La Jolla Playhouse Announces Cast and Creative Team for Derecho

La Jolla Playhouse announces the cast and creative team for its world-premiere production of Derecho by Uruguayan-American writer Noelle Viñas, directed by Delicia Turner Sonnenberg, running from July 23-August 18 in the Mandell Weiss Forum.

The cast features Ashley Alvarez as Eugenia Silva, Jorge Sánchez Díaz as José Portillo, Caro Guzmán as Mercedes Silva, Eric Hagen as Jeff Randolph, Carla Navarro as Soledad Portillo, and Luis Vega as Gabe Diaz. Understudies are Andrew Gallop, Germainne Lebrón, and Kat Peña.

The creative team includes scenic designer Tanya Orellana, costume designer Dominique Fawn Hill, lighting designer Sherrice Mojgani, sound designer Germán Martínez, hair and wig designer Alberto “Albee” Alvarado, and dramaturg Zharia O’Neil.

In the play, a series of intense storms — a “derecho” — is bearing down on an affluent Virginia neighborhood near DC, where Eugenia Silva, a politician hoping to join the wave of women of color elected to public office, is preparing for a crucial meeting. Her sister Mercedes is a struggling musician fighting to find her way on her own terms. Eugenia’s political ambitions crash into Mercedes’s need to reconnect her sister with their roots in this play that explores how traditional Latino values conflict with an ever-changing American definition of success.

Derecho is the 11th piece to have its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse after development during the annual DNA New Work Series.