The Cuban Vote
by Carmen Pelaez
Directed by Kelsey Mesa
Booking and details
Dates Fri, Jan 26, 2024, 8pm
Tickets Festival pass - $35; All-access pass - $75
Duration 90 minutes
Join us at The Reading Room Festival for this staged reading of The Cuban Vote, directed by Kelsey Mesa.
Miami is the third rail of national politics. Confounding experts every election cycle, its electorate sets the tone for what’s to come for the rest of the country. For better, or worse. Inspired by The Taming of the Shrew, The Cuban Vote by Carmen Pelaez revisits Shakespeare’s story through an unlikely romantic lead who embodies our vote while being honest about our hubris, surreal political tendencies and our success as a city, even if it’s in spite of ourselves.
The Cuban Vote was commissioned by Miami New Drama, world premiere April, 2022.
Post-show conversation
Nadia Guevara moderates a conversation with Carmen Pelaez and Kelsey Mesa.
Students receive free admission with valid ID, 30 minutes before event start time. General admission seating is available for this staged reading on a first-come, first-serve basis after festival pass holders are seated.
Who’s who
Carmen Pelaez
Carmen Pelaez (Playwright, Carolina) wrote her first solo play Rum & Coke, which she performed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, culminating in an award-winning Off-Broadway run in 2008. In 2012, she won the HBO NYLFF Short Film Competition with “The Acting Lesson” and followed up with the short, “A Queen Without His Crown.” Most recently, she directed the short film “Mango Season,” for which she received an Honorable Mention at the 2020 Miami International Film Festival. In 2020 she was commissioned by Oolite to create the short documentary, “Caridad y Gallo” as part of their Close Quarters Series. Carmen starred in Arroz Con Lech y Powerball by Mariana Serrano and Kathy Martini’s Sombras Nada Mas. Carmen has proudly worked on President Barack Obama’s Cuba Policy team and is on President Biden’s Cuba advisory team. She has also written for NBC Latino, Marie Claire, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times. She was recently featured in John Leguizamo Does America (Miami). Currently she’s developing two series, Tropical Beasts and Ventanita, as well as her first feature adaptation, The Cuban Vote. Most recently she was commissioned by The Huntington Theatre to adapt Antigone and by Miami New Drama to write Museum Play and Caridad. Carmen is a 2023 MacDowell Fellowship recipient and a 2023 Ellie Award recipient. She is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.
* Member of Actors’ Equity Association
Gabriel Alejandro
Gabriel Alejandro (Ludovico, Tibaldo, Rufino, Astolfo) Folger Theatre: Romeo and Juliet, The Cuban Vote. Next Stop Theater: Native Gardens; Prologue Theater: Marjorie Prime; Devil’s Isle Shakespeare: As You Like It; Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: The Oresteia, As You Like It; Keegan Theater: The Wilting Point; Shakespeare Theatre Company Academy: Macbeth, Measure for Measure, Pericles, Twelfth Night; Worlds Elsewhere Theater Company: The Roaring Girl; Fractal Theater Collective: Untitled Horror Project. New York: The Tank: Por Lo Que Soy. International: Colombia: Criaturas; Denmark: Barter; Greece: KOMMOS; Puerto Rico: Mujeres del Alba, Sueños de Colores, Drácula, Unmerciful Good Fortune. Education: (MFA) Shakespeare Theater Company Academy. @galejandro
Fabiolla da Silva
Fabiolla da Silva (Doña Leonor/Leonardo, Flora) Folger Theatre: The Cuban Vote: The Reading Room 2024, Love’s Labor’s Lost. Taffety Punk Theatre Company: Macbeth, La Salpêtrière (Helen Hayes nomination); The Keegan Theatre: Webster’s Bitch; 1st Stage: The Last Match (Helen Hayes nomination); Prologue Theatre: World Builders, The Revolutionists (Helen Hayes Award for Best Supporting Performer – Play); Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: Measure for Measure, The Merry Wives of Windsor; Workhouse Arts Center: Women Playing Hamlet. Films: The Importance of Finding the Other, That Engagement Thing, Autumn’s Room.
