5th Annual Loisaida Festival TheaterLab 2018

Co-produced by MEZCOLANZA NYC & Loisaida Inc.

Starting at 12:00 pm on La Plaza Cultural Community Garden

[Read Press Release here!]


The Loisaida Festival’s Theater Lab, a production of Loisaida Inc. with Mezcolanza NYC, returning for the third year to the Plaza Cultural on the SW corner of 9th Street & Avenue C in the East Village as part of the annual Loisaida Festival on Sunday, May 27th. Among the highlights of the program is the New York premiere of ¡Ay María!, a play that explores the post-Maria reality for an isolated group of neighbors in Puerto Rico that must come together after the storm.

The play was initially written to provide catharsis to performer and audience alike following the devastation of Hurricane Maria. In turn, members of Mezcolanza NYC will be among those discussing the role of contemporary theater and performance in post-Maria Puerto Rico as part of a panel discussion organized by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, which will take place days before the festival, on Thursday, May 24th at 6pm.

Loisaida Inc. remains committed to the voices of Puerto Rican playwrights and performers in wake of Hurricane Maria. Following a special one-night only performance of Pateco, el sepulturero by acclaimed Puerto Rican actor Teofilo Torres this past December, the Loisaida Center will again host another timely theatrical work that addresses the aftermath of Hurricane Maria with humor, improvisation, satire, and introspection.

This creative window into the island’s trauma and the resilience of local communities is also an extension of the theme of the annual Loisaida Festival: “Bridging Resurgence: From Sandy to Maria.”


Schedule:


12:00 pm. Fernandito Ferrer / DJ /

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artist: Fernandito Ferrer is a soulful singer-songwriter of nueva trova and folk fusion from Sabana Grande, PR. This year at Loisaida’s TheaterLab he will be spinning an eclectic mix of reggae, pop and soul to jump start the afternoon. Fernandito is a long time Loisaida contributor and once again we have been fortunate to have him as  TheaterLab’s  stage manager. His services as a stage manager are very underrated as he’s experience spans over 20 years in the industry.


12:25 pm. Julián Garnik / Performance / 2018 Loisaida Theater Lab Emcee

Title: A mis Amigos de la Locura

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artist: Julián Garnik is an actor and director from Puerto Rico based in New York City. His theatre credits include Jacob in Morning at the Bridge Theatre in Manhattan and El actor tiene permisos part of the III Festival del Monólogo Latinoamericano in Cienfuegos, Cuba. As a director, his short films La Secadora and Tessellation have been screened in several festivals around the world, such as the Puerto Rican Heritage Film Festival and the Durham Regional International Film Festival.


12:35 pm. Anthony Rosado / Performance /

Title: Hatuey’s Dream

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece:  For the sake of revealing true stories, archiving indigenous & contemporary Caribbean practices, and sharing methods of ancestral commemoration, I will facilitate interviews. As part of the Native Caribbean Heritage Preservation Project, the interviews function to provide future generations with the inherent understanding of where they come from, so they may know who to become. Interviews with historians, contemporary practitioners, and other descendants of Caribbean peoples will be recorded in effort to (1) act as a digital archive with printed transcriptions and (2) portions of each interview will be presented in a solo performance where I embody each interviewee. This form of oratory storytelling descends from Native Caribbean communicative modes of information sharing and is glorified in Hatuey’s Dream.


12:50 pm. Calle Joroba / Clown Theatre /

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artist: : Calle Joroba es un colectivo de clown teatral, teatro físico, circo y títeres creado por el mimo, teatrero y maestro Luis Oliva en el año 2014. La misión del colectivo es poder exponer a través de estas técnicas temas universales como lo son la creación, la escasez del agua, la contaminación del aire, entre más. Su repertorio de piezas incluyen “Am i Ea” (2015), la primera pieza que estrenó el colectivo en el Circo Fest En el 2015 y “Wata” (2016) también presentada en el Circo Fest, que luego estuvo de gira por diferentes escuelas en Puerto Rico. .


1:15 pm. Casa Cruz de la Luna / Theater /

Title: The Marquis de Sade is Afraid of the Sea (second movement)

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: A re-visitation of the 1918 legendary earthquake in the South West of Puerto Rico; bodies resurrected from the flood; agitation of the masses, and the peaceful violence of quotidian life meet in the staging of this text by Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya. Featuring: Alejandra Morales, Christopher Cancel, Laura Mercedes and Caridad del Valle.


1:35 pm. Teatro 220 / Improv Troupe /

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artists: Grupo de jóvenes actores latinos que por medio de la improvisación teatral, llevamos comedia, música y entretenimiento para toda la familia. Nuestro fin es llevar alegría, risas e impactar a su audiencia con un mensaje refrescante y positivo. El grupo está compuesto por: Andrés López-Alicea, Gilberto Gabriel, Zuleinette Ralat y Venuz Delmar. Teatro 220, significa que somos ese conducto de 22O voltios de locura por el cual transmitimos alegría y carcajadas a nuestro público.


