This week, Hispanic voices take center stage! Five contemporary plays, performed in English, live music, and Hispanic food will shine at Goodwood Museum on Aug. 8-9. This year’s 8th Annual Micro Theater Festival will include two plays translated and one play directed by Tallahassee Hispanic Theater’s founder and president, Alejandra Gutierrez.
From small towns to big stages
As a college student, Alejandra Gutierrez walked into a maze of mirrors — or into “Laberinto de Cristal,” a play by Spanish writer Alfonso Plou. The play, about five young people pursuing their artistic passions, spoke to Gutierrez. She’d left her own hometown at 16 to study journalism in Venezuela’s bustling capital, Caracas. But fate had other plans. When her university needed a lead actress for Laberinto, Gutierrez stepped onto that stage and never left.
For the next six years, Gutierrez would work with renowned companies like Grupo Actoral 80, and under acclaimed playwright Juan Carlos Gené, against the backdrop of a waning Argentinian dictatorship. Later, Gutierrez worked as the special events coordinator for Venezuela’s International Progressive Theater Festival, bringing performers from across Latin America, Germany, Italy, Spain, and beyond.
In 2004, Gutierrez moved to the United States to pursue a PhD. The University of Virginia, she soon discovered, had its own Hispanic theater program. And when she moved to Tallahassee to join Florida State University, she was determined to start one of her own. Thus, Tallahassee Hispanic Theater (THT) was born.
“My goal,” said Gutierrez. “Was to bring those plays and those playwrights to this audience, which had never been in contact with that tradition (of Latin American theater).”
Hispanic theater differs from the United States in a few interesting ways — for example, musicals are uncommon — but Gutierrez believes there are more similarities than differences.
“These are themes that are universal,” said Gutierrez. “Last year, we did a play about the political situation in Venezuela. And it’s interesting, because people in the U.S. can easily relate to that.”
“It’s part of helping people understand a different culture,” Gutierrez added, “who don’t have any idea that these same things are happening there, or that we go through the same situations, the same problems.”
8th Micro Theater Festival
The Micro Theater Festival was first imagined in 2016, with a trio of short plays by the same author, but did not begin in earnest until the following year. These days, the Festival is THT’s annual flagship event.
Held in Goodwood’s Carriage House, the festival includes five 15-minute plays performed in an open, interactive space. Between each play, audiences move from stage to stage, discuss the performances they collectively just witnessed, listen to music, and purchase Hispanic food from local vendors. Festivalgoers can expect a warm, engaging atmosphere, where art, language and community meet.
“One of the things I’m most proud of is the amount of people that have worked with us — directors, actors, crew members,” said Gutierrez. “Some people come back. Some people have been doing things for many years, some people just came one time.”
“In fact,” Gutierrez continued. “We give people the opportunity to direct for the first time. I remember the first one — he was a lawyer who approached me after one of the festivals. He said that there’s a Mexican short story he would love to adapt. I told him, go for it! And that play was amazing. It was one of those plays that everyone remembers.”
Audiences at this year’s festival will encounter a futuristic dilemma, surreal bureaucracy, family connections and drama about family, connection and loss. In addition to the recurring actors, directors and theater tech, visitors may also recognize a familiar face.
“I wrote a short story about my grandmother in grad school,” said Gutierrez. “I adapted it for the theater. My daughter, who’s an actress too, she’s playing a young me.”
Gutierrez is already thinking a few years ahead, to the festival’s 10-year anniversary.
Although Tallahassee Hispanic Theater is used to performing in unconventional spaces, she’d like to expand their offerings, including workshops with contemporary Hispanic writers and actors. “I’d like to bring playwrights together with audiences,” she said. “We are lucky that these people are alive, so we can talk to them.”
If you go
What: 8th Annual Micro Theater Festival
When: 7:30-10:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 8 and Saturday, Aug. 9
Where: Goodwood Museum & Gardens, 1600 Miccosukee Road
Cost: $25 for general admission, $20 for students, seniors, and veterans
Details: tallahasseehispanictheater.org
Summer Callahan is the Grants Manager for the Council on Culture & Arts (COCA). Celebrating its 40th anniversary, COCA is the capital area’s umbrella agency for arts and culture (tallahasseearts.org).
