Diversionary Theatre Has Announced Their WELCOME TO LA MISA, BABY 2020 D-Tours Performance

Diversionary has announced their 2020 D-Tours production of WELCOME TO LA MISA, BABY which will tour the San Diego Unified School District as part of the Arts Education and Outreach programming.

In response to the tragic shooting in Orlando and the continuing attacks against the LGBTQ community, performer and activist Migguel Anggelo uses music, dance, and a kaleidoscope of personalities, to pay homage to one of the most sacred spaces in gay culture: the disco.

Welcome to La Misa, Baby! takes place in a defunct religious sanctuary-turned-safe space called La Misa. LGBTQ revelers interact with Manuela, the celebrated drag queen and high-priestess of the glittering disco club. This one-actor, six-character play performed by Migguel Anggelo weaves a compelling, narrative collage celebrating the history of queer safe spaces in America and the LGBTQ communities that come together nightly in times of joy and crisis. Welcome to La Misa, Baby inspires audiences to contemplate what understanding, tolerance, belonging and safety mean for Queer and Latinx communities in the United States of today.

WHO:

Co-Creator and Performer Migguel Anggelo brings his show WELCOME TO LA MISA, BABY to the San Diego Unified School District.

WHEN:

Touring the San Diego Unified School District March 9th - 13th, 2020.

For more information visit http://www.diversionary.org/d-tours/.

Diversionary Theatre will continue their relationship with the San Diego Unified School District with the second year of their D-Tour series. This year's touring production is WELCOME TO LA MISA, BABY by Migguel Anggelo and will tour the San Diego Unified School District March 9th through the 13th.

About making WELCOME TO LA MISA, BABY part of the D-Tours Series , Executive Artistic Director, Matt M. Morrow, says, "Diversionary is grateful to have Migguel Anggelo in residence for the second year of D-Tours! His tour de force solo performance piece Welcome to La Misa, Baby is a powerful and intimate exploration of the LGBTQ community in the wake of gun violence. Migguel's performance will undoubtedly electrify and inspire the student audiences we will reach through our tour of the San Diego Unified School District."

About The D-Tours Series , Director of Arts Education and Outreach, Skyler Sullivan, says, "Diversionary Theatre is thrilled to be partnering with the San Diego Unified School District again to bring Welcome to La Misa Baby, a thought-provoking LGBTQ work directly into the schools. This year's selection is inspired by the Pulse nightclub shooting and features Migguel Anggelo playing a myriad of colorful characters who bind together to combat hate in their community using love and empathy."

ABOUT THE CREATOR:

Migguel Anggelo (Co- Creator and Performer) Brooklyn-based, and Venezuelan-born, Migguel Anggelo is an interdisciplinary performing artist. He invokes muses from art history, harnessing this lineage in effortlessly forward-thinking ways. He mines from his journeys as a Latino immigrant and a queer man: a fountain of source material to explore shared human experiences. He expresses himself through costume, musical composition, and solo theater work, evoking the "showmanship of Desi Arnaz and the performance art of Klaus Nomi" (Theater Scene). His lyrical movement recalls Marcel Marceau, and his comic timing alludes to Charlie Chaplin. Marked by pop ambition, he nods towards the likes of David Bowie and Freddy Mercury. With unabashed theatricality, Migguel Anggelo straddles decades, genres, and cultures.

Migguel has released two albums (Dónde Estará Matisse and La Casa Azul) and has been awarded residencies to develop new works at such esteemed institutions as the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts (Philadelphia) and BRIC (Brooklyn). Migguel was named a 2019 Joe's Pub Working Group resident and has been tapped to perform in festivals like LPAC's Rough Draft and Provincetown's Afterglow. He has served as a cultural attaché, under the auspices of the U.S. State Department, in two separate 10-city tours of Russia. In the last year, Migguel has been rigorously developing and performing his outrageously queer and gender-bending concert experience, LatinXoxo (2018-2019). He has also developed So Close: Love and Hate (2017), Another Son of Venezuela (2016-2015), andWelcome to La Misa, Baby (2016-2019) created with Obie Award-winner David Drake. Welcome to La Misa, Baby was inspired by the tragic shooting at the Pulse Nightclub, taking on a series of imagined characters that dance beneath the proverbial disco ball.

David Drake (Co-Creator and Playwright) is the Artistic Director of the Provincetown Theater as well as a director, writer, and actor. He is most widely known as the Obie Award-winning playwright/performer of The Night Larry Kramer Kissed Me. NY directing credits (new works): Theatre for the New City, Joe's Pub, HERE, Dixon Place, multiple shows (and awards) at the NYC International Fringe Festival and Under the Radar at The Public Theater. Artist residencies: Dance Theater Workshop, New School, Maryland Institute College of Art, Out North Art House, the Kimmel Center, BRIC. David has twice been a Directing Fellow at the Sundance Theatre Lab. His production of The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac won a Herald "Angel" Award upon its debut at the 2007 Edinburgh Fringe. David's production of Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge at HERE landed on many publication's "Best of the Year" lists and won a 2010 Obie Award. Most recently, David directed the premiere of J.Stephen Brantley's The Jamb at The Kraine, off-Broadway, and has written and directed Migguel Anggelo's So Close: Love & Hate, Another Son of Venezuela, and I, Inmigrante at Joe's Pub at The Public Theater. Currently, David and Migguel Anggelo have been creating and developing WELCOME TO LA MISA, BABY which David has written.

Skyler Sullivan, (Director of Arts Education and Outreach & Director of Welcome to La Misa, Baby) is an actor/director/ and arts educator transplanted from New York. While in NYC, he worked with The New Victory Theatre for ten years as a veteran teaching artist, where he honed his skills as a curriculum developer, and facilitator. Other NYC teaching credits include: The Lee Strasberg Theatre & Film Institute, the Professional Performing Arts School, and on-set coaching on two P.B.S. shows: Sesame Street and The Electric Company. Skyler is thrilled to be working with Diversionary Theatre as it continues its tradition of arts education and outreach. Currently in San Diego he also teaches for The Old Globe, and The La Jolla Playhouse. Skyler also works as a therapeutic clown with Healthy Humor, a non profit serving chronically and terminally ill kids and their families. Education: B.F.A. in acting Emerson College, M.F.A. in Acting Brooklyn College