Eric Tucker To Direct Invite-Only Industry Reading Francisco Manuel Martínezcuello's SALSA NIGHT

Savage Wonder will present an exclusive industry reading of Salsa Night, a new play by U.S. Marine Corps veteran and writer Francisco Manuel Martínezcuello, directed by Eric Tucker. The reading will take place Friday, July 25 at 3:00 PM at The Players, 16 Gramercy Park South in Manhattan.

Set against the backdrop of a Forward Operating Base in Iraq in 2004, Salsa Night is a searing, surreal, and lyrical portrait of two Marines-Sgt. Manuel Cillian, a Dominican-American infantryman, and Sgt. Chinose Dieufely, a Haitian-American Mortuary Affairs specialist-who forge an unexpected bond across cultural divides and personal grief. Through spare dialogue, stylized choreography, and immersive design, the play interrogates identity, loneliness, and the blurred line between survival and surrender. Salsa Night is not about the war, but about what the war reveals-about memory, about race, and about what it means to keep living.

The reading will be helmed by Eric Tucker, one of Off-Broadway's most celebrated directors. As the Founding Artistic Director of Bedlam Theatre, Tucker has been named "Director of the Year" twice by The Wall Street Journal and received wide acclaim for his innovative stagings of Sense & Sensibility, Saint Joan, The Seagull, The Crucible, and Hamlet. His work has been recognized with honors from the Drama League, Off Broadway Alliance, Lucille Lortel Awards, and Helen Hayes Awards.

Francisco Manuel Martínezcuello served in Iraq and Afghanistan before earning his master's degree from UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. His creative nonfiction has appeared in Hippocampus Magazine, The War Horse, Iron & Air, and others. Salsa Night was awarded the Lieutenant William Broyles Award and placed third in the 2022-2023 Veterans Repertory Theater (now Savage Wonder) Playwriting Competition.

Bailey Alexandrea James (Chinose) is making her Savage Wonder debut. Recent credits include tbh: u cute, Sunday Morning, and The Women of Colour Project, which she also wrote and directed.

Nayib Felix (Manuel) appeared in Not Okay (Hulu), Jessica Jones (Netflix), and An American Pickle (HBO Max). Stage credits include Coriolanus (The Public/Delacorte) and Marisol (Juilliard). A Dominican-American actor and graduate of Juilliard's MFA program (Group 52), Nayib trained at Penn State and the University of Melbourne and is fluent in Spanish. Also a writer/director, his short film Friends Like was an official festival selection. This marks his Savage Wonder debut.

"Francisco's play is as precise as a field report and as aching as a final dance," says Christopher Paul Meyer, Founding Artistic Director of Savage Wonder. "It is an innovative piece of theater as moving as it is kinetic. So it begged to have a director as disruptive and imaginative as Eric Tucker."