FST Announces Collaboration With Milagro Theatre and Playwright Bernardo Cubría

Florida Studio Theatre (FST) is proud to announce that the National New Play Network (NNPN) has awarded the theatre $10,000 to support a new collaboration with Milagro Theatre, based in Portland, OR, as well as with California-based playwright Bernardo Cubría. For this new project, Cubría will conduct interviews with members of the Latinx and Hispanic communities about their experiences as voters in Sarasota, Florida, and Portland, Oregon. The project will culminate in a new play written by Cubría that will be centered on these experiences and will explore the evolving perception of "the Latino vote" as a monolith. The current title for this new theatrical work is The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latine Vote.

Cubría, winner of the 2021 Smith Prize for Political Theatre, was inspired to write this play in 2016 after his phone started getting flooded with text messages from friends with links to articles about the "Latino vote."

"They were constantly requesting, 'Please, Bernardo, explain to me all of Latin America!'" said Cubría. "The idea that every single person from Tijuana to Buenos Aires should agree on every single human issue is a deeply misguided notion, and one that I want to take head-on with this project."

Cubría will be in residence at FST on October 26 and 27, where he will facilitate interviews with the local Latinx and Hispanic communities to discuss their thoughts on recent U.S. election history. FST will work with a representative from UnidosNow, a local organization dedicated to "elevating the quality of life of the growing Hispanic/Latino community in Manatee and Sarasota." Latinx and Hispanic members of the theatre's own staff will also be invited to participate in the interview process.

Milagro will serve as a home base for Cubría in Portland, OR, where he will conduct interviews with Latinx constituents in the western United States. Milagro's Oregon Latino Oral History Project, an initiative to document over 100 professional and personal accounts from Oregon's Latino community, is in progress, and will support Cubría with these interviews. By interviewing people on both coasts of the United States, Cubría will attain a more varied look into the larger Latinx and Hispanic communities and will amplify these voices rather than reduce the complex to the simple.

In January 2023, FST will host a closed reading of Cubría's new play, providing him with a professional cast, director, and dramaturg to help support his creative process. FST and Cubría will then engage in a vigorous phase of development with the goal to workshop The Hispanic/Latino/Latina/Latinx/Latine Vote in a future reading series at the theatre.

For more information on FST's new collaboration with Milagro Theatre and playwright Bernardo Cubría, funded by the National New Play Network, please contact Lydia Baxter, FST's Public Relations Manager, at 941.366.9017 ext. 338, or lbaxter@floridastudiotheatre.org.