2001

A QUEST FOR OUR

THEATRICAL IDENTITY

2002

11th

Season


Houseguest


by Mario Diament (Argentina)
Directed by Mario Marcel

About the play: A young couple’s sedentary life is interrupted by the arrival of a guest. The three reveal their needs: to be heard, to have a witness to their existence, to have something to talk about the next day… A constant search for friendship, affection, solidarity, and above all, identity, by beings of a questionable past and an uncertain present.

From the director:  Our Houseguest:  Mario Diament

We are now closing our 2001-02 season; a season that gave us all kinds of surprises and propelled us down unsuspected paths.  With the end of the season, we also close our tenth year of lunar activity and soon move into our new home, our “Casa de la Luna”, which will be open to all of you, our very dear friends.

And so we finish a season in which we sought our theatrical identity, and we’re sure this finale could have no better ending.  By presenting an author of Mario Diament’s quality, with his work El Invitado/Houseguest, we are truly delving into our identity!

This is the theater of Mario Diament – and especially his Houseguest:  a return to the headwaters of a theater of quality and timeliness.  This is a theater that mirrors us and strips us bare, at the same time it tenderly embraces us.

El Invitado/Houseguest is a play that could have been written in any Hispanic country, but it is also a work that gives us the latitude to investigate the most interesting and forceful dramatic currents in today’s Latin American theater.

Thank you for joining us today, thank you for the affection and company you’ve gifted us with this season, and a very special “thank you” to “Our Houseguest:  Mario Diament.”

Mario Marcel

About the author: Mario Diament was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. A veteran journalist, he worked as a reporter, editor, foreign correspondent and columnist for several publications in Miami, Madrid, New York, Geneva, Tel Aviv and Cairo.

During the years of the Argentine dictatorship he was managing editor of La Opinión, a newspaper directed by Jacobo Timerman that strongly opposed the military government. Mr. Timerman was arrested in 1977, and the paper was taken over by the Army.

Mr. Diament is the author of several award-winning plays that have been produced in his native Argentina as well as in Latin America, Spain, Israel, Yugoslavia and the United States. He has also written for the cinema and television, and is the author of several books of fiction and non-fiction.

Most of his plays were produced in the U.S., and published in Modern International Drama. Story of a Kidnapping was presented in New York, Los Angeles and Washington DC and featured at the Joseph Papp Public Theatre in New York during the Hispanic Theatre Festival. Houseguest, produced by the Los Angeles Actor’s Theatre in 1982, won the LA Weekly Award for Best Play. Equinox premiered simultaneously in New York and Los Angeles. Lost Tango was directed by Joseph Adler in 1994 at the Hollywood Boulevard Theatre. The Book of Ruth, commissioned and produced by the New Theatre in March 2000, was nominated for a Carbonell Award and won the Streisand Festival of new Jewish Plays in San Diego, CA.

Besides the current World premiere of Smithereens at the New Theatre, several of his plays will be seen this year in Washington DC, Romania, Portugal, Spain, Israel and Argentina.

He currently lives in Miami, where he teaches journalism at Florida International University and writes a weekly column for the Argentine daily La Nación. Mr. Diament wishes to thank his wife Simone for her invaluable help, advice, and companionship.

Cast

Nora……………………Claudia Torres

Lucio………….….…….Hernando Acuña

Silvio…………………...Peter Pereyra


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