The play that almost didn’t make it to our stage

It doesn’t take a village to produce a new play, but it certainly takes a playwright with something to say, artistic directors with vision (and resources) and a bit of serendipity.

Abuelita turned out to be that play for PRIME Productions. Co-Artistic Director Alison Edwards was clearing out PRIME’s mailbox and found the script in an unopened email. Alison and Co-Artistic Director Shelli Place read the script and were immediately drawn to it.

“We loved that it was telling the story of a Latine community,” she said, “and we were looking to expand our reach to other cultures.”

But what sealed the deal was that the play had roles for four women over 50, all fully developed characters who were both funny and relatable. They reached out to the playwright, Nathan Yungerberg.

“It was different from other plays we’d read,” Place said. It had roles for two generations of Latinas, a gay Black man, and a bi-racial teen struggling with his sexuality. Their production of Margarie Prime had just wrapped up its run at the Guthrie’s Dowling Theater and the concern about starting work on a new play was tied up in fears of how long the pandemic could last and the safety mandates by actors’ equity union.

“We knew it (Abuelita) wouldn’t be cheap,” Shelli said. Abuelita requires a large cast and a set with a NYC-style porch stoop and interior rooms. But they did love the play.

PRIME scheduled a stage reading, just as things were starting to open up after the pandemic. That first week, three shows had to be canceled due to cast members testing positive for COVID. “We switched to doing it online with one day’s notice,” Alison said.

Each actor was in their own home for the reading, appearing on the screen in boxes like The Brady Bunch. “In the midst of the production, the lead actor’s feed vanished. Alison jumped in to read that part without any rehearsal or introduction,” Shelli said, adding that in the chaos of the moment it didn’t occur to them to alert watchers of the actor switch.

But even with all those challenges, the 200 people watching loved the play, which prompted PRIME to apply for grants to help cover the expenses of staging the play. In the meantime, Park Square Theater in St Paul approached PRIME to do a co-production of The Revolutionists. So rather than put Abuelita on the shelf, Shelli and Alison worked to get it into the Playwright Center in Minneapolis to be workshopped, a resource for playwrights to get feedback from various audiences to strengthen the play.

Once they finally got the green light that the play was ready for the stage and the grants were lined up, PRIME began casting the play, which turned out to be another challenge.

“There’s a limited number of older Latina actresses in the Twin Cities, and four of them had to be over 50,” Shelli said. Particularly hard to cast was the 13-year-old grandson, because as Shelli put it, she didn’t want to deal with parents and they needed someone old enough to drive themselves to the rehearsals. Nathan rewrote the part for an older boy and then made minor changes when the actor who was cast for the part was Black, rather than Puerto Rican. The two grandmother roles also required actresses who could carry the performance.

The play was cast, the director chosen, the set skillfully designed and the costumes fitted and then ICE came to town. “We were worried that the Latine community wouldn’t come out,” Alison said. But they came out in force.

As it turned out, the play was a success, in part due to the audience that showed up. The enthusiastic audience, which was more diverse than most theatergoers in the Twin Cities, greeted the actors each night with cheers and loud laughter in all the right places. Opening night even had a salsa party.

And now, there’s a sequel in the wings. Stay tuned….