Denver playwright Tencha Avila’s prize-winning play, “El Beso del Adios,” – “The Goodbye Kiss” in English — will open off-Broadway in New York on March 13 at the Repertorio Espanol Theatre.
The play, set in 1970 in Bessemer, a fictional steel mill town in Southeastern Colorado, creates a dramatic day in the life of a Mexican American family roiled by problems.
“The play dramatizes the universal themes of love and conflict in a family undergoing generational and social change,” Avila said.
“It’s a drama with serious themes, but the distinctive, complex characters with their own personalities, foibles and contradictions bring humor to their serious predicaments.”
The play won the Grand Prize in the 2007 MetLife National Playwriting Competition Nuestras Voces and will enter the theatre’s repertory of Hispanic-themed plays presented in Spanish with simultaneous English translation via headphones.
Avila, a native of Las Animas and graduate of the University of Colorado, was a Boulder school teacher, cultural diplomat in Vietnam, staff member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and member of the Ohio Governor’s Housing Commission among other roles before studying theater at Ohio University and becoming a producer, director and actor, as well as playwright in the United States and Mexico. She has also been a visiting artist at the University of Northern Colorado in Greeley and the Chinese Central Drama Academy in Beijing.
In “El Beso del Adios,” Lupita, the first family member to attend university, is about to graduate, a cause for celebration. Uncle Chuy, a boisterous, self-made man who regards himself as the unchallengeable head of the family, arranges for her to teach in a local school, but she’s got more distant plans with a Japanese American boyfriend who arouses old family ethnic antipathies. Uncle Joe, out of work for four months because of the strike at the steel mill, is severely depressed. Lupita’s aunt and mother add their problems and solutions to the mix.
Ms. Avila’s plays “Maria y Su Side Kick” and “The London Impromptu” were produced at the Cultural Center of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Two of her 10-minute plays won national competitions and were produced at the Cleveland Play House and the six Women Playwriting Festival in Manitou Springs, respectively. Her plays “Angie’s Fire” and “No Number Home” were also finalists in the MetLife Competition of 2008 and 2009.
Repertorio Espanol theatre, founded in 1968 to present high quality productions of Latin American, Spanish and Hispanic American plays, is at 138 East 27th St. in New York. Its telephone number is (212) 889-2850, or it can be found on the Internet at www.repertorio.org.
