Two River Theater Announces 2017 Crossing Borders Festival
(photo provided by Two River Theater)
Two River Theater has announced the lineup for its seventh annual free Crossing Borders festival of new plays by Latino writers. The event will take place August 2-6 and will kick off with a outdoor neighborhood party with food and live music performed by David Oquendo.
Works to be read at the festival include plays by Benjamin Benne, Raul Garza, and Charise Castro Smith. Conversations with artists will follow every reading. This year, Two River is expanding the festival to include its first musical, The Golem of Havana, with music by Salomon Lerner, lyrics by Len Schiff, and book and direction by Michel Hausmann; and its first play for young people, Blancaflor, a bilingual adaptation of a traditional fairytale, written by Cecilia Cackley and translated by Ártemis López. Additional offerings include Raul Garza's El, directed by Michelle Bossy; Benjamin Benne's At The Very Bottom of a Body of Water; and Charise Castro Smith's El Huricán, directed by Pirronne Yousefzadeh.
The kickoff party will be followed by a keynote address given by Jacob G. Padrón, the founder and artistic director of the Sol Project, New York City-based theater initiative dedicated to producing works by Latinx playwrights.
Crossing Borders is curated by Stephanie Ybarra, who currently serves as the director of Special Artistic Projects at the Public Theater in New York, where she leads the Mobile Shakespeare Unit and produces the Public Forum series. The festival is sponsored by the Horizon Foundation for New Jersey, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo.
