MI ABUELA, QUEEN OF NIGHTMARES Excerpt Comes to Arts on Site Next Month

An excerpt of Christine Stoddard's award-winning play "Mi Abuela, Queen of Nightmares" is coming to Arts On Site, a black box theater on St. Mark's Place in New York City on Oct. 21 and 22, 2022. Act I of this two-act play will be performed at 6:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. each night for a total of four performances.

Tickets will be available on ArtsOnSite.org.

The Cast & Crew

​Maya: Vanessa Vivas
Mami: Marian Del Valle
Abuela: Fiamma Piacentini (also movement director)
Father: Aaron Gold
Figment #1: Jess Appel (also assistant director)
Figment #2: Laura Aristovulos
Ancestor #1: Ariana Jackman (also Maya understudy)
Ancestor #2: Christine Stoddard (also the playwright/director)
Interns: Sydnie Stern (St. John's University), Bronte Gosper (Columbia University)

Maya, a young Salvadoran-American woman, navigates trauma and family mythology through magic and folklore as she comes of age in Phoenix, Arizona. Her story explores mother-daughter relationships, mixed race identity, being the first-generation child of an immigrant, growing up without a father, and fantasy as a coping mechanism, while featuring movement and dance. And there are owls, jaguars, and cacti-oh, my!

*Trigger warning: This play references sexual assault and suicide.

Find out more about the story's characters here. See the New Play Exchange listing page here. View visual art inspired by the play here.

"Mi Abuela, Queen of Nightmares" won a national playwriting competition held by Table Work Press in 2019 and was published in the book Two Plays: True Believer and Mi Abuela, Queen of Nightmares (2020). The play is based upon the 2018 Semiperfect Press chapbook of poems by the same name. The non-equity stage play premiere at the Gene Frankel Theatre in New York City happened in June 2022 and was produced by Quail Bell Press & Productions. The play was chosen as one of three national finalists in the Fulton Festival of New Works in Lancaster, Pennsylvania and was presented in a reading at the Fulton Theatre in August 2022.