Three World Premieres Headline Latino Theater Company's 2017 Season

By: Dec. 13, 2016
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Three world premieres by Los Angeles-based playwrights Jonathan Ceniceroz, John Pollono and Diane Rodriguez make up the centerpiece of the Latino Theatre Company's 2017 season at The Los Angeles Theatre Center.

The company will also produce and curate the 2017 Encuentro de las Americas, a three-week international theater festival celebrating dynamic contemporary Latinx and Latin American theater that spans Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. In December, the LTC will reprise, for the 15th consecutive year, its beloved annual holiday pageant La Virgen de Guadalupe, Dios Inantzin, a site-specific event presented annually at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

The Latino Theater Company has operated The Los Angeles Theatre Center, a facility of the City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs and a landmark building in Downtown's Historic Core, since 2006.

"Our venue is called the 'Los Angeles Theatre Center,' and our focus remains on making it a center for L.A.-based artists," says LTC artistic director José Luis Valenzuela. "In 2017 we explore themes of identity and its relationship to history as we continue our commitment to creating opportunities for local playwrights, actors and designers to work together on the stage."

Spring 2017 will see world premiere productions of Ceniceroz's The Cruise, Pollono's Rules of Seconds and Rodriguez's The Sweetheart Deal. Last year, the Latino Theatre Company launched The Temblors, a new collective of L.A.-based playwrights including Pollono, Meghan Brown, Nate Rufus Edelman, Oliver Mayer, Kemp Powers, Vasanti Saxena and t. tara turk, together with a four-year initiative to produce seven Equity world premiere productions at the LATC. Pollono's Rules of Seconds marks The Temblors' inaugural production.

The complete season schedule is as follows:

March 16 - April 9 (low-priced previews March 9 - 12):
World premiere of The Cruise - Los Angeles-based playwright Jonathan Ceniceroz's Latino-themed father/son comic drama, set on board an ocean liner, explores the specter of colonial history and dark politics hidden beneath the decadence of Caribbean cruise culture. Directed by Heath Cullens (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia).

March 23 - April 15 (low-priced previews March 16 - 19):
World premiere of Rules of Seconds - Honor. Madness. Death. Amy Brenneman (The Leftovers, Judging Amy), Jamie Harris (AMC's Turn, Agents of the S.H.I.E.L.D.) and Brian Letscher (Scandal, One & Done) head the cast of an edgy, intense and darkly comic new play by John Pollono (Small Engine Repair), directed by Obie Award-winner Jo Bonney. Set in 1855 Boston, where the slightest infraction between gentlemen is grounds for a challenge to be resolved with pistols, Rules of Seconds marks the inaugural production of The Temblors, the Latino Theater Company's new collective of LA-based playwrights. When Nathaniel "Wings" Leeds is challenged to a duel by the most dangerous man in the city, he asks his estranged brother to be his second. Deep family tensions and old rivalries resurface as the brothers struggle to follow the hundreds-years-old "Code of Dueling."

May 11 - June 4 (low-priced previews May 4 - 7):
World premiere of The Sweetheart Deal - 1970 was a tumultuous time for Cesar Chavez and the United Farm Workers. Utilizing the Chicano theater tradition known as "acto," Obie Award-winning writer/director Diane Rodriguez traces the history of the United Farm Workers movement through the story of two journalists caught in the middle of a violent struggle. Produced in association with El Teatro Campesino.

Oct. 29 - Nov. 19:
2017 Encuentro de las Americas ('Encuentro 2017') - Drawing upon the success of Encuentro 2014, the largest national Latina/o theater festival in over 25 years, the Latino Theater Company continues to expand our view of the Americas and its geographic and theatrical landscapes with an international festival featuring Latinx and Latin American artists from across the hemisphere. Eleven productions will run in repertory in five spaces at The Los Angeles Theatre Center, together with live music, additional performances and parties. Participating companies will also work together to create a new work for presentation and will participate in the 2017 LTC International Convening, November 9-12, 2017. Produced in association with Latina/o Theatre Commons in partnership with Howlround.

Friday, Dec.8 and Saturday, Dec. 9::
GOYA Foods presents the 15th annual La Virgen de Guadalupe, Dios Inantzin - A Los Angeles holiday tradition starring renowned opera singer Suzanna Guzman as the Virgin and featuring over 100 actors, singers and indigenous Aztec dancers as well as children and seniors from the community, the City's largest theatrical holiday production celebrates its "quinceañera" in 2017. Join the tens of thousands who have become transfixed by the story of Juan Diego, a simple peasant to whom the Virgin Mary appeared on four occasions in the mountains of Tepeyac near Mexico City in 1531. Adapted for the stage from the mid-16th century text The Nican Mopohua by LTC resident playwright Evelina Fernández and performed in Spanish with English subtitles, this site-specific epic event is produced by the Latino Theater Company at downtown's Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels.

For more information about the Latino Theater Company and the 2017 season, call (866) 811-4111 or visit thelatc.org.



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