My next project

So yesterday Stella and I met with Jen and Susie from Vestige Group as well as Andrew who will be playing my brother in Marisol. Andrew and I wound up reading about half the script for them. And we were cast. Yay! Stella was really an angel, but I'm sure she picked up all sorts of new cuss words from Andrew and I's reading. So mark your calendars for the last two weeks in September. This is a dark, dark script, but doesn't the description sound freaking awesome?!

THE STORY: Marisol Perez, a young Latino woman, is a copy editor for a Manhattan publisher. Although she has elevated herself into the white collar class, she continues to live alone in the dangerous Bronx neighborhood of her childhood. As the play begins, Marisol narrowly escapes a vicious attack by a golf club-wielding madman while traveling home on the subway. Later that evening Marisol is visited by her guardian angel who informs her that she can no longer serve as Marisol's protector because she has been called to join the revolution already in progress against an old and senile God who is dying and "taking the rest of the universe with him." The war in heaven spills over into New York City, reducing it to a smoldering urban wasteland where giant fires send noxious smoke to darken the skies, where the moon has not been seen in months, where the food has been turned to salt, and water no longer seeks its level. Alone, without her protector, Marisol begins a nightmare journey into this new war zone where she is attacked by a man with an ice cream cone demanding back pay for his extra work on Taxi Driver. Marisol finds herself on the streets, homeless, where her many encounters include a woman beaten for exceeding her credit limit and a homeless burn victim in a wheelchair looking for his lost skin. With the apocalypse well under way, the angels have traded in their wings for Uzis and wear leather motorcycle jackets and fatigues. As the action builds to a crescendo, the masses of homeless and displaced people join the angels in the war to save the universe.

Winner of the 1993 Obie Award. An apocalyptic urban fantasy which urges society to "wake up" and somehow find a way to recover the long-lost and much-needed compassion for our fellow man, as this is the only way to save our world. "…Rivera's play is angry, fearsome, fantastic, and poetically frenzied, without surrendering either its sanity or its mordant sense of humor…It's a cry from the poet's heart." —Village Voice "…Rivera's cruelly slanted world view…is fascinating." —NY Post. "…Rivera's dialogue is poetically powerful…" —BackStage. "…the writing has the potential to tickle a bruised city audience awake with the dark absurdities of our current malaise…" —NY Newsday.

I play June, Marisol's best friend and coworker. And I care for my mentally-challenged brother Lenny, who will be played by Andrew Varenhorst, a very talented local actor you've probably seen if you've seen much here in town. As for the rest of the cast, that gets decided Saturday at auditions, so hopefully some talented folks will come out in droves!