02:00 pm Mezcolanza NYC Performances 


1. Kairiana Núñez / Performance / 15 min

Title: Chiquita

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: In Chiquitita, Ms. Miller Parachute Woman is a character that moves between ridiculous and reality. Between the joke and the speeches that have us cornered in the dependency.
She is a right-wing military officer. She is a recalcitrant Republican. She repeats neoliberal spiels as if there were critical ideas she owns. The fact is that many military were part of the so-called “Reconstruction” of Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria. They took over the streets along with the local police. The military returned, as they always return.

En Chiquitita, la Sra. Miller Parachute Woman es un personaje que se mueve entre el ridículo y la realidad. Entre el chiste y los discursos que nos tienen acorralados en la dependencia. Ella es una oficial del ejército de derecha. Ella es una republicana recalcitrante. Ella repite el discurso neoliberal como si tuviera ideas críticas que le pertenecen. El hecho es que muchos militares fueron parte de la llamada “Reconstrucción” de Puerto Rico después del huracán María. Tomaron las calles junto con la policía local. Los militares regresaron, como siempre regresan.

About the artist: Actress taurine and Puerto Rican. Graduated from the Drama Department of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, (2009). She began his career in 1996 with Pedro Santaliz, and later became a founding member of the theater group in the streets Jóvenes del 98 under the direction of Maritza Pérez Otero. Later she continued his training with Puerto Rican teachers and artists Rosa Luisa Márquez, Teresa Hernández, Viveca Vázquez, among others. In Argentina, she trained at Sportivo Teatral with Mirta Bogdasarian and Ricardo Bartís (2011-2013, Buenos Aires), and was part of the Quinto Piso Theater Companies, directed by Daniel Godoy, and El Rizoma Collective (2011-2016, Buenos Aires) . In 2017 she returns to Puerto Rico, where despite the imbalance, she bets on continuing to grow artistically, professionally and ideologically.


2. Karen Langevin / Performance / 15 min

Title: Fortune

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: An interactive whimsical game of chance that uses improvisational movement to foretell. Fortune winks at the futility of our desire to know the future through the unavoidable presence of the body.

Fortuna, Un juego de azar interactivo que usa la improvisación de movimiento como herramienta para predecir. FORTUNA es un guiño a nuestro deseo banal de conocer el futuro, usando la inevitable presencia del cuerpo.
​diseño camisa: ​Zaida Goveo Balmaseda.


3. Luna y Vecky / Musical Performance / 30 min

Title: Luna y Vecky

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece:  After having expanded their audience to more than 15 people, Luna and Vecky decide to make a little concert in ​the Loisaida Theater Lab​. Luna and Vecky studied music at Berkley and fuse their music with different musical genres and performance. They use their music to express their darker feelings. They have been depressed for more than 10 years.

Luego de haber expandido su público a más de 15 personas, Luna y Vecky deciden hacer un conciertito en el Loisaida Theater Lab dentro de la Plataforma Mezcolanza​. Luna y Vecky estudiaron música en Berkley y fusionan su música con distintos géneros musicales y performance. Usan su música para expresar sus sentimientos más oscuros. Llevan en depresión más de 10 años.


03:30 pm ¡Ay María!


4. ¡Ay María! / Short Play / 30 min

 

About the piece:   Some neighbors who did not know each other before hurricane Maria, have joined after the catastrophe, to collect debris, share food and rely on their needs. These neighbors are the actors and actresses. Some of the people / characters represented in the piece are taken from the Puerto Rican reality, people / characters that we find in our neighborhoods, urbanizations or towns. We also parody public figures and politicians who through the media have been part of the hurricane experience.

Cast: Mickey Negrón, Mariana Carbonell, José Eugenio Hernández, José Luis Guitierrez, Marisa Gómez
directed by​: Maritza Pérez Otero​

Unos vecinos que no se conocían antes del huracán se unen después de la catástrofe, para recoger escombros, compartir la comida y apoyarse en sus necesidades. Estos vecinos son los actores y actrices. Algunos de las personas/personajes representados en la pieza son sacados de la realidad puertorriqueña, personas/personajes que encontramos en nuestros barrios, urbanizaciones o pueblos. También parodiamos las figuras públicas y los políticos que a través de los medios han sido parte de la experiencia huracanada.

​Elenco: Mickey Negrón, Mariana Carbonell, José Eugenio Hernández, José Luis Guitierrez, Marisa Gómez
Dirección: Martiza Pérez Otero.


5. Mickey Negrón / Performance / 15 min.

Title: Carpeta

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: A look at the process of persecution that the Puerto Rico Nationalist Party experienced in the past and the current crisis.

​U​na mirada al el proceso de persecución que vivió​ el movimiento nacionalista de PR en el pasado y la ​resistencia actual.


