Hispanic Theatre Festival at CDC Theatre

Hispanic Theatre Festival to Open at CDC Theatre in Cranford

Rehearsals are underway at CDC Theatre in Cranford, New Jersey’s oldest continuously producing community theatre, for an exciting new venture: The CDC Hispanic Theatre Festival. Even though there is a large and vibrant Hispanic population in New Jersey, there are no Spanish-language plays being performed in central New Jersey. The CDC Theatre plans to bridge that gap by mounting the Hispanic Theatre Festival, featuring one-act plays that will showcase exciting and intriguing playwrights in Spanish for the Spanish-speaking population of the state...

In a recent interview, long time CDC Theatre member Joel Redmount, who serves as both producer and a director for the Festival, outlined the genesis of the project.

“It all begins with my love for the Theatre. Of course, being married to an Argentine woman and having many friends of all Hispanic cultures was certainly influential. It occurred to me that, despite there being 1.2 million Latinos living in New Jersey, and ‘la cultura Latina’ being increasingly pervasive in our society, there seemed to be very little live Spanish-language theatre in New Jersey. But when I broached this idea to my Spanish-speaking friends – the idea for performing plays in Spanish – they had no clue what I was referring to. It was a foreign concept to them. Thousands of people grow up and raise families here in suburban New Jersey, often speaking Spanish at home, but they never even imagined the experience of hearing the beauty of the Spanish language brought to life on the stage I brought the germ of the idea to the governing board of the CDC Theatre earlier this year. There is a lot of great community theatre being done in New Jersey – but this was an opportunity to tap into an underserved audience, to bring people to the Theatre who perhaps had never experienced it before. That is a very compelling notion to any good Theatre. Doing something new, something inventive, finding new audiences to fill seats. The CDC Theatre board was highly encouraging. They jumped at the chance and carved out time from the CDC Theatre summer schedule. .

The festival’s goal is to showcase up-and-coming playwrights and expand the audience base of established Spanish-speaking playwrights, who speak to a modern audience. Redmount continued:

“Often people’s experience with Spanish-language theatre is from books. We wanted it to be fresh, relevant to a modern Hispanic audience, perhaps a bit edgy. We knew of Alicia Dolinsky, the Argentine playwright, through family connections and brought her one-act play, “Ana y las Langostas” [Ana and the Locusts] on board for its North American premiere. Alicia also agreed to direct. Our second one-act play, “Bony y Kin” is by Carlos Canale, a Puerto Rican dramatist currently working at the University of Connecticut. “

Auditions attracted actors not only from New Jersey, but from the New York and Long Island area. The Festival features actors from nine towns throughout New Jersey and New York with an exciting mix of actors with extensive experience and others for whom the festival is a first introduction to the stage.

The Hispanic Theatre Festival will span two weekends -- July 28/29 and Aug 4/5 -- with four (4) evening performances starting at 8pm. Each evening performance will consist of two (2) one-act plays. Additional information about the Festival and how to order tickets can be found by visiting the theatre’s website at www.cdctheatre.org. Funding has been made possible in part by the NJ State Council on the Arts, Dept. of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts, through a grant administered by the Union County Office of Cultural & Heritage Affairs.