Powderhorn Resident Beliza Torres is performing in Teatro del Pueblo's upcoming show, "From Puerto Rico...with Love?"! "Broken English, Mother Tongue" takes the audience on a ride across continents, languages, and cultures. Javier Morillo weaves personal stories of growing up on a US Army base in Puerto Rico with the history of the Island's complicated relationship to the United States. Note: the audience may be quizzed on its knowledge of Puerto Rican history—but don't worry—like Puerto Rico, all answers are, well, complicated. "Resabios de Amargura or that bitter cabaret", by Beliza Torres Narváez is a campy mixture of song, comedy, mistranslations and social critique that follows the story of Lola Amapola, a singer-performer-TV diva-wannabe that loves her country Puerto Rico but feels attracted to afuera, or the outside. After realizing she cannot achieve her highest potential if she stays on her island, she leaves for the more promising and glamorous U.S mainland, but things don't turn out quite as planned. Will she stay in the U.S.? Will she go back home? Is there a home to go back to?
This is a presentation of two pieces on February 20th, 21st, 22nd, at 7:30 and 23rd at 2 pm. The show will be at Avalon Theater located at 1500 East Lake Street in Minneapolis.
Get your ticket(s), at http://bit.ly/392kYH9/
The Friday, Feb. 21st production of "From Puerto Rico...with Love?" will be sign language interpreted by Maria Rodriguez-Dively. Maria is a trilingual interpreter in ASL, Spanish, and English.
Beliza's Bio:
Beliza Torres Narváez is a Puerto Rican artist/scholar/educator. She is Assistant Professor of the Theater Department at Augsburg University where she teacher and directs. She was a resident and touring puppeteer of the Bread and Puppet Theatre, and studied acting at the Laboratorio Teatral Malayerba in Ecuador. In Puerto Rico she was the artistic director of Teatro Camagua, and a dancer of Hincapié Contemporary Dance Company. She has also vast experience as a teaching artists in under served populations using theatre as a tool for education.
Her more recent work as a performer includes her solo performances Hi...perverted as part of Patrick's Cabaret Latinx-Q (18) and choreographer Pedro Pablo's Noche Bomba (20% Theatre' 18). She was also an Pangea World Theatre Arts Organizing Fellow and guest artist at the National Directing and Devising Institute.