6. Paulina Pagán / Performance / 15 min.

Title: Bestias de paraíso 2 – El fuego y la jicotea*

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the piece: In honor of my Caribbean grandmothers, especially Levina Wiltshire (1938-2014) In this piece my body becomes a river, a vessel, a bridge between my ancestors, our island ecology, Puerto Rican bomba, its violent history and the joy of dancing. *The jicotea (Trachemys stejnegeri stejnegeri) is the only native Puerto Rican freshwater turtle. The bomba song “El fuego y la jicotea,” composed by Christian Tonos, ignited this creative process.

A mis abuelas caribeñas, en especial a Levina Wiltshire (1938-2014) En esta pieza mi cuerpo funge de río, de nave, de puente entre mis muertas, la ecología isleña, la bomba puertorriqueña, su sangrienta historia y el placer de bailar. *La jicotea (Trachemys stejnegeri stejnegeri) es la única tortuga nativa de agua dulce de Puerto Rico. La canción de bomba “El fuego y la jicotea,” compuesta por Christian Tonos, fue uno de los detonantes de este proceso creativo.


6. Eduardo Alegría and Desmar Guevara / Musical Performance / 30 min.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

About the artist: Puerto Rican musician and singer-songwriter, developed in theater and experimental dance, improvisation, democracy and politicization of the body. This amalgam of disciplines informs his work. Part of training as an actor he did with the director Maritza Pérez Otero in the political theater. He is an observer of the country and of society.On this occasion he will sing accompanied by Desmar Guevara on the piano.

Músico y cantautor puertorriqueño, desarrollado en el teatro y en la danza experimental, la improvisación, la democracia y politización del cuerpo. Esta amalgama de disciplinas informa su trabajo. Parte de formación como actor lo hizo junto a la directora Maritza Pérez Otero en el teatro político. Se nombra a sí mismo como: un observador del país y de la sociedad.​ En esta ocasión cantará acompañado por Desmar Guevara en el piano.


Mezcolanza NYC


About TheaterLab co-producers:

MEZCOLANZA NYC 2018 – 13th Edition

Mezcolanza is a cultural platform born in 2013 in the city of Buenos Aires produced by Helen Ceballos. It gathers short pieces of artists and multi-disciplinary collectives in order to maintain a live and open stage for the processes and creations of emerging artists in different cities around the world. We aim to erase distances and expose pieces of author, which account for the social reality that is lived in our changing environments. To date, Mezcolanza has hosted over 250 artists among the cities of Buenos Aires, New York and San Juan de Puerto Rico. On this occasion, Mezcolanza visits the city of New York for the third time and celebrates its twelfth edition. We have convened 14 multidisciplinary artists. These artists work in theater, performance, movement, music, improvisation, construction, musical composition, costume making, sculptures, sound and video art. In this edition of the Festival Loisaida and within the framework of the Theater Lab. Mezcolanza presents the urban interventions of 14 outstanding artists from the local and international scene of Puerto Rico, Latin America and the United States, interlacing the scenic discourses of these creative artists with their status as permanent immigrants.


04:35 pm Community Pageant


Loisaida Community / Short Play / 20 min

Photo by: Ryan John Lee

 

About the piece:   The pageant is a large scale outdoor performance, using giant puppets, painted flats, masks, costumes, music and dance performed by and for the community to tell the their own story.


#LoisaidaFest@LoisaidaFest

The 31st Loisaida Festival

The 2018 Loisaida Festival

Sunday, May 27th 2018

11:00am – 5:00pm

Avenue C Corridor / Loisaida Avenue / Alphabet City.


The Loisaida Festival is the largest ethnic community pride festival in the Lower East Side. On the Sunday before Memorial Day, over 29,000 converged on Avenue C— Loisaida Avenue to participate in last years amazing street fair event. More locals, citywide, regional and global visitors pack the Avenue every year. The Loisaida Festival offers diverse manifestations of the Puerto Rican and Latino cultures expressed through music, dance, live theatre performances, cuisine, and the arts and crafts of the many artisans that are our prime vendors. Besides delivering top-notch live musical entertainment that features well-known names, the event is also a venue for local artists and emerging talent. It also serves as an important vehicle to disseminate educational, wellness and community services information to its visitors.

The Loisaida Festival, along with the colorful and expressive Artist/ Community Parade that precedes and kicks-off the day-long event, have become the annual signature Loisaida, Inc. production that brings together all cultures to celebrate the inclusive spirit of the LES. Funds raised go directly to our non-profit for programming and community services that are based out of our new Loisaida Community Center on 9th Street and Avenue C, where we now enjoy a long-term lease [50 years] for our 10,000 square foot facility. Our corporate, public and individual supporters that contribute generously to the event appreciate that the Sunday, May 27th Festival is a true culmination of a year-long community curated program of workshops, residencies, intergenerational activities and partnerships that are the foundation of, and create the energy and impetus behind the Festival.

Your support guarantees innovative cultural and community development programs in media and technology, healthy living, as well as our culinary arts component in development of our upcoming teaching commercial kitchen, plus much more, it keeps our community thriving!

