Photos: SOTTO VOCE Cast at GableStage Theatre Company

GableStage Theatre Company will present Sotto Voce, written and directed by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Nilo Cruz. The production runs January 23–February 15, 2026, at the Wolfson Family Theatre, located at GableStage’s historic Biltmore Hotel home. Check out photos of the cast below!

Receiving its first full English-language production in Miami, Sotto Voce drifts between past and present in a lyrical, haunting tale inspired by the true story of the MS St. Louis. The play traces the ripples of the ship’s tragic 1939 voyage, which carried 937 Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany, only to be turned away by Cuba, the United States, and Canada. Rather than a direct retelling, Cruz uses the St. Louis as a point of departure to examine memory, longing, and the weight of what remains unspoken.

At the center of Sotto Voce is Saquiel Rafaeli, a young Jewish-Cuban researcher whose fascination with the St. Louis leads him to Bemadette Kahn, a reclusive, German-born novelist haunted by the memory of her first love, Ariel Strauss. As a young woman, Bemadette watched Ariel and his sister, Nina, board the doomed ship in Hamburg. Saquiel’s impassioned petitions to speak with the retired writer about the St. Louis bring Bemadette’s memories of her lost love to life. The two are drawn into an intimate, cross-generational relationship through emails and phone calls shared in sotto voce (which translates to “under the breath”).  

Returning to GableStage are South Florida favorites Sara Morsey (Summer, 1976, The Year of Magical Thinking) and Gabriell Salgado (El Huracán). They are joined by Cuban actress Claudia Tomás, who makes her GableStage debut as Lucila Pulpo, Bemadette’s spirited companion and caretaker. Salgado, whose credits include Anna in the Tropics (Miami New Drama, directed by Cruz), and Tomás, who has appeared in Cruz’s A Park in Our House and Thirst on Water Street, also portray the 1939-era Nina and Ariel Strauss.

Nilo Cruz gained national prominence in 2003 when he won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for Anna in the Tropics, which also received the Steinberg Award and a Tony Award nomination. His acclaimed body of work includes Two Sisters and a Piano, Lorca in a Green Dress, Hortensia and the Museum of Dreams, and Bathing in Moonlight, among many others. In addition to his plays, Cruz has written opera librettos including The Last Dream of Frida and Diego, which opens at the Metropolitan Opera in 2026, and an adaptation of Ann Patchett’s Bel Canto for Lyric Opera of Chicago. He holds an MFA from Brown University and has taught at Yale, Brown, NYU, the University of Iowa, and the University of Miami.

Sotto Voce had its world premiere in February of 2014 at New York’s Theater for the New City, in a well-received production staged by the Cuban-American playwright. The following month, the play had a bilingual four-day run at Miami-Dade County Auditorium’s On.Stage Black Box theater. Presented in English with Spanish supertitles, this limited run was the only time the play has been performed for Miami audiences. 

Photo Credit: Magnus Stark