Mariela Lopez-Ponce
Mariela Lopez-Ponce (Ofelia) is an actor and director based out of Boston, MA. Folger Theatre: debut. Regional: Teatro Chelsea: Atipico 3 New Play Festival (Director); 1st Stage Theatre: Mojada; Teatro Chelsea/Apollinaire Theatre co-production Don’t Eat the Mangos (Elliot Norton for Best Director); Hartford Stage/Huntington Theatre/Alley Theatre touring co-production of Quixote Nuevo; Wellesley Repertory: Sonia Flew; Apollinaire Theater: Hamlet, A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes (Elliot Norton Award), Blood Wedding; Lyric Stage Boston: Water by the Spoonful, Living Out (Ana, IRNE Award for Best Actress); TheatreZone: Bodas de Sangre; Company One: Twilight LA; Lexington Players: The Lion in Winter. Mariela is a founding and board member of Teatro Chelsea, and a member of Actors’ Equity Association.
Thony Mena
Thony Mena (Benji) was born in the Dominican Republic, raised in the DC/Maryland area, and is based in LA. He’s a natural goof with a gentle seriousness and just loves to tell stories. Recent credits include: Curious Theatre Company: Sanctions, Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, Water By The Spoonful, and The Happiest Song Plays Last; 1st Stage: The Brothers Size; Theater J: Another Way Home. Thony is a graduate in Theatre at the University of Maryland, College Park.
* Member of Actors’ Equity Association
Jonathan Nichols-Navarro
Jonathan Nichols-Navarro (Gilberto) was most recently seen in Elián and The Cuban Vote at Miami New Drama, where he won the 2022 Carbonell Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Play. Before that, he played Alfred Molina/Gilbert Cruz in The Play You Want at the Road Theatre in Los Angeles, where he is a company member. Other plays include Nowhere on the Border (Road Theatre); El Huracán (Yale Rep), The Year To Come (La Jolla Playhouse), Seven Spots on the Sun (Boston Court), Little Children Dream of God (Road Theatre), Element Pea (South Coast Rep), Anna in the Tropics (South Coast Rep), Beauty of the Father (Seattle Rep), Julius Caesar (Hartford Stage), Measure for Measure (Lincoln Center), Hamlet, Necessities, As You Like It, La Fiaca (Old Globe Theatre). Films/TV include: Pay it Forward, Grey’s Anatomy, Major Crimes, CSI, Without a Trace, The West Wing, Friends, Family Law, Chicago Hope, Judging Amy, NYPD Blue, Payne, Becker, Oliver Bean. Studied at The Juilliard School and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
* Member of Actors’ Equity Association
Andrew Quilpa
Andrew Quilpa (Stage Directions) makes things up and writes them down. He was recently in Night of the Living Dead (Rorschach Theatre) and Witch Wartsmith’s Halloween Spooktacular (Puppet Company). Local credits: Faction of Fools Theatre Company: Love Like Tuesday, Missed Connections; Adventure Theatre MTC: Fantastagirl and the Math Monster; Rorschach Theatre: She Kills Monsters, 410[GONE]. Andrew has voiced a wide array of characters for Feminist Fairytales podcast, Flying V Theatre’s Paperless Pulp anthology podcast, and The COIL Project Variety Hour on 94.3 FM WOWD-LP. Andrew is a company member of Faction of Fools Theatre Company, and The COIL Project. www.andrewquilpa.com
Nadia Guevara
Nadia Guevara (she/her) is a director based in DC and NYC. She has worked across the country at The Kennedy Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Dallas Theatre Center, New York Stage and Film, Red Bull Theatre, The Old Globe, and Keegan Theatre, among others. She has been a guest director for American University, Texas Tech University, and Johns Hopkins University. Upcoming projects: Cinderella: A Salsa Fairy Tale (Imagination Stage), Spring Awakening (American University), Cell (Keen Theatre/Drama League DirectorFest), The Survival (National Queer Theatre/PACNYC) She is the 2022-2024 recipient of The Drama League Stage Directing Fellowship. In 2018, Nadia was named Actor of the Year, San Diego Critics Circle, and has since retired from acting. www.nadiaguevara.com
Kelsey Mesa
Kelsey Mesa (Moderator) Folger Theatre: The Cuban Vote (Reading Room Festival); Taffety Punk Theatre Company: Othello, Antigonick, She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, The Trojan Women, Charm. The Hub Theatre Company: The Pavilion, The Magi, Wish List; Catholic University: Crimes of the Heart; University of Maryland, College Park: Fefu and Her Friends. Awards: 2024 Helen Hayes Outstanding Production of a Play: La Salpêtrière (playwright). The Inkwell: Artistic Associate. John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts: Manager of Kennedy Center American College Theater Festival and Resident Director of the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive.
Related blog post
Q&A with Carmen Pelaez
Carmen Pelaez shares how she was inspired by Shakespeare’s The Taming of the Shrew and why she set her play The Cuban Vote amid a political campaign in Miami.