From contract to cleanup, the Loisaida team aims to meet sponsor expectations at every level providing an excellent opportunity to engage thousands of festival visitors on the day, and display branding Logo throughout social media, and beyond, for many preceding and subsequent months.


Garbagia Universe

Concept:

Building on last year’s successful Garbagia Island, Loisaida Inc. Center will expand this summer into Garbagia Universe. Acting on the continued need to build public historical awareness of cultural immigrant history, and consistent with Loisaida’s commitment to urban place keeping, the project refashions cultural practices of Downtown Latino/a/xs from Carmen Pabón, Jorge Brandon, Bimbo Rivas, Pedro Pietri, Petra Santiago and beyond, to contemporary realities. This second cycle will expand to include and explore the pedagogy and practice of the Latin American modernist, Joaquín Torres García, who lived in New York’s Downtown, and who was the subject of investigation of one of our artist-in-residence, and teaching artists for this cycle, Juan Bautista Climent.

This version will offer three component workshops where participants can hone their skills and realize their final products in a performative exposition. These include sewing and costume making, sculptural and conceptual art, and performance production, over the span of three weeks in August and September.

Description:

1st week: Sewing and Textiles Workshop by Daniela Fabrizi

In this first week, after finding an object and having an introductory inspirational meeting about the universe with images and references, we will be building a specialty costume. Together we will create a more universal idea of what fabric means. We will be looking on how to make fabric from “junk”, while learning basic techniques on sewing and alterations, crafting textile patterns and building this piece that will keep developing on the second stage of the project, adding sculptural pieces, all this while reflecting and developing a character for its 3rd week stage. The garment will be the final product of each participant artist, and will be presented as part of the Fashion Show the day of the event.

While creating this costume we will work on creative stimulation, repurpose of materials that can become/are also fabric, and with invited artist Sonia Peña we will have 1 to 2 hours workshops each day to learn mending and alterations, not only this will help to the development of their costume but while creating it they will learn basics but practical and useful techniques for everyday life.

Workshops will include:
Alterations/Mending: From buttons, zippers, hems to decorative hand stitches.
Patterns and Sewing: Basic machine sewing, introduction and reading of a pattern.
Textile Design: Lets make textiles and design patterns creating consciousness about color, composition and mix media. This will be where we explore with different materials, ways of mixing color and texture while learning the ideal tools to use.
Character Development: Out of all of this aspects, we will start an exploration of the first stages of a character, using the costume as a tool to understand and give information about these creature through color, texture and shape. The idea is to give the first step into what will be an ongoing work until Performance Workshop Week where it will be finally worked in
detail and developed.

2nd week: Sculpture Workshop by Juan Bautista Climent

This workshop will focus on the development of sculptural elements that add visual force and meaning to the garments made in the first Garbagia Universe workshop provided, they are made mostly of recycled materials.

Day 1: Universal Symbols and Drawing
We will study traditional clothing from different indigenous cultures in Latin America, Africa, and Asia, containing symbols of the universe (such as the Sun, Mother Earth, Planets, Stars, etc.). We will have a brief review of the ideas of universal symbols of Joaquín Torres García, previously learned in Loisaida Center during the Constructivism Month in July. With these visual and theoretical sources as inspiration, participants should sketch their own sculptural designs, contemplating that they will be designed with recycled materials.

Day 2: Objects in our neighborhood are objects in the Universe
Participants will be challenged to find at least one object that has been discarded within the Lower East Side area, which they consider to be of visual or conceptual value, or which may have this value with appropriate interventions with other artistic materials. Participants will learn the basic techniques of paper mache to combine it with recycled objects.

Day 3: Time to Work
Development of Sculpture, recycled materials and paper mache.

Day 4: Color as forms in the Universe
This day, participants will learn basic concepts of color, but understanding it as tone and form, as taught in the constructivist doctrine of Joaquín Torres García.

Day 5: Final Details
Completion of sculptures. The participants will add the pieces made to their clothes.

3rd week: Performance Workshop by Zuleyka Alejandro & final presentation.

During the last week of Garbagia Universe Program the participants will have the opportunity todevelop their character in a collaborative manner. Performance, body movement and character workshops will be held in order to develop the Performance for the event. After creating their fabric and sculptural pieces during the first weeks of the Project, it will be a time to put it in action the creations.

Outcome:

Participants developed a socio-political approach and learned about crucial contributors to the history of the LES through active participation. Directed with a pedagogical perspective into recreating what important key people (yet invisible to the mainstream narrative) did for our neighborhood. This created awareness into reusing waste and reconstructing its concept into resource. Also pointing out the use of communal spaces for the benefit of the community.

We empowered participants to be active in their communities. The art workshops are beneficial for trans-generational bonding, mental health, motor skills and cognitive development in younger participants. Infusing the creative act with social contemporary issues at stake in the neighborhood and the larger world of many residents, creates empathy, conviviality and a sense of urgency to make a difference.

