CarlosAlexis Cruz Awarded Princess Grace Foundation Fellowship

Miracle Theatre Group is pleased to announce that actor CarlosAlexis Cruz has been awarded a 2011 Princess Grace Theater Fellowship from the Princess Grace Foundation-USA. Cruz was also selected as the 2011 recipient of the Grace le Vine Theater Award. National in scope, the Princess Grace Foundation-USA is dedicated to identifying and assisting emerging talent in theater, dance and film by awarding grants in the form of scholarships, apprenticeships and fellowships.

"Grace loved theatre and it is our pleasure to remember her by presenting this award," stated the foundation's program manager Diana Kemppainen, who told Cruz that "The panel was extremely impressed with your talent, and we are happy to acknowledge you with this additional honor."

The Foundation will present Cruz with this award at the 2011 Princess Grade Awards Gala on Tuesday, Nov. 1, 2011 in New York City. The $5,000 fellowship will support Cruz's work as an actor in Miracle Theatre Group's upcoming productions of its 2010-2011 28th Season, including Jardín de Sueños (Garden of Dreams), where his experience in generative work will lead the development of this original, Spanish-language production.

Cruz began his training in traditional acting methods based on Stanislavsky and Spanish classic techniques, completing his BA in performance from the University of Puerto Rico in 2004. He also began his musical training in Puerto Rico, playing guitar, and added the ukulele to his repertoire during his MFA training. Over the past seven years he has focused on developing physical acting technique, receiving his MFA from the Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake, California. He continued his training at the Circus Center in San Francisco, and in Portland with Do Jump (circus) and Imago (clown) companies and has become a trainer for Do Jump and Portland Actors Conservatory. The development of his physical theatrical vocabulary, his skills as a musician, and his bilingual skills as a native Spanish speaker and fluent English speaker, already make him a unique actor with performance vocabularies beyond the traditional naturalistic actor. However, Cruz is committed to developing the full range of his potential in order to fulfill his vision of what acting and theatre can be, which includes mastery in naturalistic acting.

"CarlosAlexis exemplifies a kind of actor prevalent in Latin America, the actor as athlete; indeed he is the best physically-trained Latino actor in Portland if not the Pacific Northwest," said Olga Sanchez, one of Miracle Theatre Groups' two Artistic Directors. "He has the potential to enhance and transcend these performance styles to become an artistic force that builds a new model of theatre that uses multiple vocabularies, physical, musical, psychological and emotional, to tell the stories of humanity."

Cruz has worked with Miracle Theatre Group on a number of highly successful bilingual and Spanish-language works including: Oyá: Call the Storm (2007), a dance/theatre work based on the spiritual traditions of Afro-Cuban dance; and Canta y no llores (2009), the Day of the Dead show set in Oregon during the Great Depression. Most recently he performed the role of Palomo in Ana en el trópico (Anna in the Tropics), the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Nilo Cruz He recently directed and performed the title role of Lazarillo, a modern bilingual adaptation of a classic 16th century Spanish novella.

"His commitment, self-discipline and accomplishment in the realms of physical theatre and music, as well as the clarity of his goals, are tremendously promising and inspiring - and a strong reason Miracle Theatre Group wishes to support him with a Fellowship," said José González, Miracle Theatre Group's Co-Founder and Executive Director.

Last year, Cruz staged the show A Suicide Note from a Cockroach... at Imago, marking the debut of his own New Theatre Company Pelú Theatre. CarlosAlexis is currently staging a new original circus theatre piece on the theme of immigration opening at Imago Theatre in November 2011.