SATURDAY-ONLY SHOW

'Anna in the Tropics' en español a 1st for Theatre Charlotte
JULIE YORK COPPENS
Theater Writer

Over 80 years of rehearsals at Theatre Charlotte, a lot of directors have told actors to take it from the top. But never like this:

"Otra vez, por favor."

The community troupe will make history Saturday with its first performance en español: a staged reading of "Anna in the Tropics," the 2003 Pulitzer Prize-winner by Cuban-American playwright Nilo Cruz. The drama, in which a classic Russian novel inspires and divides a family of cigar-factory workers in 1920s Florida, is most commonly staged in English.

A representative for Cruz said Theatre Charlotte was the first amateur theater in the country to request the Spanish version of the play. That makes this weekend's modest presentation -- actors seated on a bare stage, scripts in hand, an English translation projected above -- a national milestone, too.

The 221 seats in the Queens Road theater are apt to be filled with friends and family of the cast, plus curious Anglos; Theatre Charlotte executive director Ron Law hopes the performance also will draw a new audience of Latinos hungry for live theater.

How many?

"We have no clue," Law says, laughing.

A sellout might prompt more performances of "Anna," either at Theatre Charlotte or within the Latino community. Whatever happens, Law says, another Spanish play-reading is on the slate for next season; after that, he'd like to try a full production.

Community cast

Charlotte had a Spanish-language theater troupe briefly, in the late 1990s, but since then -- even as the area's Latino population has grown -- such performances have been rare. So Spanish-speaking actors, too, have been starved for opportunities."I'm very excited about it, you know, because I like theater a lot. Sometimes I miss it," says "Anna" actor Carlos Manuel Rivera, a native of Puerto Rico who lives in Cornelius and teaches Spanish at Davidson College.

Before moving here, Rivera says, he performed in the still-thriving theater tradition the Spanish colonials brought to the New World. In "Anna," he reads the part of Santiago, a factory owner and father torn between old values and new economic realities.

The play's director, Frank Dominguez, says Rivera's performance "will blow the audience away." "He has such a rich, deep voice," Dominguez says. "When he's speaking this beautiful, poetic dialogue, you don't have to understand what he's saying."

Another member of the cast, Catalina Kulczar-Marin, has always wanted to try acting in Spanish. Born in Venezuela to Hungarian parents, and raised in Florida, the trilingual Kulczar-Marin has been in Charlotte for 10 years. When she heard about the "Anna" audition via e-mail, she says, "I was all over it."

Outreach `great,' needs work

And yet it took Dominguez weeks to find enough actors to fill all eight roles.

Here's how desperate he was for talent: When La Noticia reporter Diego Barahona went to interview Dominguez about the show, the director handed him a script. That impromptu audition earned Barahona, born in Ecuador, the key role of Juan Julian, a handsome "lector" hired to recite literature during the cigar rollers' tedious shifts.

"I think it's great that this old bastion of Charlotte in Myers Park is reaching out to people who are really new," says Dominguez, a former New Yorker whose own parents emigrated from Cuba in 1948. But like theaters across the country that have struggled to diversify along with their communities, he adds, Theatre Charlotte has a lot to learn about recruiting Latino talent and reaching Latino viewers.

For one thing, Dominguez says, he could have cast the show more easily if Law hadn't scheduled it during the summer, when many Spanish speakers are out of the country visiting family. And though "Anna" reads well, he says, it's a title better-known in the Anglo theater world than among Latinos.

"For the next time around, I would definitely try to find people who are already active in the Latino community who have an interest in the arts -- and those people are out there -- and ask them, what play should we do? When should we do it?"

Rivera thinks simple stage fright kept auditioners away.

"It's just like English," the Davidson professor says, smiling. "Many people are afraid to act."

Dominguez and company are hopeful that Saturday's performance will calm the fears of theater lovers on both sides of the footlights, and on both sides of Charlotte's Anglo-Latino cultural divide.

Now the director has a new problem: what to tell his actors just before they go on.

A literal translation of "break a leg" -- "rompa una pierna" -- lacks a certain ring, he says. And for show people, "good luck" ("buena suerte") is bad luck in any language. So Dominguez thinks he'll borrow from an old teacher who said, "¡Coraje!"

Or en inglés: courage. ON STAGE

Anna in the Tropics

A Spanish-speaking cast reads Nilo Cruz's acclaimed play about love, literature and a good cigar.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Saturday.

WHERE: Theatre Charlotte, 501 Queens Road.

ADMISSION: $10-$12.

DETAILS: (704) 334-9128; or www.theatrecharlotte.org..