Artistic Statement

Artistic Statement

My body of work for theatre is wide-ranging and eclectic. A significant portion of my work has been dedicated to radical re-configurations of the classics (Shakespeare, Euripides, Sophocles, Wedekind) and epic re-imaginations for the stage of major novels from the Americas (The House of the Spirits, In the Time of the Butterflies, Love in the Time of Cholera, Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter, The House on the Lagoon). Another portion of my career has focused on creating roots music-based, sociopolitical plays about contemporary American life, from a US Latina perspective. Yet another side of my writing life has been devoted to the translation into American English of the dramatic works of Federico Garcia Lorca as well as works by Lope de Vega, Calderon de la Barca and contemporary work from Cuba, Mexico, Spain and Catalonia. What is central to my aesthetic is the creation of a new poetics for the stage: a focus on heightened language, abstracted yet lush landscapes, the use of song and music in unconventional ways, the exploration of fluid gender, sexuality and identity, a focus on the voices and stories of migration and immigration, and a continued investigation of the dramaturgical possibilities of different levels of mediation (especially projection design, video, and sound-scapes). My work is visceral and poetic, political and spiritual. My formal overarching goal is to break aesthetic and formal boundaries with each play. Sometimes the work hearkens back to older forms of storytelling and sometimes it defies all models.