Garbagia Universe Show pictures (check back soon):

Press release:
(In progress) Garbagia Universe Show
Sept. 9th, 2017 – 6:00 pm at La Plaza Cultural de Armando Pérez Community Garden.

NEW YORK, NY, SEPTEMBER 10, 2017 – Tbd.

Pedagogical Benefits:

Participants developed a socio-political approach and learned about crucial contributors to the history of the LES through active participation. Directed with a pedagogical perspective into recreating what important key people (yet invisible to the mainstream narrative) did for our neighborhood. This created awareness into reusing waste and reconstructing its concept into resource. Also pointing out the use of communal spaces for the benefit of the community.

We empowered participants to be active in their communities. The art workshops are beneficial for trans-generational bonding, mental health, motor skills and cognitive development in younger participants. Infusing the creative act with social contemporary issues at stake in the neighborhood and the larger world of many residents, creates empathy, conviviality and a sense of urgency to make a difference.

Garbagia Island 2016 original trailer:



Loisaida’s Summer Program is made in collaboration with La Plaza Cultural and with your support, thank you.

Constructivist Month

The Loisaida Center is proud to announce

Constructivist Month

 

A Constructivist View: The artist in the Community, the artist in the Universe

Goals and overview:  In Commemoration of Joaquín Torres García

  • Series of workshops and conferences on Joaquín Torres García Constructivism in Spanish and English language.
  • Artist open-studio (Every Thursday, Friday & Saturday from 1pm to 6pm)

1.Introductory Workshops on Constructivist Aesthetics By María Eugenia Méndez-Marconi

BIO: María Eugenia Méndez-Marconi,

Friday, July 14: Initial theoretical instance, J.T.G biographical presentation (7-9pm)

Saturday, July 15: Introductory Workshops on Constructivist Aesthetics. (For youngsters from 12 to 16 years old from 9 am-1pm, and for those over 17 years old, from 3-6pm)

2.Exposition of the Constructivist Doctrine By Marcos Torres Andrada

BIO: Marcos Torres Andrada, son of the painter Augusto Torres, who received by direct oral tradition, the philosophy proposed by his grandfather, Maestro Joaquín Torres García, in his Constructivist School.

Friday, July 21: Conference: “Relevancy and Urgency of the Constructivist Proposal”(7-9pm) This conference will bring to light fundamental concepts of the Constructivist Proposal highly relevant in the Contemporaneity of the American Continent and global challenges.

Friday, July 28: Tribute to Maestro Torres García’s Legacy. Introduction to Constructivist Thinking (7-9pm)

This commemorative event, has been held for fifty consecutive years, thanks to the  Uruguayan Embassy, Consulate and Uruguayan Diaspora of NYC. Torres-Garcia’s grandson, Marcos Torres, will be present to give a brief scope of the hemispheric influence of his grandfather’s influential Escuela Constructivista in Uruguay and the rest of the world from its beginning to the present day.

Saturday, July 29Comments on the text “The Tradition of the Abstract Man” (9:00 am-5:00pm, with recess from 12: 30 to 2:00 pm)

Original intensive workshop, developed by  that will deepen the constructivist concepts of visionary Torres García, making a thorough reading and revision of his text “The Tradition of the Abstract Man”.

Friday, September 22: Conference: “Relevancy and Urgency of the Constructivist Proposal”(7-9pm)

  • Theoretical lecture on concepts dealing with the exhibition (Dates TBD)

 

Sing for hope!

Come one, Come All!!

Loisaida Inc., Acacia Network and the Institute for the Puerto Rican/Hispanic Elderly invite you to experience the uplifting power of music with Broadway performers from Sing for Hope!

The Sing for Hope vision of art for all is informed by our belief that the arts have unique power to uplift, unite, and transform individuals and communities. Our outreach programs in under-resourced areas – from schools to community centers to healthcare facilities – demonstrate this every day.

Each Sing for Hope program is defined by the volunteer service of artists, the needs of the community, and our belief in the transformative power of the arts.

Noches de Bohemia with IRIS CHACON


Buy TicketsComprar Boletos


Your contribution will support our commitment to the Puerto Rican and Latino Cultures and the preservation of our heritage in New York City.


Made possible through the generous support of AgeWell New York

AgeWell New York

Open Community Textiles Workshop

Loisaida inc. is proud to present Tejedoras de Magia with Daniela Fabrizi. This open community textile workshop will be complementing with costumes, banners and flags the Cabezudo and the Parade Making workshops to debut in the Opening Community Parade of the The 30th Annual Loisaida Festival. This collaborative atelier will be open to visitors and the community at large during the whole month of May, all FREE.


Specific Dates by theme:

Re-plasti-cycle your Garments: July 2017 New Dates TBD (3pm-6pm)

Costumes! Banners! Flags! GIANTS!: July 2017 New Dates TBD (3pm-6pm)


Workshop description:

  1. Re-plasti-cycle your Garments

Learn how to reuse plastic and repurpose everyday plastic trash into your own hand-made fabric. We will focus at making fabric from plastic junk, crafting our own textile patterns and building handmade garments and wearable pieces that would be used by individuals at the parade.

