Audience Response from a Friend of Playwright, Elena Guochins
Last weekend, we were pleasantly surprised to find that one of the audience members that day, Roberto Reyes, had come because he is in town for 3 months, and had heard that a production of Elena's work was being done here. He is friends with Elena in Mexico City. Here are his thoughts:
Coming to Chicago and finding out that there are lots of different plays during the year, including Broadway and Off Broadway shows and more than 200 independent companies, was a great; finding out that there’s an annual festival called the Alcyone Festival that since 2008 has dedicated its performances to different topics, including this year’s selection of Mexican plays translated to English, was a very nice experience; but realizing that the best play that I’ve seen since I came to Chicago 2 months ago is a play by a Mexican playwright and directed by a Mexican living in the city was really overwhelming.
I’m talking about A Lover’s Dismantling: Fragments of a Scenic Discourse, written by Elena Guiochins and directed by Alex Gualino, one of the 4 Mexican plays presented this year as part of The Alcyone Festival.The universal topics about couples and love, combined with an impeccable script as well as the way that the director knew how to communicate to the actors the feeling of contemporary Mexico City, made this performance something worthy of being watched.
For some moments I forgot I was watching a play in English, and I felt like home. Despite the young ages of the actors, they manage to give the mid-30’s characters the ideal strength. Their energy on stage and the simple and neat set design and direction makes this play recommended and proves, once more, that for making good theater, a big production is not necessary- just a good script, neat acting and the director’s comprehension of the playwright feeling.
Roberto Garcia Reyes
Deb is Executive Director of The League of Chicago Theaters, which serve a membership of more than 200 theaters, a rich and varied theater community ranging from storefront, non-union theaters with budgets under $10,000 to major cultural centers with multi-million dollar shows.
Neal Dandade has lived in Chicago since 2006. He has trained and performed at the Annoyance, Second City, and iO theaters. He was also a member of Stir Friday Night, Chicago’s Premier Asian American comedy group. He is currently an understudy for the Second City National Touring Company and received his MFA in the Writing for Screen and Stage program at Northwestern University. In Summer 2011, Neal was a writing intern at The Daily Show and the Colbert Report as part of Comedy Central’s Summer School Internship
Reginald Edmund, is a resident playwright of Chicago Dramatists, he was previously a 2009-2010, 2010-2011 Many Voices Fellow playwright. Originally from Houston, Texas, he served Artistic Director for the Silver House Theatre, as well as the founder and producer for the Silver House Playwrights Festival and the Houston Urban Theatre Series. Reggie was the inaugural recipient of the Kennedy Center Fellowship at Soul Mountain Retreat as well as the 2009 National Runner-up for the Lorraine Hansberryand Rosa Parks Playwriting Award.
Born in Mumbai, India, raised near San Francisco, Minita has been seen on The Chicago Code (FOX),and as the title role in the upcoming Hindu mythological film, Parvati's Golden Skin. She has performed with Tony award-winning director Mary Zimmerman's "The Arabian Nights," and has played at Chicago's Lookingglass Theater, The Gift, First FolioTheater, Silk Road Rising, Theatre Seven and Halcyon.
Marc David Pinate is theatre artist committed to creating performance on the edge. Through the mediums of theatre, spoken word, music and movement Marc collides the political with the abstract and pop culture with the spiritual to construct a new reality. As an actor he has worked with the Magic Theatre, Campo Santo, and Teatro Vision in the SF-Bay Area and Su Teatro in Denver. He is a National Slam Poetry champion and was front man for the poetry-music group, Grito Serpentino. His directing experience includes founding Los Del Pueblo Actors’ Lab and the Hybrid Performance Experiment. Marc is currently pursing an MFA in Directing at DePaul University’s Theatre School in Chicago.
