"Guapa" by Caridad Svich at the Austin Latino New Play Festival, April 7!

Teatro Vivo (in collaboration with ScriptWorks) presents
The Second Annual Austin Latino New Play Festival
April 5-7 at 8pm
Mexican American Cultural Center, 600 River St.

These staged readings are workshop-style presentations with lively readings using props and movement on stage. After each workshop, the playwright, director and actors will participate in moderated talkback sessions with the audience.

Admission is free and open to the public. Seating is limited. Reservations can be made early at http://www.teatrovivo.org.

Thursday, April 5 (8 p.m.): Rosalia by Arthur Bryan Marroquin
Rosalia, based on Arthur Bryan Marroquin’s mother, exhibits her struggle to find herself as she grows up in a poverty stricken household in Autlan, Jalisco, Mexico. As she and her cousin, Emilia, help their families by maintaining jobs, Rosalia longs for more. In her decision to marry a man from America she is forced to lead a new life. This play tells the true story of an inspirational woman, a devoted daughter, wife and mother who overcame many hardships to find a new and better life for her family.

Arthur Bryan Marroquin is currently pursuing a BA in Acting from the University of Texas at Austin. He was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley in Weslaco, Texas. He has been performing since elementary school and has spent most of his time in the theatre on stage. Most recently, he was in UT’s production of Bacha Bazi, and is in their next production, Love’s Labour’s Lost. Rosalia is Marroquin’s first full-length production based on his own family’s history.

Friday, April 6 (8 p.m.): Cura by Raul Garza
Cura explores what happens when faith is tested to its limits. In a small Texas bordertown, a humble, defeated woman of faith, Amparo, encounters both spiritual hope and crisis in a young man who may or may not be the legendary Curandero/Saint, El Niño Fidencio.

Raul Garza’s first full-length play, Fantasmaville, received the 2007 National Latino Playwriting Award. As a writer for Austin’s Latino Comedy Project, Raul contributed to numerous stage and touring shows. When not writing plays, Raul teaches yoga, fills up on pop culture and serves as co-founder and creative director of TKO Advertising. He received his degree in Advertising from The University of Texas at Austin. Raul is an adjunct professor of Communications at St. Edward’s University, teaching integrated campaigns courses.

Saturday, April 7 (8 p.m.): Guapa by Caridad Svich
Guapa takes place in a small Texas town, caught in the long history of class struggle/racism, where we find Roly, a single mother, and her makeshift family. Taken in by the family is a young woman named simply Guapa (Beautiful), who dreams of playing women's soccer. This is a story about a working class family trying to make ends meet with magical dreams of sports, graffiti, birds in flight, indigenous history, trauma, recovery, and the viable possibilities of a better life. Workshop production directed by Natalie Goodnow!

Caridad Svich is a highly-awarded US Latina playwright, translator, songwriter, lyricist and editor. Svich was awarded the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for her play The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende. Her theatre pieces and songs, written in English and Spanish, have been presented across the US and abroad at diverse venues including Denver Center Theatre, Teatro Mexico (Quito, Ecuador), and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival/UK. She is alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theater alliance & press, associate editor of Routledge/UK's Contemporary Theatre Review, contributing editor of TheatreForum, and Drama Editor for Asymptote international translation magazine. Svich is astutely entered in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Latino History.