This workshop is aimed at younger audiences, who are in the beginning of their journey on their textiles and design interests. Also participants will explore the idea of reusing, recycling and re-inventing with what they have and experiment letting their mind to be their own limit to create new beautiful and usable things.

(Recommended for Pre-teen and Teens)

  1. Costumes! Banners! Flags! GIANTS!

Fabric is one of the most versatile, used and indispensable materials that could transform any parade into a memorable experience within any community. On this workshop we will learn and apply some basic skills on textiles to make costumes, banners, flags and giants. Open to all artists interested in textiles with any experience. In collaboration with Zuleyka Alejandro.

All creations can be part of this year’s edition of the Loisaida Festival Community Parade.

(Recommended for kids, adults, EVERYONE)


Artist Bio:

Daniela Fabrizi. Always inspired by the work of women and her own travels, she is a costumes and textiles lover. Based in New York, and having working experience in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, France and London, she works in all crafts related to this medium: from film, tv and theater to textile arts work with the community and her own independent projects. She enjoys the most working and sharing her craft with the community, while learning and getting inspired from them.

Contact Daniela Fabrizi at dani.fabrizi@gmail.com or call (347) 314-3555

The Loisaida Festival’s 4th Annual Theater Lab

 The Loisaida Festival’s 4th Annual Theater Lab

Co-produced by MEZCOLANZA NYC & Loisaida Inc.


Brief description of participants and their performance, visual, theatrical or musical pieces:


1. Teresa Hernández / Performance / 15 min

Title: (A) parecer  

About the piece: Performance-space intervention and body. Appearance is a human condition that reveals the uniqueness of each in the encounter with the-othrx. Ten years ago he works with a woman dressed in a black suit. She has named her-the walker. She goes out and walks in and out, complains, reveals in she a-seem what she lives.

About the artist: Stage performer. Actress, dancer, creator-interpreter, author and director of her own texts, self-management activist. She has spent more than twenty-five years research and practice from the frontiers of dance, theater and performance. Looking for other ways of doing, narrating and being on stage, starting with the integral study of the body, space, and its own text. Their themes surround; Identities as shifting and complex lands; Art and it´s established canons, violence and power with its multiple faces and bifurcations. Precariousness is a fundamental part of its ethics. Hernández’s career has been recognized by the United States Artists Foundation under the discipline of Theater Arts. (USA Role Fellow-2011). She is the second Puerto Rican on the island to receive such distinction, being the only one in the field of theater. She holds a master’s degree in “Management and Cultural Management” from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras precinct.


2. Kairiana Núñez / Performance / 10 min

Title: La basquetbolista

About the piece: Set in a basketball game’s tight quarter, a Puerto Rican basketball player has to row hard against the opposite team’s defense in the presence of a referee that unfairly penalizes her and does not call the true fault.

About the artist: Actress taurine and Puerto Rican. Graduated from the Drama Department of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus, (2009). He began his career in 1996 with Pedro Santaliz, and later became a founding member of the theater group in the streets Jóvenes del 98 under the direction of Maritza Pérez Otero. Later he continued his training with Puerto Rican teachers and artists Rosa Luisa Márquez, Teresa Hernández, Viveca Vázquez, among others. In Argentina, she trained at Sportivo Teatral with Mirta Bogdasarian and Ricardo Bartís (2011-2013, Buenos Aires), and was part of the Quinto Piso Theater Companies, directed by Daniel Godoy, and El Rizoma Collective (2011-2016, Buenos Aires) . In 2017 he returns to Puerto Rico, where despite the imbalance, she bets on continuing to grow artistically, professionally, Ideologically and humanely.


3. Mickey Negrón / Performance / 18 min

Title: Transgressed Body

About the piece: An emigrant, homosexual, transvesti. Strength in the voices of the minority.

About the artist: Mickey Negrón Puerto Rican artist. Artistic director of the Asuntos Efímeros art platform. Enthusiastic writer. Free thinker. Nonconforming gender. Cultural manager. Singer. Moving. Student who never finishes. Fan of pop singers and frustrated athlete. It just premiered as a critic. Currently works an artistic residence at the Center of Fine Arts to be presented in August 2017 and coordinates the second edition of Quiebre: International Performance Festival in Puerto Rico.


4. Yan Christian Collazo / Performance / 15 min

Title: Untitled 

About the piece: Character that intervenes in the intermediates, comments the pieces, is ally of the public. Uses a half mask makes jokes about the current situation on the island in relation to the floating islands that we are all talking about individualism, migration and the condition of the migrant.

