Teatro Luna Launches Residency at Instituto Cervantes with GENERATION SEX

Teatro Luna is starting summer off with a bang with their newest original devised show, GENERATION SEX! After touring through ten states and three countries over the past year, Teatro Luna is returning home with their sizzling stories of love in the digital age at their new home in downtown Chicago, Instituto Cervantes! Teatro Luna is America's only Pan-Latina theatre company producing a full season of new and original work. The Instituto Cervantes of Chicago, Inc., located at 31 W. Ohio, promotes cultural activities and events related to the Spanish culture and language together with other organizations and institutions from around the Chicago area, Latin America and Spain. Their mission is carried out by experts from Spain and the Spanish speaking world, and Teatro Luna is the first theatre company to be in residence.

An anchor of this exciting residency will be producing new work in partnership with Instituto Cervantes of Chicago, Inc. Flying out the gate first is the world premiere production of GENERATION SEX, their tenth fully devised play in the company's thirteen year history. "We did the first workshop of Generation Sex at Instituto Cervantes just over a year ago," says Abigail Vega, Director of the Artistic Collective of Teatro Luna. "It's amazing to see how far the play, and our blossoming relationship with Cervantes, has come." After that initial workshop in March of 2013, the development process of GENERATION SEX continued with story-collecting workshops in Los Angeles, Phoenix, Berkeley, Seattle, and a five performance workshop at the Chicago Fringe Festival.

In GENERATION SEX, Luna bares all without blushing as we explore how technology has transformed sex, love, and our relationships. With the new rules of feminism now reduced to 140 characters or less, the Lunáticas dissect the tragically outdated ideas of femininity women are still forced to perform, tackling questions like: What is the art of seduction in a digital world that leaves little to the imagination? Can we Instagram loneliness? Is it possible to resist our avatars and be our true selves online? Has Facebook flipped how we define family? From sexting to Skype to the dark side streets of cyberspace, the Ladies of Luna explode how hollow soundbytes and played out listicles shape today's quest for love and satisfaction, with a touch warmer than your welcome screen.

"Chicago audiences have seen our shows for the past twelve years," says Vega, "but then we traveled and showed our work to the world. Now it's time to come back and share this new play with our hometown." And after fifteen months of development, workshops and showcases all over the country, this play is ready to come back home. "This is a performance that examines love in its various shapes and the performance of its expression. We are really at a crossroads in terms of how our society consumes and eschews notions of feminism. We are being told how to love and more importantly, we are being told who we have to be in order to trap love. In GENERATION SEX we seek to better understand the complexities that the performance of gender roles and technology has on our ability to make healthy familial and sexual relationships last today. What better place than where our work started to perform it fully for the first time?" says Executive Producing Director, Alexandra Meda.

In addition to performing, Teatro Luna will be hosting events, teaching workshops and holding community events at Instituto Cervantes over the next 18 months. "Teatro Luna is a unique, one-of-a-kind theatrical experience. Instituto Cervantes is proud to support the original and innovative theatre these women produce in Chicago," says Teresa Hernando, Cultural Programs Curator at Instituto Cervantes Chicago, Inc. Many of Luna and Cervantes' new programs will be collaborations between the organizations, bringing the best of both companies to the community. "We are engaging deeply in the fabric of Instituto Cervantes by supporting their current education and programming goals in any way possible, but we're also expanding those goals to include our social justice theatre and storytelling," says Vega. "It's what we do best, and we're proud to be doing it with a partner as strong as Cervantes."

The play is presented in English with a sprinkle of Spanish.