Pulitzer Prize- and Greenfield Prize-winner Nilo Cruz's exquisite new play Sotto Voce opens Thursday, April 2, 2015 at 8pm in the Historic Asolo Theater and runs through Sunday, April 26, with previews on Tuesday, March 31 at 7:30pm and Wednesday, April 1 at 8pm. This hauntingly beautiful metaphysical love story will be directed by Melissa Kievman, who previously directed Searching for Eden: The Diaries of Adam and Eve, and The Blonde, The Brunette and The Vengeful Redhead, and Expecting Isabel at Asolo Rep. Sotto Voce premiered in February 2014 at New York's Theater for the New City, and had a brief yet celebrated run the following month at Miami-Dade County Auditorium's On.Stage Black Box theater. The title of Mr. Cruz's new work is an Italian musical term that means to speak in a soft manner with purpose.
Cruz captures the resiliency of true love and the power of memories in this spiritual masterpiece. German-born novelist Bemadette Kahn lost her one true love when he fled Nazi Germany aboard the SS St. Louis, a ship carrying 937 Jewish immigrants seeking refuge in Cuba. Cuba and the United States tragically turned the ship away, leaving the ship's passengers to return to Europe where many perished in Nazi concentration camps. Her heartbreak resurfaces when a young Jewish Cuban writer contacts the now 80-year-old reclusive, lovelorn Bemadette to research the ship's ill-fated voyage.Their relationship slowly evolves into a transcendent romance based on her memories of the boy she never stopped loving. Olivier Award-winning actress Kathryn Hunter, who was the first British female to ever professionally portray the title role in Shakespeare's King Lear, stars as the wistful Bemadette. On screen, Ms. Hunter played Arabella Figg in Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. NYU Tisch School of the Arts CAP21 graduate Ben Rosenbach and Cuban-American stage and television actress Hannia Guillen star alongside Hunter.Videos