Canciones is the world premiere of an immersive theater piece set in a house in Flatbush, Brooklyn. Collaboratively created by Rebecca Martínez, Julián Mesri, Beto O'Byrne, Sara Ornelas, and Meropi Peponides, and presented by Radical Evolution, latinX Playwrights Circle, The Sol Project, and Boundless Theatre Company.

You are a guest at a Mexican family gathering, and the piece never asks you to pretend otherwise.

Cast: Mayelah Barrera (Nina), Johanna Carlisle-Zepeda (Maestra), Cristina Contreras (Ely), Sara Ornelas (Kati), Chino Ramos (Julio), Sammy Rivas (Ricky), EJ Zimmerman (Jenn).

Creative Team: Rebecca Martínez (Director), Beto O'Byrne (Writer), Julián Mesri (Music Director/Arranger), Meropi Peponides (Dramaturgy), Raul Abrego (Production Designer), Christopher Vergara (Costume Designer), María-Cristina Fusté (Lighting Designer), Tye Hunt Fitzgerald (Sound Designer), Daisy Torralba (Props Supervisor).

The dramaturgy of gossip.

The piece is reconstructed from fragments and gaps, what you don't know, what happened in the other room, what you piece together from overheard conversation. Moving through the space is itself a dramaturgical act: you wander, you find the best spot to catch what's unfolding, you learn things secondhand and out of order. Each room has its own logic, but they also bleed into each other. The living room is the space of celebration and leisure. The kitchen is where work and collaboration happen.

The basement holds something else entirely: intimate stories, buried things. It functions as a surprising space of reconciliation, as if submersion were necessary to bring the deepest intimacies into dialogue, to release old resentments and make repair possible.

The illusion of the everyday.

One of the piece's greatest achievements is the feeling of frictionless participation. The flow of the family party is honored completely, and the balance between that organic rhythm and intentional compositional choices is remarkably well-held. You are inside the logic of the gathering, not observing it from outside.

The night I attended, New York was experiencing an intense heat wave.

Rather than disrupting the piece, the heat was absorbed into it, bodies moved and settled differently, and the space breathed differently.

It made me think about the resilience of family social structures, how they accommodate what comes, how even weather becomes part of the event and shapes how people inhabit a space together.

The family as site of care.

Despite the frictions the piece doesn't shy away from, the family here is fundamentally a space of care. The piece also traces a kind of sentimental education: what a Mexican family carries into a new context, what holds, what sustains itself as the essential core of an identity. What is kept and what transforms.

Ritual.

I'm aware the word is overused and sometimes feels emptied out. But here it earns its meaning. The collective songs, the food, the exchange of personal news, these are repeated actions that perform the family encounter, that ritualize it. The piece makes that visible: how those rituals serve as vehicles for strengthening the bonds of the family unit, exorcising resentments, processing grief, and establishing a new balance. Personal feeling is not set aside for collective decision-making: it is the material of it.

The economic undercurrent.

The piece carries, lightly but clearly, the weight of material precarity: a family home at risk, the possibility of losing inherited things to survive. The gathering itself, the ritual of coming together, helps the family locate its real collective priorities. Those priorities are unique to each family and can only be found from inside.

My own experience.

I felt genuinely welcome, “not performed-welcome”, but naturally received as a guest.

The encounter with other audience members was itself interesting: the room held a real range of ages and backgrounds, and watching how differently people connected with the party, how they moved through the space and found their own relationship to it, was part of what I was witnessing.

An immersive piece that doesn't demand anything of you, but opens the space for authentic presence.

Canciones: notes from la fiesta

You are a guest at a Mexican family gathering, and the piece never asks you to pretend otherwise.

The dramaturgy of gossip.

The basement holds something else entirely: intimate stories, buried things. It functions as a surprising space of reconciliation, as if submersion were necessary to bring the deepest intimacies into dialogue, to release old resentments and make repair possible.

The illusion of the everyday.

Rather than disrupting the piece, the heat was absorbed into it, bodies moved and settled differently, and the space breathed differently.

The family as site of care.

Ritual.

The economic undercurrent.

My own experience.

The encounter with other audience members was itself interesting: the room held a real range of ages and backgrounds, and watching how differently people connected with the party, how they moved through the space and found their own relationship to it, was part of what I was witnessing.

Network of Ensemble Theaters

Canciones: notes from la fiesta

You are a guest at a Mexican family gathering, and the piece never asks you to pretend otherwise.

The dramaturgy of gossip.

The basement holds something else entirely: intimate stories, buried things. It functions as a surprising space of reconciliation, as if submersion were necessary to bring the deepest intimacies into dialogue, to release old resentments and make repair possible.

The illusion of the everyday.

Rather than disrupting the piece, the heat was absorbed into it, bodies moved and settled differently, and the space breathed differently.

The family as site of care.

Ritual.

The economic undercurrent.

My own experience.

The encounter with other audience members was itself interesting: the room held a real range of ages and backgrounds, and watching how differently people connected with the party, how they moved through the space and found their own relationship to it, was part of what I was witnessing.

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Network of Ensemble Theaters