"The director is Carlos Gimenez, celebrated for
his richly visual staging"
IT'S not Christmas yet, but a pinata filled with rich artistic gifts is about to burst on this city. The 11th Festival Latino in New York - the biggest Latin American cultural event in the United States and one of the most important showcases anywhere for Latin talent - begins tomorrow. Fifty thousand people attended the festival's events last year, and at least as many are expected this time.
It will run through Aug. 23, and will feature the best of Latin American, Spanish and Hispanic-American theater, films and music at the Public Theater on Lafayette Street, the open-air Delacorte Theater in Central Park and the Metro Cinema on upper Broadway. Joseph Papp of the New York Shakespeare Festival is producing the festival.
''This is not an ethnic festival,'' said the co-director, Cecilia Vega, in her office at the Public. ''This is an inter-theatrical event whose messages cross all borders.'' Mr. Papp described Ms. Vega, born in El Salvador, as the person ''who keeps the thing together.'' He called her ''the clear-headed and practical one'' who arranges visas, air tickets, hotel space and all other logistical matters for the several hundred Latin performers, crew, directors and producers coming here. Mr. Papp described her co-director and husband, Oscar Ciccone, as the ''dreamer'' who makes the esthetic decisions.
All seven stage presentations, most with simultaneous interpretations in English through headphones, will be at the Public. So will the Tribute to Argentine Cinema, with 21 feature-length movies spanning four decades of one of South America's most influential film centers. There will be a free concert at the Delacorte and a movie festival at the Metro with works from nine Latin American countries, all subtitled in English. Fifty hours of Spanish- and Portuguese-language television programs will be shown over Manhattan and Paragon Cable's Channel L.
Leading off the Festival Latino this weekend is a modern classic of Latin American drama, Sergio De Cecco's ''Renidero'' (''Cockpit''), performed by La Comedia Cordobesa, which includes some of Argentina's most noted performers. The director is Carlos Gimenez, celebrated for his richly visual staging. Based on Sophocles' ''Electra,'' it was first performed in the early 1960's. It is a tale of uprooted, dueling gauchos threatened by industrialization, and is set in a turn-of-the-century slum in Buenos Aires. (In Spanish, tomorrow through Thursday at 8 P.M.; simultaneous English interpretation available at some performances.)
'Political Farce' With Music Among the theatrical stars participating are Fernando Allende, Mexican heartthrob of movies, television and records, in his New York stage debut, and Norma Aleandro of Argentina, the heroine of ''The Official Story,'' which won the 1986 Academy Award for best foreign film. Mr. Allende, a Los Angeles resident who has appeared on the ''Miami Vice'' television series, will be the lead of Carlos Morton's comedy ''Pancho Diablo.'' He said it tells the story of how the Devil, fed up with an eternal bum rap in Hell, reappears as an undertaker on the border between the United States and Mexico. It was written, and will be performed entirely, in English. Mr. Morton, born in Chicago and now living in Laredo, Tex., ''five minutes from the Rio Grande,'' is a Chicano - a North American of Mexican descent. Mr. Allende sees ''Pancho Diablo'' as a ''political farce'' with music. He said, ''Everybody had to cross a big river to get to this country.'' He said the play describes the search, despite hunger and war, ''for that divine heart in all of us.'' Performances will be at 8 P.M. Wednesday through Aug. 9.
Ms. Aleandro, who scored in a one-woman show at the Festival Latino in 1986, will play the title role in ''The Senorita From Tacna,'' by Mario Vargas Llosa. She will appear with her nine-member company. She portrays Elvira, a spinster in her 90's, whose fantasies about herself and her family's past become the obsession of her grandnephew Belisario. Ms. Aleandro's acting last year in her one-woman program was so visually eloquent that one critic removed his English-spouting headset halfway through the show. ''Language,'' he wrote, ''almost did not matter.''
The play will be performed in Spanish, at the Public from Aug. 14 through Aug. 23 at 8 P.M. Simultaneous English interpretations will be available at the performances of Aug. 14-16. Classic Theater, Modern Film
The festival's other theatrical productions are Spain's Cuadra de Sevilla performing an adaptation of Euripedes' ''Bacchae,'' with Manuela Vargas, actress and dancer; Venezuela's Rajatabla Company in ''The Tragicomedy of Calisto and Malibea''; Chile's Taller Theater Two workshop in ''The Clowns of Hope,'' and Puerto Rico's female musical group Las Bohemias in ''Concerto in Hi-Fi,'' a re-creation of Las Damiselas, a true-life female band of the 1940's, with songs by Sylvia Rexach, one of Latin America's most beloved composers.
The new movies at the Metro Cinema include the winner of the best-film prize of the 1987 Latin American Film Awards: ''A Successful Man'' by Humberto Solas, a Cuban director. It will be shown Aug. 7 and 8 at 7:45 P.M. and Aug. 14 at 10 P.M.
The fourth annual free Concert for Peace and Friendship will be held at 8 P.M. Aug. 10 at the Delacorte, and will feature two stars of Latin America's ''New Song'' movement: Lucecita Benitez of Puerto Rico and Pablo Milanes of Cuba. Tickets are available only on the day of the concert.
Photo of Aristides Manira in ''El Renidero,'' which opens the three-week Festival Latino tomorrow night. (Oscar Gonzalez Aguirre); Photo shows, left to right, Ivonne Coll, Fernando Allende and Sully Diaz perform in Carlos Morton's play ''Pancho Diablo,'' beginning Aug. 5 at the Public. (Martha Swope Associates/Carol Rosegg) (Pg. C23).
By Nan Robertson
July 31, 1987
Source: The New York Times