I-DJ to Run 2/19-3/9 at FRIGID New York Festival

San Antonio's award-winning play, I-DJ, comes to the 2014 FRIGID New York Festival. The theater festival takes place over the course of three weeks, from February 19th - March 9th, 2014.

Hailed by San Antonio theater audiences and on the Top 10 list of local theater critics, I-DJ is a story of Warren Peace aka Amado Guerrero Paz, a queer Chicano DJ who spins the soundtrack of his life on the dance floor by night and by day in a gay send-up of Shakesqueer's Ham-A-Lot set to a dub-step beat of ecstasy, tainted love, Rollerena and Herb Alpert. When a younger DJ challenges him to a musical standoff, their stories and their music collide. Only one will emerge triumphant.

Rick Sanchez reprises his ATAC award-winning role for the New York City production. "Sanchez gives a fierce, fully realized performance." The San Antonio Express-New raved. "Sanchez is perfectly cast and has gotten down and dirty barrio style in claiming this role," the San Antonio Current critic said in their cover story.

For award-winning playwright Gregg Barrios, I-DJ like his previous theater work has received accolades from theater audiences in New Orleans, Phoenix, Provincetown, Santa Fe, Los Angeles and San Antonio. New York City drama critics from John Lahr to Phillip Lopate have favorably reviewed his previous work.

Writing in the San Antonio Current critic B. V. Olguin called Barrios I-DJ both groundbreaking and iconoclastic. "As with Barrios' other plays, this one is meticulously researched, and smartly intertextual. The play uses two theatrical templates - A Chorus Line and Hamlet - to queer Chicano history and simultaneously racialize American popular culture. A carefully choreographed soundtrack drives the plot from the portfolio of A&M Records, a label that broke many racial taboos and genre boundaries before being sold to corporate music giants in 1989. Each sampling perfectly marks time in Warren Peace's recollections, which alternate from the profound and painful to the playful and politically prescient."

Barrios sees his play as an homage to the era that dance music and the DJ culture emerged as the LGBT community was beset by the specter of AIDS. "My inspiration comes from gay dramatists like Mart Crowley, Larry Kramer, Tony Kushner and so many others. The music and the theater of those difficult times made it possible for our artists to courageously do the right thing and fight the good fight with their art during the plague years. I-DJ brings that untold story to the stage."