be. Clip available on our videos page. Photo by Jorge Dieppa, postcard design by Matt Egan.


    COLONIA2007o el cabaret de los días terribles

               Written, directed, produced and performed by Karina Casiano
        Old San Juan, Puerto Rico, November 2000 
                 Teatro Malayerba, Quito, and Casa de la Cultura, Ibarra, Ecuador, February 2001 
              HERE Arts Center, New York City, 2004  

       WATCH THE VIDEO!
                                                                                                              
       .

                    A musical multimedia play which fictionally predicts the future of Puerto Rican society based in the prevailing repressive policies
                    enforced in the United States and other countries. An array of baffling characters sing, dance and invite the audience into the
                    world of Puerto Rico in 2007: a government-run night club where behavior considered illegal before a fictional uprising in 2001,
                    is permitted. The purpose is to keep social order through an illusion of freedom. Terrorized citizens accept and promote these
                    measures as a response to the threat of losing their individual well-being. The social issues raised by the show are even more
                    pertinent now than in the year 2000 when Casiano originally wrote the play. Omnipresent surveillance, the police and the military
                    flooding the streets, and ethnic and ideological profiling are now part of our everyday lives. The show presents, with a heavy
                    dose of sarcasm and dark humor, how a US-owned nation sloppily subscribes to its version of an expensive, sophisticated
                    police state. Clip available on our videos page. Photos by Eric Borcherding and David Rubio. 


THEATER COMPANIES
La Criatura Theatre Company
 Silence Is Health / Silencio es Salud     

Written and directed by Karina Casiano
With Miguel Belmonte, Jorge Dieppa, Antonio Pantojas,
  David Storck, Elodián Barbosa and José Acevedo
Stage Manager Miguel Ángel Reyes
CSV Cultural Center, Lower East Side, New York, February 2006
chashama @ Queens, old Citibank Building, Long Island City, New York, June 2006
More at: www.lacriatura.org 
                        WATCH THE VIDEO!                      
                                                                                                             


                     Based on official documents, testimonies, historical research and analyses of similar periods in
Argentina, Guatemala, Chile, Spain, Germany, Ireland, Israel and the United States, Silence Is Health is
an aesthetic approach to the pressing debate on human rights, warning us of the symptoms of
a horrific pattern too often repeated throughout History. A chilling, site-specific, documentary play seeking to shed light
onto mass psychology, fear, individualism and oblivion.The play had 10 sold-out shows at the
Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural Center in the Lower East Side, New York in February 2006
and encored at an abandoned bank in Long Island City, Queens, in June in a co-production
with chashama. For more photos, info and audience reviews, click here for La Criatura theatre company's site.
Clip available on our videos page. Photos by Abel Ramírez and La Criatura.
Colectivo C-4

Hamletmachine by Heiner Mueller: Festival de Teatro Instituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña 1996
University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, 1997
Festival de Teatro de Caguas, Puerto Rico, 1997
Día Uno: Eve of the Beheading by Jorge Díaz: Festival de Teatro de Caguas, Puerto Rico, 1999
University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, 2000
Centro de Bellas Artes, San Juan, Puerto Rico, 2000
Festival de Teatro de La Habana, Cuba, 2000
Luz Negra by Álvaro Menén Desleal: Festival de Teatro Insitituto de Cultura Puertorriqueña, 2000
University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras, 2000
Festival de Teatro de Caguas, Puerto Rico, 2004 
                                           
                  Founded in 1996 by Fermín Candelario, Karina Casiano, Manolo Castro and Myrna Cuevas,
Colectivo C-4 works in a completely cooperative fashion taking advantage of its members' array of skills,
which feed the Company's creative process and administration. No hierarchies or static roles are established;
duties are distributed freely and variably. Colectivo C-4 selects plays which address our society's most
pressing issues, such as violence, inequality and lack of solidarity. The company seeks to build eclectic stagings
that go beyond traditional theatrical form, and includes images, movement and dance as crucial references to creation.
Photo by Colectivo C-4.