From Aug. 2-6, the Two River Theater will host the seventh annual Crossing Borders (Cruzando Fronteras), a festival of new plays by Latino playwrights.
The five days of the festival will take place at the Two River Theater, 21 Bridge Ave., Red Bank. Admission is free and open to the public.
According to theater representatives, the festival will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Aug. 2 with an outdoor neighborhood party on the Two River Plaza, featuring opportunities to meet the artists involved in the festival, along with food and live music performed by David Oquendo.
There will also be a lecture by Jacob G. Padron, the founder and artistic director of The Sol Project, a New York City-based theater initiative that produces producing works by Latino playwrights, at 7 p.m.
The first play will be “El”, which will be performed on Aug. 3 at 7:30 p.m. Written by Raul Garza and directed by Michelle Bossy, the play depicts two siblings living with their mother in Chicago who find themselves caught between their past and their future as one risks exposing family secrets in a novel she’s writing, while the other hopes to leave his job at a butcher shop.
On Aug. 4, “At the Very Bottom of a Body of Water” will be performed at 7:30 p.m. The play tells the story of a reclusive woman who leaves her life of solitude and enters a surreal world. It is written by Benjamin Benne and directed by Weyni Mengesha.
The festival’s first play for children, “Blancaflor,” will be shown on Aug. 5 at noon. A bilingual production with Spanish and English dialogue, the performance will be mostly spoken in Spanish. Depicting a prince attempting to rescue his father with the aid of the mysterious title character, “Blancaflor” is written by Cecilia Cackley and directed by Jerry Ruiz, with a Spanish translation from Artemis Lopez.
Also on Aug. 5 will be “El Huracan,” written by Charise Castro Smith and directed by Pirrone Yousefzadeh, which will be performed at 7:30 p.m. Influenced by William Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” the play depicts a family in Miami during Hurricane Andrew and their life 30 years later.
The final play will be “The Golem of Havana,” a musical with music from Salomon Lerner, lyrics from Len Schiff and book and direction from Michel Hausmann. It will be shown on Aug. 6 at 3 p.m. “The Golem of Havana” focuses on a Hungarian-Jewish family living in Barista’s Havana just before the Cuban revolution.
The Two River Theater will also be host to “Lunch and Learn – Speak Up, Speak Out! – Art Matters” on Aug. 15 from 11 a.m.-3 p.m. According to theater representatives, the event will teach participants to learn how to take a non-partisan position and advocate for the arts, learn to talk to elected officials through one-on-one role playing and have conversations with legislators or communicate with their local offices. As with the festival, admission is free.
