Julián Mesri

An intrepid and revealing look at intimacy, revolution, and global identity Set within the paper-thin walls of a telo, a pay-by-the-hour sex hotel in the heart of Buenos Aires, three pairs of people across three eras of Argentine history find themselves torn between the personal and political in a perpetually changing and increasingly dangerous world. Repressed gay lovers in a tango bar, two sisters planning a terrorist attack, and a random hookup in the middle of an economic crisis are woven together in a narrative that crosses generations. Accompanied by a dynamic score that brings together tango, cumbia, and Latin rock, Telo connects the revolutions--big and small--of the past with what we face in the world today.

In late 2000s Miami, Pamela and Patricio are two Argentine-Americans trying to live the American dream and succeeding pretty well. They have a lovely home with a flat screen TV, an Ingres painting, and a pool, which happens to be haunted by the ghost of a 16th Century Spanish Friar. When Pamela's brother Lautaro comes to visit however, after having been in jail for nearly a decade, a bitter rivalry lines up between Patricio and Lautaro. Making matters worse is that Patricio speaks terrible Spanish, and Lautaro terrible English, making the only real interlocutor Pamela, who has to keep the chaos at bay while also dealing with an increasingly needy and meddling ghost. Performed entirely in English but spoken in two languages, the play looks at the legacy of imperialism and colonialism in America through the domestic strife of an aspirational Latine family.

In Los Estados Unidos  three gauchos wrestle with deportation, the law and themselves on a quest to become “American.” The stubborn Don Ariel looks after his cousins, the soccer-obsessed Don Entorno and his brother the hotheaded Don Infante. Needing work visas, Don Ariel enlists the services of cowboy lawyer Billy, who realizes that due to a clerical error, Don Ariel has been granted an artist’s visa and must scramble to record an Argentine epic as a book on tape. The appearance of immigration agent Gazpacho brings to light truths—in English and in Spanish—about Billy and the gauchos. Written in an invented cowboy dialect the Gauchos Americanos reverses the rules of language to explore the hypocrisy at the heart of our borders.

In a typical apartment in an American city, a group of post-collegiates play out their varied malaises while a Spanish lesson goes on behind them. But there are more than just foreign languages in the air. Strange things (and smells) are afoot, and soon their world begins to be taken over by another world (and family) in their apartment. Soon, as the rules change, and the scenes multiply and overlap, we find that our home is not what we think it is, and we ask ourselves: who is invading who? A dark bilingual comedy about who and how we mis-understand.

In 1907, four stowaways board a steamship leaving from Europe, in the hope of escaping their past and immigrating to America. A century later, that boat is now a cruise ship, providing US customers with stories of how their immigrant ancestors “really” lived. As the cruise ship launches its inaugural voyage, the passengers’ connections to the stowaways become evident in ways both known and unknown to those on board. At once cynical and poignant, this multigenerational, multilingual musical asks us to confront the stories we tell about our history and the inescapability of the past.

Progress: An American Fable, is a fever dream that imagines the death of Argentine war
criminal Emilio Eduardo Massera at the hands of an ex-pat in New York City. The play explores
the dark aftermath of revenge, as Leo, the aforementioned murderer, Roderick his Cuban-
American playwright friend, and Madeline his friend’s photographer girlfriend decide that
assassination is not enough for someone guilty of crimes against humanity and take matters into
their own hands in terrifying, and hilarious ways. Progress is a play that shows that cycles of
violence may still haunt us and live in our bodies long after we’re gone.