THE WINTER OF APRIL to Play Theater for the New City, 12/4-21

"The Winter of April," a Police Thriller partly inspired by the Gilgo Beach murders on Long Island in 2010, compares the fate of murdered sex workers with others who have been shadowed or forgotten by history, including those, like Ada Lovelace, who were at the forefront of science and technology. The play was written and structured by Ricardo Sarmiento Gaffurri from a concept by director Ramiro Antonio Sandoval and his Tabula RaSa NYC Theater & Performance Lab. It is mounted with ensemble acting, sophisticated audiovisuals and multimedia modeling. The piece protests society's tendency to tie sexual crimes to one perpetrator when the individual is usually the tip of an iceberg--a global machine of human trafficking. Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave., NYC will present the play's world premiere December 4 to 21.

The Gilgo Beach murders is an unsolved 2010 case that began when police recovered the body of a woman working as an "escort," then inadvertently stumbled upon a burial grounds, in the beach's dunes, of eight other people including lost girls, prostitutes and runaways. One theory is that a single killer deposited them there; another is that it was the dumping ground for a bigger operation. The play imagines the latter situation and begs us to consider how societies allow such soulless individuals to have their way.

The style of the play is the fantastic realism of steampunk. The title page of its script describes it as "a fictional waltz in three movements" that is "inspired by thousands of stories per year." A deep water diver, searching for toxic waste near the beaches of pristine private estates, discovers first one body of a female resting on the seafloor, then many. He senses that they may be women from a nearby private club. In another country, a ghost writer is commissioned to prepare a lecture about women who have made remarkable scientific discoveries or inventions during their lives, but for various reasons, have been disregarded or shadowed. Meanwhile, in a severe snowstorm, an anonymous young exotic dancer drives her car. Her windshield wipers stop while the snowflakes continue gently falling in a sort of velvety dance. The muffled noise of a crash against the highway railing and a silent flight over the white cliff are followed by the loud noise of the crash against the surface of the icy water, then silence. This part of the story is presented in miniature, using multimedia, sculptures and remote control scale models.

The play is a puzzle of how these three people's lives are entwined. The characters find themselves in the dark labyrinth of human trafficking, walking through steamy hotel rooms, luxurious gardens, inhospitable deserts, human cages, and a fascinating and never seen before striptease circus named "Le Bad Ton Futuriste." A criminal enterprise behind the murders is traced to high governmental levels, exposing the hypocrisy of the system. The mother of one of the young victims comes to realize that sometimes, the inexorable process of revenge will take a lifetime. There are reflections on such prominent women of history as Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, who invented the analytic engine (and whose name is ironically echoed in the stage name of Linda Lovelace, star of "Deep Throat"). Vaudeville music and sound projections enhance our understanding of the psychology of the characters.

The story was conceived by Artistic Director Ramiro Antonio Sandoval and the Tabula RaSa collective and set to dialogue through daily interaction with Ricardo Sarmiento Gaffurri, a Colombian/Italian playwright working in Colombia. Research for the play included extensive viewing of fictional and documentary material, talks with NYPD homicide detectives, interviews with Colombian women who were deeply involved in the sex trade and visits to rehabilitation facilities for such women. "They were sold, gambled, everything you can imagine," says Sandoval. "We came to understand the level of cruelty to which they were subjected by fellow human beings." The ensemble's mission statement says it believes in "the power of theater, audiovisual and performance to be vital in social healing."

After this premiere at TNC, Tabula RaSa will reconstruct the play in Spanish and take it to Texas and Florida for short runs, later returning to New York. In August 2015, the play will be presented in Bogotá, Colombia as part of the International Theater Festival of Women for Peace.

Tabula RaSa's next play will be "Mechanism of Action," an exploration of contemporary comedy using ethics as a theme. Tabula RaSa means "clean slate. Ramiro Sandoval began the company in 2011 with some collaborators as an ensemble theater with a collective creation approach. Its interests are international, focusing on human issues. In the previous eleven years, he was co-artistic director of ID Studio Theater NYC, working with immigrant communities. Tabula RaSa's website is www.tabularasatheater.org.

Playwright Ricardo Sarmiento Gaffurria graduated from the Civica Scuola D'Arte Drammatica of Milan as a stage director and worked as a researcher in Rome University, later obtaining an MA in cinema from Goldsmiths College, London. He is author of seven plays, some based on classics by Poe, Dostoyevsky and Maupassant. He has directed thirteen plays (both classical and modern) and one opera. He has been invited many times to the Ibero-American Theater Festival and had won several awards as a director and as a creative artist. He is author of two films, has had three TV shows produced, and has directed three TV movies. He is currently a professor in the National School of Dramatic Art at the National University of Colombia and works steadily at the National Theater House, a commercial theater in Colombia. He is also a consultant for the Javeriana University. Since 2009, he has been a professor and researcher in the Department of Design at the University of the Andes in Bogotá.

Director Ramiro Antonio Sandoval studied acting and directing at the National School for Drama in Bogota, Colombia, where his mentors included Ricardo Sarmiento Gaffurri. As a young artist, he was a resident actor of Mapa Teatro Theater Co, directed by Rolf Abderhalden, one of the most important theater companies in Colombia. Moving to New York, he co-founded the Main Street Arts Theater in Nyack, New York and was co-artistic director and lead actor of ID Studio Theater, where he also managed an actor training program. He has directed bilingual plays by European and Latin American writers including Jose Asaad and Fabio Rubiano. In 2013, he produced and directed an all-women show, "Where There Was Fire," at TNC, which was nominated for an IT Award for Outstanding Performance Art Production. The play won the Audience Award and Best Production Award at the Dominican Commissioner of Culture's Theater Festival and Sandoval won Best Director for it at the Independent Theater Artists Awards. It was invited to the Colombian Alternative International Theater Festival. Sandoval has lectured at The New School Drama Department, HB Studio and the Faculty of Humanities of the Universidad del Valle, Cali, Colombia. Recently he was commissioned as Creative Artistic Director for the Colombian Independence Day celebration in New York. He has acted in classical and modern plays, films and TV series across the Americas. He received the 2009 Saturno D'Oro award for Best Actor at the Saturno International Film Festival in Italy for his film, "1973 Revolutions Per Minute," which also won him Best Actor at the Latin Art Awards and the Big Apple Latino Film Festival. Outside the theater, he is a creative director at a prominent NYC advertising agency, where he has earned several industry awards and honorary mentions.

"The Winter of April" is written by Ricardo Sarmiento Gaffurri. Original Music is by Boris Acosta, with the participation of Fabio Montenegro. Art Director is Eliana Perez. Costume design is by Yosiany Simbaqueba and Giovanni Correa (Fantasy Maker). Animation and Motion Graphics are by Miguel Rueda. Lighting and Stage Design are by Bum Ki Kim. Lighting Consultant is Tsubasa Kamei. Architect is Tyrene Calvesbert. The actors are Lorena Ayub, Jorge Berrios, María García, Bum Ki Kim, Javier Leñero, Clara Lopera-Sánchez, Fabio Montenegro, John Neiderer, Laura Riveros and Richard Trujillo.

Photo by Ramiro Antonio Sandoval

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