About the artist: Yan Christian Collazo: Actor, poet, creator, dancer. Puerto Rican. He holds a Bachelors degree in Drama with a second concentration in Foreign Languages ​​specialized in Italian. Studied at “Universitá Cattólica del Sacro Cuore” in Milan, Italy; Specialized in poetry and Italian literature. He took workshops with Latin American theater groups including Malayerba from Ecuador and Yuyachkani from Peru. De Clown with maestro Luis Oliva of Puerto Rico, David Martínez Sánchez of Spain and with the group “Pig Iron Theater Company” of Philadelphia. In 2012, he was part of the group La Pata de Cabra, acting in the play ‘Cortadito or Capuchino’, directed by his teacher Rosa Luisa Márquez. The Festival of Theater of the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture was invited. He obtained an MFA in Ensemble Based Theater. He was selected to participate in the “Mad River Festival” along with the company of the school “Dell’Arte International School of Physical Theater. He has been invited to the “2017 River Theater Festival” in Blue Lake, CA and to “California Summer School for the Arts” in Los Angeles, CA. After completing his short tour with his thesis, he will move to New York with a view to forming a multidisciplinary theater group and establishing a working and collaboration bridge between Puerto Rico, New York, California and the world.


5. Awilda Rodríguez Lora / Theater Lab MC / Contemporary Dance / 19 min 

Title: Untitled

About the piece: Contemporary dance movement piece that accounts for its status as a migrant who absorbed American culture and made it theirs.

About the artist: Awilda Rodríguez-Lora is a performance choreographer and cultural entrepreneur. Born in Mexico, raised in Puerto Rico, and working in-between North and South America and the Caribbean, Rodríguez Lora’s performances traverse multiple geographic histories and realities. In this way, her work promotes progressive dialogues regarding hemispheric colonial legacies, and the unstable categories of race, gender, class, and sexuality. Rodríguez Lora is currently a host/coordinator at La Rosario in Santurce (Puerto Rico) where she is creating, researching, and producing her life project, La Mujer Maravilla, while developing new strategies for the sustainability of live arts in Puerto Rico. After more than ten years of work as a fully independent artist, she is committed to further studying how artistic economies can be harnessed to support alternative forms of life rooted in communality, creativity, and social justice. laperformera.org.


6. Jeanne D Arc / Dance / Flamenco / 15 min

Title: Untitled

About the piece: Contemporary dance & Flamenco intertwined with poems of protest by Federico García Lorca

About the artist: Jeanne D Arc Casas (1984) was born in Aibonito, Puerto Rico. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Individualized Studies from the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras Campus. In 2011 she earned a master’s degree in performance and choreography at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque where she was a Moderna and Flamenco dance instructor. Since January 2012 is part of the company Soledad Barrio y Noche Flamenca. She has made a large number of tours in the United States, Canada and Argentina Europe and the East. It also teaches lessons in modern dance, contemporary dance and body movement in different schools and universities. Recently Jeanne D ‘Arc Houses participated in the program of residential artifacts of the Fine Arts Center Luis A. Ferré de Santurce, PR where shows the show Hij @ s de la Bernarda directed by the teacher Rosa Luisa Márquez.


7. Poncili Creación Artist Collective/ Performance / Art Installation  

About their piece: During the month of May Poncili Creación will be studying the Loisaida community and its mural history in order to produce a performance piece that speaks about the short comings that the community has faced in the past and still face today.

Inspired by Loisaida, Poncili Creación will create several of their unique sculptures based on Loisaida’s murals and community. Using different elements they will create a performance to be presented at the Theater Lab.

About the artists: Poncili Creación conceptualizes and designs interactive experiences for all ages. The company has been conspiring for over half a decade, in which they have shared their work with several countries throughout their international tours to the United States, Latin America and the Caribbean. Their creation technique consists of several disciplines which lead them to create complex structures that resemble different forms through different mechanisms and means of creation. These objects, often humanized, can induce placebos and metaphorical experiences to the spectating mind that often goes from passive interaction to active observation, in the attempt of decoding what happens and transforms before their eye. They currently reside in Puerto Rico and dedicate their time to the study of objects and reality.


8. Yaraní del Valle & Gabo Lugo / Music  / Performance / 20 min

Title: Pura’s Lágrimas

About the piece: Musical project developed by Yaraní del Valle and Gabo Lugo that fuses pop music with electronic sound supports and stage theatricality.aims to comment and provoke conversations about identity, gender inequality, her experience as an immigrant and the devastating effects of colonialism, the political condition that Puerto Rico has been a victim of for more than a century.

About the artist: Yaraní Del Valle Piñero is a Puerto Rican actor, singer, dancer, educator, cultural promoter, and activist based in New York City. Her interdisciplinary approach to artistic creation has led her to train and to collaborate with theater directors, choreographers, musicians, filmmakers, writers, and educators as a performer, co-creator and/or curriculum developer. Some of her projects include CHAMACAS,  ChicaPReneursSeniors In Motion and Pura’s Lágrimas and latest co-founder of Caicú, a nonprofit organization that serves as a cultural platform to empower Puerto Rican artists beyond geographical barriers.


