←Recommendations of the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo)

Nelson Diaz-Marcano: the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo) by Matt Barbot

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A fast paced reflection of what takes a country to keep its identity,. of the wars we wage against those that refuse to acknowledge us and more importantly about the very unique Puerto Rican spirit that has kept them proud for the 500 years they've been colonized. Digestible yet thought provoking, Barbot has created an absurdist masterpiece about revolution.

A fast paced reflection of what takes a country to keep its identity,. of the wars we wage against those that refuse to acknowledge us and more importantly about the very unique Puerto Rican spirit that has kept them proud for the 500 years they've been colonized. Digestible yet thought provoking, Barbot has created an absurdist masterpiece about revolution.

”
Andy Boyd: the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo) by Matt Barbot

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A beautifully-realized tribute to some under-sung heroes of Puerto Rican resistance. There's a perfect marriage of form and function in this play, which examines both literal guns-and-bullets violence and the violence of racist representation, especially including on stage. To quote someone who makes a surprise appearance, who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

A beautifully-realized tribute to some under-sung heroes of Puerto Rican resistance. There's a perfect marriage of form and function in this play, which examines both literal guns-and-bullets violence and the violence of racist representation, especially including on stage. To quote someone who makes a surprise appearance, who lives, who dies, who tells your story?

”
Emma Goldman-Sherman: the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo) by Matt Barbot

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Here is a stunningly theatrical play! Barbot makes the history of and the ongoing fight for Puerto Rican independence so alive and palpably necessary while deconstructing stereotypes to provoke both hilarity and pathos in well-apportioned doses. Barbot writes to stir our emotions with fabulous roles for actors. He succeeds beautifully with this gorgeous work of art. A privilege to see or read.

Here is a stunningly theatrical play! Barbot makes the history of and the ongoing fight for Puerto Rican independence so alive and palpably necessary while deconstructing stereotypes to provoke both hilarity and pathos in well-apportioned doses. Barbot writes to stir our emotions with fabulous roles for actors. He succeeds beautifully with this gorgeous work of art. A privilege to see or read.

”
Conor McShane: the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo) by Matt Barbot

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A wildly theatrical piece that takes the whole history of colonialism in Puerto Rico, throws it in a blender, and serves it up with a metaphysical/metatheatrical twist. Sometimes these kinds of historical plays can feel a bit dry, but I appreciated the imagination and humor threaded throughout.

A wildly theatrical piece that takes the whole history of colonialism in Puerto Rico, throws it in a blender, and serves it up with a metaphysical/metatheatrical twist. Sometimes these kinds of historical plays can feel a bit dry, but I appreciated the imagination and humor threaded throughout.

”
Shaun Leisher: the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo) by Matt Barbot

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Loved the theatricality of this piece. Loved how time works so uniquely. Need to see this produced!!

Loved the theatricality of this piece. Loved how time works so uniquely. Need to see this produced!!

”
Alexander Perez: the beautiful land i seek (la linda tierra que busco yo) by Matt Barbot

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A deeply resonant, thrilling, and hysterical train ride through both America's heartland and the annals of it's absurd history. Our would-be heroes confront not only the solemn task before them but also the relative lack of impact it would come to have on their cause. Through wit, courage, and a sage level of restraint, "the beautiful land i seek..." further excavates our existence's most pressing questions;

Is the act of martyrdom an exercise in futility?

What value does present sacrifice offer future generations if they never know you exist?

Were they just speaking Spanish?

A deeply resonant, thrilling, and hysterical train ride through both America's heartland and the annals of it's absurd history. Our would-be heroes confront not only the solemn task before them but also the relative lack of impact it would come to have on their cause. Through wit, courage, and a sage level of restraint, "the beautiful land i seek..." further excavates our existence's most pressing questions;

Is the act of martyrdom an exercise in futility?

What value does present sacrifice offer future generations if they never know you exist?

Were they just speaking Spanish?

”

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Reviews

La Guía Cultural

“
Barbot juega con sus diálogos: bilingües… binacionales… bisiestos… y con sus ideas: pasado, futuro, absurdo, congruente… El ludismo se extiende a sus referentes: los dos espías se transforman en Vladimir y Estragon de Esperando a Gogot; pero también son Rosencrantz y Guildenstern de Tom Stoppard. Colonizadores y colonizados conviven en el camarote mágico que se convierte en un portal a la sempiterna dialéctica de la identidad puertorriqueña: estatidad o soberanía.
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Evening Transcript

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I’ve long insisted that some of the most exciting work in Boston happens on the smallest stages, and The Beautiful Land I Seek is a striking example of why that remains so deeply true. In the end, Barbot leaves us with a truth that lands harder than any historical fact: being silenced carries a cost all its own, and insisting on your story can be the most radical thing a person—or a play—can do.

What stays with you isn’t the audacity of Barbot’s conceit, nor even the beauty of this production, but rather the accumulation of what it exposes, cracking open five centuries of distortion that have kept Puerto Rico’s reality obscured. By the time the train sighs to a halt at play’s end, Barbot hasn’t untangled any of it; he simply refuses to let any of it pass unnoticed. And that refusal lands with a force that feels, at long last, like truth.
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3Views

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Theater makers like those who came together to tell this story are firefighters; the world seems up in flames and we all need to pour into wells of knowledge while we still can. Perhaps then we would have collected enough to water powerful, preferably peaceful, change. The divine time is now.
”
American Theatre Magazine

“
The play bursts with all it contains, from fictional characters to imagined versions of historical figures, references old and new. Barbot even writes himself, with a twinge of self-deprecation, into a character he calls the Writer, who treats Gris and Oscar as minable “resources” for his play.
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New York Sun

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Some of Mr. Barbot’s most direct political commentary is reserved for the writer, a visitor from 2020, who enters wearing a facemask. Played by a drily anxious Nate Betancourt, he is full of news, little of it good: about the pandemic, hurricanes, the greed and corruption that have only further complicated Puerto Rico’s plight. “The real business draw for the most part is using the island as a tax shelter,” he reports, and then quips, “I guess you don’t know what hedge funds are.”

The writer’s first response when asked about the future, though, is that “theater is terrible,” another of Mr. Barbot’s little jabs at contemporary culture — though this brightly thoughtful piece, for its part, offers no evidence to support that theory.
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TheaterMania

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The Beautiful Land I Seek has auspiciously arrived off-Broadway at a time of popular acclaim for the assassin of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. While Collazo and Torresola attempted their grand political gesture at a time of relative social cohesion in a triumphal America, those conditions have evaporated in 2024, and an alarming number of Americans have come to view violence as a legitimate means to desired political ends. That makes this examination of the forces that drive assassins to kill particularly timely, with no sign that will change in the foreseeable future.
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New York Magazine/Vulture

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In another bittersweet twist, the beautiful land i seek takes its name from Puerto Rico’s national anthem, “La Borinqueña,” whose lyrics proudly purport that Columbus described the island with the title phrase upon landing. Throughout the play, which is subtitled in both Spanish and English, characters are struck with passing flurries of confusion about what language they’re speaking: “Are you speaking English now or Spanish?” Gris asks Oscar early on, and that feeling of slippage informs Barbot’s whole dramatic world. How do you hold onto identity, to ideals, in the long, choppy wake of colonization? How do you make sense of the violent liminality it leaves behind? How do you seek something more just, more beautiful?
”