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The 2011 De Colores Festival
Ayelen Ayelen is the story of a young warrior named Ayelen, the Eagle Spirit, who sets out to save her great love Pahana, the Condor Spirit, from the desolate wastelands of lost souls. Metaphorically it is the story of North and South, as it describes how Ayelen tracks Pahana in the black crystal mines. He has changed and in the coldness of the desert night Pahana orders the rape and murder of Ayelen, only to find that after her death, he is haunted by her memory. Ayelen's return from the afterworld, forces them both to come to terms with his betrayal. About The Playwright
Gilda Monreal is a quadrilingual actress working in theatre, film and television. Her theatre performance credits include Romeo and Juliet (Juliet), Unity 1918, Julius Caesar, and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Her film and television credits include the lead role in the feature film Bachata, LEX television series, and various comedy performances on Roger's TV. In addition to performing, Gilda has also written for theatre, television and film, including the short documentary La Muralla Que Habla, which she directed in association with the National Film Board of Canada. She is also one of De Colores' Playwrights of 2011, for her new script Ayelen. Her work has been produced in Canada, the United States, Dominican Republic, and Chile.
Staying Alive
Staying Alive is about the journey of an estranged daughter coming to terms with her mother's terminal illness and the secrets of her past. It's about struggle, recovery, and survival, evolution, revolution and redemption. Joanna De La Cruz's journey is accompanied by a chorus of poets, mystics and drag queens. About The Playwright Martha Chaves has been called a lot of things in her eighteen years as a stand-up comedian with her favourite being, “ Smart, sassy, subversive and very funny” (Bill Brownstein, The Montreal Gazzette). From Atomic explosions to Zombies transvestites, her material covers a great array of topics. Martha definitely has a very broad appeal. She tours all over the world doing comedy, in several languages and has entertained audiences of every race, color, sexual orientation and religious hats including the UN Canadian Peace Keeping Troops in the Middle East. Chaves is a veteran of twelve Montreal Just for Laughs Festival; The Halifax Comedy festival, The Winnipeg Comedy Festival, The San Antonio Comedy Festival and many others. She is a multiple Canadian Comedy Awards nominee in the category of Best Female Stand-up and in 2010, she came in first in The Great Canadian Laugh Off Comedy Competition, Ottawa chapter and she placed second in the nationals. You may recognize her from her many appearances on TV like her comedy specials on the CBC (Comics, JFL GALAS) and CTV and The Comedy Network (Something About Martha). Martha is also a passionate activist and participates in many humanitarian and political fundraising events. In November 2010 Martha hosted the Benefit for the G-20 Arrestees, which featured Naomi Klein and Hawksley Workman and in March 2011 she was part of the cast of The Vagina Monologues (Ottawa V-Day). She is honoured that Alameda Theatre Company will be featuring her semi-autobiographical play, Staying Alive once again at this year’s De Colores Festival of New Works in Toronto. |
The Anti-Romantic The Anti-Romantic is a semi-autobiographical piece about Cely, a young artist disillusioned by love after a messy breakup with her boyfriend. She vows to live her life completely devoid of any love, only to find that it keeps entering her life through her art and the people around her. About The Playwright Aracely Reyes entered the Theatre world seven years ago and has loved it ever since! She is a multidisciplinary artist, working as a Visual artist, Actress, Stage Manager, Director, and playwright. She has performed in several shows including bcurrent’s 2009 production of Wise Woman and was a participant in the A.M.Y project’s 2007 production, I AM HER. She performed for the fourth time in bcurrent’s annual Summer Arts Raw Materialz show in August 2011. She is the author of her recently published Poetry book, Tragic Love. When she’s not writing Dark monologues or preparing for her next show, she’s in her makeshift studio, working on an oil painting or doodling in her sketchbook. For more information, please visit her at www.cell-air.mirrorz.com
La Danza del Venado La Danza del Venado by Ari Belathar (formerly known as Emma Ari Beltran) is inspired by the playwright’s crossing of the border into the United States as a child. It tells the story of a group of migrants trying to cross the U.S. border into the Sonoran Desert of southern Arizona. The title of the play is based on the ancient dance of the same name celebrated by the Yaquis, a native community from the Mexican side of the Sonoran desert. La Danza del Venado- Maso Yi Ihua, in Yaqui language- narrates the life and death of the deer, the sacred animal of the Yaquis. This dance serves as a metaphor to tell the story of Quino, a 14-year-old boy with an adult sized responsibility, to shepherd his nine-year-old sister Lili all the way from the outskirts of Mexico City to their mother in Clinton Mississippi. On their journey they meet other migrants: Don Lauro, a quiet man who is going back to L.A. after being deported, Julian, an eager young man full of dreams and ready to work hard to change his life, Yadira, a young woman from El Salvador, and Sammy, the smuggler that Quino and Lili’s mother Ana has arranged to take her children across the border. The four movements and the cosmology of the Maso Yi Ihua dance are used to interweave the stories of these migrants, stories that reflect one of the great surrealistic tragedies of the global age. About The Playwright Ari Belathar is the founder and main contributor of www.mojadonews.com. She is a Mexican poet, journalist and playwright in exile. Between 1994 and 2001 she facilitated creative writing and popular theatre workshops for indigenous women and children throughout Mexico and was a founding member of the first Mexican community radio station during the student strike at the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1999. After being kidnapped and tortured by the Mexican National Army in 2001 due to her work as an independent journalist and human rights activist, she escaped to Canada. A participant in Artscape’s Gibraltar Point International Artists Residency Program, she has published poetry in literary journals and anthologies around the world. Belathar served as Writer-in-Residence through PEN Canada’s Writers in Exile Program at the University of Windsor in 2006, that same year she took part in the Wired Writing Studio at the Banff Centre for the Arts. In 2009, Brandon University appointed Belathar as the university’s first Writer-in-Residence. As a result of this nine-month appointment, Belathar published her first collection of poetry in English, The Cities I Left Behind by Radish Press. In the summer of 2010 Scirocco Drama published The Taxi Project – a collective play about exile, originally produced by PEN Canada and ARC Collective, with Ari Belathar as lead-writer. *** |
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