AZ Espinoza

Caribbean King is a de-colonial, trans-gressive, adaptive confrontation with Shakespeare’s King Lear in which Cord(elia) fights to survive against a catastrophic hurricane barreling towards his childhood home, and his father’s unshakeable belief that he is a daughter, not a son. The play begins with Cord’s return to the island of his birth for the first time since becoming an adult and moving to Brooklyn where he has lived openly as a transgender man. His father, the island’s last colonially appointed governor-general, has staged a public sit-in of the Governor’s Mansion insisting that he stay in residence despite the island’s recent transition out of the Commonwealth and into political independence. While Cord’s initial goal is to encourage his father to vacate the premises, his stalled efforts result in a reawakening to place, self, community, and what leadership can look like in service to queer collectives and in the face of the climate crisis. A love letter to found family and queer community building, the play features a chorus of drag performers who embody Cord’s rude and unsupportive older sisters, feverishly optimistic Island political commentators, and Cord’s community of fellow drag performers from Brooklyn, who roll deep and show up for Cord right when he needs them–in the eye of the storm.

Mac, an adjunct lecturer, and Nessa, a freshman, have a lot in common. They’re slightly awkward, deeply passionate about Homer’s The Odyssey, and are Black AF in a very white department at a very white school. When they stumble upon the discovery that Homer himself came from Africa they must figure out how best to honor this truth in the face of university administrators, overbearing older siblings, the Internet, and Homer himself. HOMERIDAE is a play about who controls the narrative, and about finding your voice when it seems like no one is listening.

Inspired by Afro-Venezuelan folk history, All My Mothers Dream in Spanish is about three generations of an Afro-Latinx family and their encounters with their ancestor named Guiomar. An Afro-Venezuelan folk hero, Guiomar was queen of Buría, a kingdom established by Africans who rebelled against enslavement in 1552. Guiomar also had the capacity for magic and has passed this on to her descendants who are: A Grandmother who worked as a housekeeper and now listens to the birds who visit her mango tree… A Mother who is a successful physician in the United States and never taught her daughter her mother tongue… A Daughter who dropped out of law school to join a revolution in the same forest where Guiomar reigned as queen. This play is made of midnight conversations, Spanglish, and dreams that leave visible scars.

A Black/Queer/2020 response to Euripides' Bakkhai. Nadia and Cecily are trying to make their socially distanced relationship work, but trying to keep it sexy is a whole different grape on the vine. When they both join a Zoom-room nightclub hosted by DJ Dion, the two love birds are thrust beyond their mundane digital world into an intoxicating new dimension. A glimpse into our current cultural moment, exxx...stasis, exxx...hale… serves up a politically radical, and radically queer, virtual fantasia. “So dance.”

A contemporary response to the lynching play tradition of the early 20th century

A stream of consciousness on Latinidad, originally performed with drumbeats. A walk through a tropical forest. A call to action.