CLOUDCUCKOOLAND
A Play about Life, Love, and Miami
Written and Directed By Vanessa Garcia

Please join us for the production of The Krane’s newest production: a play entitled CLOUDCUCKOOLAND by Vanessa Garcia. The play had its first exposure in 2005 at Books & Books in Coral Gables, as a staged reading. After much audience acclaim for the reading, the play is now being put on the stage.

Synopsis:
TIME: EARLY 21st century; circa 2003

In 414 BC Aristophanes wrote a play called The Birds, in which there existed a city built on air above the plain of Phlegra in Greece where there lived birds of all species. As Aristophanes’ play unfolds, the audience witnesses the “flight”/escape of several Athenians to this special city built in the air, which they call Cloudcuckooland. I have taken this idea and applied it to the city of Miami, with its very own varying “species of birds,” all immigrants who have, in one way, shape or form, “flown the coop.”

My play is the story of Bobby, a young woman in her mid twenties, born of a Cuban mother and an American father, in search of home. Bobby has taken it upon herself to build a flying machine for a competition that is being held in Miami. The play opens with Bobby speaking to her psychologist about the idea she has in mind is for an airplane that takes on the characteristics of a pigeon. That is, she wants to build a plane that can detect the Earth’s magnetic field and always find its way back home, where it began. In the process of building this plane, Bobby has dreams in which she talks with Amelia Earhart, having somehow located her, regardless of her “MIA” (a pun, of course -- MIA being Miami’s abbrev.) status. She also has dreams with another “flying woman”: Mary Poppins.

The play unfolds as we listen-in on Bobby’s sessions with her psychologist, as we peek into her dreams and catch glimpses of her conversations with friends and loved ones. Eventually, her friends, who she has asked to help her build this pigeon-plane of hers, “abandon her,” and she is left to build her flying machine on her own, with only the guidance of (and defiance of) what she has dreamt.

At the competition, Bobby’s plane crashes and she is left unconscious. It is Bishop, the “balsero,” who takes Bobby to the hospital. Bishop is Scarlet’s best friend. Scarlet is Bobby’s mother, who we are also able to spy on as, in her unconscious state, Bobby has a “bird’s eye view” of her mother by her hospital bedside. In the end, Bobby has to figure out a way to make it out of her unconscious state back towards her mother, back home.

In the meantime, as it is the end of summer in Miami (otherwise known as “hurricane season”), there are hurricane’s threatening to hit the city. The play ends, as does Aristophanes’, with the hope of the future, while keeping one eye toward the danger of oncoming “storms.”

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When: Three Weekends in March
March 7,8,9
March 14,15,16
March 21, 22, 23

Time: 8pm Each Night
Except Sundays which are 3pm Matinee

Where: ABANICO Theatre
Arts & Minds Center
3138 Commodore Plaza,
Coconut Grove
Miami, Fl 33133

For more info:
Call: 305-450-9931
Or Visit www.thekrane.com

Ticket Prices:
$25 for adults
$15 for students
$7 for Children
First Come First Serve Seating

CAST MEMBERS:

AJ Navarette (of Laughing Gas Improv) as "Pinky"
Michelle Steele as "Scarlet"
Tom Colucci as "Mark"
Cristina Morrison as "Amelia Earhart"
Ozzie Rodriguez as "Teflon"
Nicole Garcia as "Bobby"
Stefan Pinto as "Boz"
Charimar Cordova as "Mary Poppins"
Robert Hernandez as "Bishop"