Elaine Romero is a 2011/2012 member of the Goodman Theatre’s Playwright’s Unit for which she is writing a full-length version of A Work of Art. Graveyard of Empires is the first in a trilogy Elaine is writing about the U.S. at war. A Work of Art is the second piece of the trilogy. She has won over $125,000 for her plays, which have been presented at the Goodman Theatre, Alley Theatre, Newtown Theatre, and Actors Theatre of Louisville, among others. Recent commissions include Goodman Theatre, Centerstage, American Theatre Company, InterAct Theatre Company (The Dalai Lama is Not Welcome Here), and Kitchen Dog Theater Company. Her plays include Walk into the Sea(Sloan Foundation/Magic Theatre, Sundance Playwrights Retreat),!Curanderas! Serpents of the Clouds, Before Death Comes for the Archbishop (TCG Pew National Theatre Artist in Residency grant),Sun, Stone and Shadows (Arkansas Repertory Theatre), Alicia(Zachary Scott Theatre), Something Rare and Wonderful (Alley Theatre), Xochi: Jaguar Princess (Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), Revolutions (Manhattan Theatre Source; in Spanish at the Panama National Theatre), Ponzi (Kitchen Dog Theater)—Edgerton Foundation New American Play Award, A Work of Art (short version, American Theatre Company), and Barrio Hollywood, which received its Spanish World Premiere at Aurora Theatre and was published by Samuel French in English and Spanish. Her play Wetback is in development with Teatro Vista. Elaine taught in the RTVF Department at Northwestern University. She has adapted Revolutionsfor the screen for a film production company in Spain, and is currently revising a film that will be produced in Mexico.
Jamil Khoury is Founding Artistic Director of Silk Road Rising (
Milta Ortiz is a playwright/poet/performer currently attending Northwestern’s Writing for the Screen and Stage MFA program. Milta’s play, Last of the Lilac Roses is a finalist at NYC’s Repertorio Español, Nuestra’s Voces play contest. Presently, she is a member of ATC’s Chicago Chronicle playwriting. She received two individual artist grants from City of Oakland Cultural Arts, and Zellerbach Family Foundation to write and perform original work. She was co founder of HyPE theater troupe and one third of Las Manas Tres Spoken Word troupe. She has been published in Teaching Artist Journal; in anthologies Days I Moved Through Ordinary Sound, Coyolxuahqui, Cipatl; edited City of Stairways: A Poet’s Field Guide to San Francisco, a book with her WritersCorps students; and self published chapbook, Encantadas with Las Manas Tres. She earned a BA in Creative Writing from San Francisco State University. 
Willa Taylor is the Goodman’s director of education and community engagement. She began her career in arts education at Arena Stage where, under founding director Zelda Fichandler, she established the Allen Lee Hughes Fellows Program—one of the first theater-run apprenticeships designed to increase participation by people of color in professional theater. She then went to Lincoln Center Theater where she created The Urban Ensemble, a multidisciplinary project that served at-risk youth. This collaboration between Lincoln Center and New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and The Public Theater was cited by President Clinton’s Council on the Arts and Humanities in its 1996 report, Coming Up Taller. At Lincoln Center, she consulted for New Victory Theatre, where she designed the arts education program for their inaugural season. Ms. Taylor also served as cultural director for Gay Games IV, where she oversaw the production of more than 200 cultural events, including the Broadway production of Sir Ian McKellen’s A Knight Out. In addition to a longtime career in the arts, Ms. Taylor brings to the Goodman a wealth of experience in other areas. For 12 years she served as a Russian and Arabic linguist in the US Navy. While overseas, she oversaw productions for the United Service Organization in Greece and managed Armed Forces Radio and Television in Turkey where she created the Profiles in Black history series. Following her graduation from Kendall College’s culinary program in 2001, Taylor opened Taylor-Made Cuisine, a gourmet catering company as well as Home Café, a neighborhood bistro. In 2005, she helped open and served as the catering chef for Chicago’s EatZi’s Easygoing Gourmet, a chain of gourmet bakeries, take-out markets and restaurants based out of Dallas, Texas.