9. Lizbeth Román / Music / 40 min

About the piece: Original music that fuses the Caribbean bohemian with multiple rhythms and a Lyric of the everyday that joins the poetic with the street jargon.

About the artist: Lizbeth Román is a Puerto Rican songwriter, theater and singer. With her scenic force accompanied by the porosity and intensity of her voice, Lizbeth has established herself in the independent scene with her original music that fuses the Caribbean and bohemian vibe with multiple rhythms and a lyric of the everyday that connects the poetic with the street jargon.


10. Alejandro Aldarondo  / Art Installation / Site-Specific

Title: Durational

About the piece: Site-specific art installation uses threads or strings that seeks to trace our multiple routes. Uniting as a collective, migrants from here and there. Respecting our qualities and differences, exalting the reasons of movement of each one, looking for a common place from which to leave, is born this installation of threads that looks for the earth and wants to take root. 

About the artist: Visual artist Puerto Rican, is dedicated to build facilities with textiles and thread in open spaces. Design and make clothes. Artist / installer, performer, designer, costume designer and dancer. He has a bachelors degree in Interdisciplinary Studies illustration and Drama. Associate Degree in Fashion Design. Has worked on several projects for: Wire / Mezzanine · PR / NYC / The great fantastic circus  and the fashion event: Bohemian Sunset.


About TheaterLab co-producers:

MEZCOLANZA NYC 2017 – 12th Edition

Mezcolanza is a cultural platform born in 2013 in the city of Buenos Aires produced by Helen Ceballos. It gathers short pieces of artists and multi-disciplinary collectives in order to maintain a live and open stage for the processes and creations of emerging artists in different cities around the world. We aim to erase distances and expose pieces of author, which account for the social reality that is lived in our changing environments. To date, Mezcolanza has hosted over 250 artists among the cities of Buenos Aires, New York and San Juan de Puerto Rico. On this occasion, Mezcolanza visits the city of New York for the third time and celebrates its twelfth edition. We have convened 14 multidisciplinary artists. These artists work in theater, performance, movement, music, improvisation, construction, musical composition, costume making, sculptures, sound and video art. In this edition of the Festival Loisaida and within the framework of the Theater Lab. Mezcolanza presents the urban interventions of 14 outstanding artists from the local and international scene of Puerto Rico, Latin America and the United States, interlacing the scenic discourses of these creative artists with their status as permanent immigrants.


BECOME A SPONSORREGISTER AS A VENDOR

Come Paint With Us!

COME PAINT A MURAL WITH YOUR COMMUNITY!

Painting extravaganza opened to the community. Artistic experience not necessary. Participants are not required to attend all of the sessions, only hands and creativity needed to help complete this project!

@ FIRST STREET GREEN ART PARK
EAST 1ST STREET AND HOUSTON

33 E 1st St, New York, NY 10003

This event has passed, thank you to all of you that made it possible!



Open Community Mural Painting Weekend

An endeavor hoping to pay tribute to the 30th anniversary of the twenty-six La Lucha Continua murals raised in 1983 by the community mural collective Artmakers Inc. to address six of some of the compelling political issues of the time, issues such as: gentrification, police brutality, immigration, women’s issues, and opposition to U.S. interventions in Central America and apartheid in South Africa. In contrast with much of the art being produced in the neighborhood at the time for the mainstream art market, this was created for the people, a “neighborhood-directed” effort as described in NYTimes.

The mural will be designed and painted by a small group of volunteers called upon by members from each organization; led by artist Sam Wisneski of the Thrive Collective. This collaboration represents a joint effort in calling on members from a surrounding community to speak to their own experiences, thus amplifying the voices of the community by offering up the podium, or in this case rather the paintbrush, to the people. More than a simple retelling of history, this mural can portray our present through past voices.

As the director of The Loisaida Center, Libertad Guerra posits,
“This exhibition is more than an excavation of the past or an exploration of the social, political and cultural context in which the murals were created. It is also a lens aimed at today’s Loisaida, focusing on how the neighborhood and the issues have changed, directing the eye to the future.”

Two from the original twenty-six pieces are still visible at La Plaza Cultural to this day.  Though much of the image from this piece by Susan Ortega has all but withered, the slogan “La Lucha Continúa” remains a powerful reminder to locals in the neighborhood and a reflection of our present through an historical lens.

Production for the commemorative mural coincides with the “La Lucha Continua The Struggle Continues: 1985 & 2017” exhibition currently on display at Loisaida Center.

The 30th Loisaida Festival

A celebration is coming:

The Loisaida Festival has been historically celebrated on the Sunday before Memorial Day, this year is on:

    Sunday, May 28th fom 12:00pm – 5:00pm

2017’s theme is Immigration where we’ll be recognizing and celebrating the Im/migrant experience in the Lower East Side – The Gateway to America, and celebrating the Latin American Immigrant and their contributions to this community, city and country.

BECOME A SPONSORREGISTER AS A VENDOR