Portland Stage Presents SWEET GOATS AND BLUEBERRY SENORITAS

Portland Stage Company's first commissioned play, Sweet Goats and Blueberry Señoritas, is a moving and layered story of home, family, and forgiveness. Told with humor and emotion, this play by Richard Blanco and Vanessa Garcia explores the universal themes of love, loss, and community through the rich motifs of food, baking, and the symbols that keep us connected throughout time.

Richard Blanco is known for his poetry, most notably for reading his poem, One Today, at President Obama's second inauguration. He is an advocate, memoirist, educator, speaker, and holds degrees in civil engineering and creative writing from Florida International University. In addition, he has received honorary doctorates from Macalester College, the University of Rhode Island, the University of Southern Maine, and Colby College. Richard has also served as artist-in-residence at Colby College, and has taught at Georgetown University, Wesleyan University, American University, and many literary centers throughout the country.

Vanessa Garcia is a screenwriter, novelist, playwright, and journalist. Her debut novel, White Light, was named one of the Best Books of 2015 by NPR and won an International Latino Book Award. Her plays have been produced in Edinburgh, Miami, Amsterdam, Los Angeles, New York, and other cities around the world. Her writing has appeared in The LA Times, The Miami Herald, The Guardian, The Washington Post, Narrative.ly, American Theatre Magazine, The Huffington Post, ESPN, and numerous other publications. She holds a PhD from the University of California Irvine, an MFA from the University of Miami, and a BA from Barnard College, Columbia University.

The play's protagonist, Beatriz, is a Cuban-American baker living in Maine, supported by a tight group of friends who have become her family. Her relationship with her mother is broken and complicated despite her uncle's attempts to reconnect them. The story weaves together past and present, Maine and Miami, world history and community with a powerful, heartfelt, interactive conclusion.

Director Sally Wood, (director of many Mainstage productions including papermaker, Love/Sick, String Around My Finger, Half-Light, and Almost, Maine in 2019), has brought together a Cuban-American cast who immediately formed a family of their own. Together they bring to life characters at once entirely unique and universally relatable. Co-writer Richard Blanco has said they represent the people and community in Bethel, Maine where he has lived for fifteen years: full of personality, accepting, and real.

Portland Stage is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award of $15,000. This grant will support Sweet Goats and Blueberry Señoritas. This grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling nearly $28.8 million that were announced by the NEA as part of its first round of fiscal year 2023 grants.

"The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide," said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. "Projects such as this one with Portland Stage strengthen arts and cultural ecosystems, provide equitable opportunities for arts participation and practice, and contribute to the health of our communities and our economy."