Parity Plays: The Ghosts of Lote Bravo by Hilary Bettis
Posted by MB - March 24, 2015
PARITY PLAYS Reading Series Kicks off with a reading of a new play by Hilary Bettis, The Ghosts of Lote Bravo. Hilary has been a Project Y collaborator over the years. Her play Mexico was featured in our “Feminine Mystique: 50 years Later” reading series and she was a writer/performer in the devised piece, Before & After in the New York New Playwright Festival in 2013. We are delighted to have her compelling new play to start our Parity Plays Reading series, directed by another Project Y collaborator, Elena Araoz.
Please join us to hear this new work and to meet and discuss in an informal setting after. All of our readings are free and open to the public. Parity Plays Reading series will produce plays that have casts of 50% or more women, with a focus on female playwrights and a goal of gender parity in the theatre. To learn more about Parity Plays click here.
Project Y Theatre Company presents:
THE GHOSTS OF LOTE BRAVO
By Hilary Bettis
Directed by Elena Araoz
Monday, April 13th at 7:30pm
ART/NY 520 8th Avenue, 3rd Floor
The Bruce Mitchell Room
ABOUT THE PLAY:
In Cuidad Juarez, Mexico young girls often disappear. Many turn up murdered. Juanda Cantu’s daughter, Raquel, is one of these girls. Through visions offered by La Santa Muerte, Juanda is shown Raquel’s past only to discover that her daughter had hopes, dreams and courage Juanda knew nothing about. The Ghosts of Lote Bravo is a play about great hope in the midst of relentless violence, poverty and grief.
ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT:
Hilary Bettis is a playwright and screenwriter. Awards, residencies, and commissions include: DNA Series, NNPN National Showcase of New Plays, Runner-Up Nuestras Voces National Playwriting Competition, Crossing Borders Festival, NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Workshop (The Ghosts of Lote Bravo), Lecomte du Nouy Award, NYFA Fellowship, Juilliard Lila Acheson Wallace Fellowship, O’Neill National Playwrights Conference (Alligator), 2050 Fellowship at NYTW, James McLure Fellowship New River Dramatists, Sloan/EST Commission (Dakota Atoll), John N. Wall Fellowship Sewanee Writer’s Conference, Blackburn Nomination (Mexico), PoNY Nomination, The Kilroys Nomination, Cherry Jones/Abingdon Theatre Company Grant. Finalist and semifinalist include: O’Neill NPC, the Source Festival and Orlando Shake’s PlayFest (The Ghosts of Lote Bravo), the Source Festival and BAPF (Alligator), BAPF, O’Neill NPC and Inkwell (Dakota Atoll), Red Bull Shorts Festival (The Bronze Serpent) Women’s Project Lab, New Dramatists, LMCC, Founders’ Award NYSF and the Leah Ryan Prize. Readings and workshops include: La Jolla Playhouse, Partial Comfort, Signature, Two River Theater, Juilliard, New York Theatre Workshop, New Georges, The Lark, The Flea, EST, Abingdon, Barrow Street, Barefoot Theatre Company, Pavement Group, Project Y, Great Plains Theatre Conference, Carolina Coastal University, New River Dramatists, The Actors Studio and The Aurora Fox in Denver. Productions include: American Girls (Off-Broadway at 45th St. Theater, upcoming 2015: The Edge Theater in Denver), The Mud Hole (Off-Off-Broadway F*IT Club), Two Lovers (New Georges #1MPF), Meredith and Molly (New Georges #1MPF), The Bronze Serpent (INTAR American Nightcap and Panglossian Productions), and Lala’s Love Nest #serials at The Flea. Publications include Smith & Kraus, McFarland & Company, Original Works (American Girls). Film screenings include: Williamsburg Film Festival, IFS Festival (she won best actress), Nashville Film Festival finalist (B’Hurst).
She is a member of SAG, AEA, Dramatists Guild, The Drama League, TCG, Playwrights’ Center and Fractured Atlas. She is a member of EST, Project Y’s writer group, Bookshop Workshop writer group and a New Georges Affiliated Artist. She has contributed articles to TDF Stages and offoffonline.com. She won the Smokey the Bear poetry contest at ten, and was presented with a trophy by Smokey the Bear himself. They remain friends to this day, occasionally brunching in the West Village. Hilary lives in Bushwick with a fat orange cat, plays a little violin, volunteers on the border with No Más Muertes and owns two horses she rides in both English and Western disciplines. She is currently working on a feature (The Lost Coyote) with Oscar-winning producer, Mara Kassin and recently filmed a short (The Iron Warehouse) with Laura Gomez and Cathy Curtin from OITNB. Contact: CAA. Theater – Chris Till [email protected], TV – Jacquie Katz [email protected] www.HilaryBettisWriter.com
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:
Elena Araoz directs theater and opera, internationally, Off-Broadway and regionally. Productions include Mac Wellman’s Wu and Horrocks (Sleeping Weazel at ArtsEmerson), Architecture of Becoming by Kara Corthron, Sarah Gancher, Virginia Grise, Dipika Guha, Lauren Yee (Women’s Project), Li Tong Chen’s The Power (Beijing), Natalia Naman’s Lawnpeople (Cherry Lane Mentor Project), Lucia di Lammermoor (Opera North), A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Prague Shakespeare Company), Falstaff (Brooklyn Philharmonic at BAM), Latin Lovers (Glimmerglass Opera), Jonathan Miller’s La traviata (New York City Opera at BAM), Naomi Wallace’s The Fever Chart (Underground Railway Theatre), Jaclyn Villano’s The Company We Keep (Boston Playwright’s Theatre), Monika Bustamante’s Thirst: a spell for Christabel (HERE), The Price (Northern Stage) and Off-Broadway productions of two Carl Djerassi plays. Elena has worked extensively with Sir Jonathan Miller as Choreographer and Associate Director, including productions on Broadway and internationally. Currently, she serves as Associate Director with Sir Richard Eyre on Ghosts at BAM. She is a 2050 Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, an Audrey Resident at New Georges, and a Beatrice Terry Artist-In-Residence at The Drama League where she is writing an adaptation of The Odyssey that has been commissioned by the Rose Theatre and which she will also direct: an environmentally-aware adaptation which combines commedia del arte, a live band, and 3-story tall puppets. New play workshops include Tiny People by Christopher Oscar Peña (Two River Theatre), River of Gruel by Sibyl Kempson (New Dramatists), Megastasis by Kia Corthron (New York Theatre Workshop, Yale University, New Works Brooklyn), Madame Ho by Eugenie Chan (Great Plains Theatre Conference), Obra Negra by Flavio González Mello and translated by Carmen Rivera (Lark Play Development Center’s Mexico/US Exchange), Good People by Maria Alexandria Beech with versions in both English and Spanish (Two River Theatre), and Hilary Bettis’ plays Dakota Atoll (New York Theatre Workshop), Mexico (Project Y), and Alligator (Great Plains Theatre Conference). MFA Univerity of Texas at Austin. www.elenaaraoz.com
THE CAST:
RAQUEL CANTU: Déa Julien
JUANDA CANTU: Liza Fernandez
EL RELOJ : Carlos Ibarra
CAMILLE: Adrianna Sananes
PEDRO: Bobby Plasencia
ROBERTO: Reza Salazar
MAN IN A BLACK HAT: Gilbert Cruz
LA SANTA MUERTE: Carmen Zilles
Project Y Theatre Company’s Parity Plays is possible through the support of NYSCA.