Virtual Reading of New Play JENNA & THE WHALE to Benefit North Star Projects and The Sol Project

Jenna & the Whale is a powerful new play written by Vanessa Garcia and Jake Cline. Please join us on Tuesday, June 30 at 5:30 p.m. for a virtual reading and benefit for North Star Projects and The Sol Project. Following the presentation, there will be a post-show conversation with playwrights Vanessa Garcia and Jake Cline, and director Conor Bagley moderated by North Star Projects producing artistic director and Sol Project artistic producer Adriana Gaviria.

Event tickets are $8. For tickets and more information, visit northstarprojects.org. The event will also be livestreamed on Broadway On Demand.

Garcia and Cline are Miami-based playwrights whose work is garnering national attention. Garcia wrote the immersive smash hit play The Amparo Experience, which just had a sold-out eight-month run in Miami. Garcia was a Women's Project Lab and Sesame Street Writer's Room Fellow, and her novel White Light was one of NPRs Best Books of 2015 and won an International Latino Book Award. Cline is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and a member of the 2019-2021 class of Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs' Playwright Development Program. His drama Purple Hearts is part of this year's prestigious Greenhouse play development program at Florida International University.

Executive producing this project are Jim Kierstead, William Fernandez and Adriana Gaviria. Kierstead and Fernandez are producing partners who collectively have 20 years of experience producing theater, film and television. Among their awards are a Pulitzer, Tony and Emmy. They are producing Jenna in conjunction with their newly formed ventures Broadway United and Broadway Virtual. Gaviria is an actress, voice-over artist, writer, director, advocate and creative producer. She is founding member and artistic producer of The Sol Project and is producing Jenna in conjunction with her new arts initiative North Star Projects. Gaviria was most recently seen in the role of Vero in the sold-out run of The Cubans at Miami New Drama.

The cast of Jenna is a combination of stage, television and movie veterans Orlagh Cassidy (The Adult in the Room) and Rachel Pickup (Wonder Woman) and exciting actors from Miami including Gabriel Bonilla, Dianne Garriga, Melissa Ann Hubicsak, Orlando Mendez and Rebecca Jimenez (Our Dear Dead Drug Lord).

Direction and editing is by a fresh new talent, Conor Bagley, whose work off-Broadway and in regional theaters is receiving critical praise.

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