#GRACED Premieres At The Adrienne Arsht Center in May

#Graced, written by Vanessa Garcia and directed by Sarah Hughes and Victoria Collado will be presented by Zoetic Stage and Adrienne Arsht Center in collaboration with Abre Camino Collective. Performing May 4 - 21. Tickets: https://www.arshtcenter.org/tickets/2022-2023/theater-up-close/graced/

Catherine, sponsored by Monteverde Moonshine, searching for something authentic, embarks on a trip across the United States with her new lover and colleague, Lewis. She wants to understand, essentially, what it means to be "American" ...right now. But this trip is also a personal journey to find her own roots in this country. Cat and Lewis don't go it alone. They pick up a wayward nun named Rosalie and a queer homeschooled teenager named Blake. Catherine travels along the bumpy road of what it means to be an "American."

"America (prior to the 2016 election) and my life felt like it was both going through a breaking point that could either tear it up for good or lead to a new light," says playwright Vanessa Garcia. "Even the Nobel Prize Committee was leary of what American art had to offer," she continued. "What the world sees as America isn't the real America, or rather, only just a part of it," she concluded. She wrote this new turning-point tale and developed it at Thinking Cap Theatre, WP Theater, South Florida Theater League, and the Playwright Development program of Miami Dade Cultural Affairs. Thanks to a grant from BOLD Ventures, development toward production culminated in NYC in December 2022, also at WP Theater.

This will be the World Premiere.

Abre Camino Collective is an award-winning entertainment company comprised of visual, theatre, literary, and performing artists redefining the American narrative through radical storytelling. Together as artists and collaborators, Victoria Collado and Vanessa Garcia, co-founders of Abre Camino, have worked in theatre, TV, journalism, the visual arts, academia, radio, the literary arts, and film. They have Masters degrees, doctorates, and have worked on Broadway. Most recently, they created The Amparo Experience, the immersive hit play that People en Español called "Miami's Hottest Ticket" and had a sold-out 8 month run in 2019. Abre Camino has received numerous residencies and honors including, Berkeley Rep's Ground Floor; The Wassaic Project Residence; The Orchard Project; and the Sanctuary of the Arts in Miami. In February 2023, ACC is receiving the inaugural George Cabrera Award (which is given to those who show Excellence in the Arts in the Miami Community. It is presented by the 4ward organization.
The website: https://www.abrecaminocollective.com/
The Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/abrecaminocollective/
#Graced Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/gracedplay/

Zoetic Stage (Presenting Company) was founded in 2010 to create fresh, bold interpretations of contemporary plays and musicals, and is dedicated to enhancing South Florida's national artistic profile by producing regional premieres and developing new works to become part of the American stage repertoire. Zoetic Stage is a proud Arts Partner with the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. The website: https://www.zoeticstage.org/index.php

Adrienne Arsht Center For The Performing Arts Of Miami-Dade County is a performing arts center located in Miami, Florida. It is one of the largest performing arts centers in the United States. The center was partly built on the site of a former Sears department store; an Art Deco building constructed in 1929, pre-dating the Art Deco hotels on Ocean Drive. www.arshtcenter.org

Vanessa Garcia (Writer/Producer of #GRACED) is a Cuban-American multidisciplinary writer -- screenwriter, playwright, novelist, and journalist/essayist -- who has written and worked for Sesame Street, Caillou, We Are Family, and Dora the Explorer. She's the author of the novel, White Light, which won an International Latino Book Award and was one of NPRs best books of 2015. Her first Picture Book for children, What the Bread Says, launched October 2022. Theatrically, her work has been produced around the world. She's the author of The Amparo Experience, an immersive hit that People en Español called "Miami's Hottest Ticket." Other plays include: Sweet Goats & Blueberry Señoritas, which she co-wrote with Richard Blanco, and #Graced. As well as her radio play, Ich Bin Ein Berliner, about the fall of the Berlin Wall and what it meant to her. Her journalism, essays and thought pieces have appeared in The LA Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post, National Review, ESPN, The Hill, Catapult, Narrativel.ly, and numerous other publications. www.vanessagarcia.org

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