BRUJA

Meet Playwright Luis Alfaro

Luis Alfaro is a critically acclaimed writer/performer who works in poetry, plays, short stories, performance and journalism. Chicano born and raised in the Pico-Union district of downtown Los Angeles, he is the recipient, among other awards, of a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship and an NEA/TCG residency grant. In 2002 he was awarded the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays twice, for his plays Electricidad and Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner. Electricidad received its world premiere at the Borderlands Theatre in Tucson, Ariz., and was subsequently produced at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, and has an upcoming production at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles. A highly anthologized writer, he is featured in the anthologies O Solo Homo (Grove Press), Twelve Shades Red (Graphically Speaking LTD) andParticular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers (MIT Press); Out of the Fringe: Contemporary Latina/o Theatre and Performance (TCG) and Extreme Exposure: An Anthology of Solo Performance Texts from the Twentieth Century (TCG). He is a member of the New York playwrights’ organization, New Dramatists, and was a resident artist at the Mark Taper Forum, where he is also co-director of the Latino Theatre Initiative. He was a visiting artist at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., where he created Black Butterfly, Jaguar Girl, Piñata Woman and Other Super Hero Girls, Like Me, as part of the New Visions/New Voices youth theater program. Black Butterfly… is also performed as part of the Mark Taper Forum’s PLAY touring program. He has toured his performance work throughout the United States, England and Mexico. His short film, Chicanismo, was nominated for an Emmy award, won Best Experimental Film at the 1998 San Antonio CineFestival and was featured in San Francisco’s CineAcción ’98. A member of The Dramatists Guild, he is the winner of the 1998 National Hispanic Playwriting Competition and the 1997 Midwest PlayLabs for his play Straight As a Line which was seen in New York at Primary Stages, in Minneapolis at 3 Legged Race and in Los Angeles at Playwright’s Arena and had its world premiere at the Goodman Theatre. His play Bitter Homes and Gardenspremiered in Los Angeles at Playwrights Arena. Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner was commissioned by South Coast Rep and was workshopped at the Public Theater. He teaches throughout Los Angeles including the University of Southern California and California Institute of the Arts.

Meet Director Loretta Greco

Loretta Greco⁺ is delighted to launch her fourth season at Magic Theatre with Claire Chafee’s Why We Have a Body. She concluded her third season in style by producing Taylor Mac’s five-hour fantasia The Lily’s Revenge. While at the Magic she has developed and produced the work of Lloyd Suh, Laura Shellhardt, John Kolvenbach, Luis Alfaro, Lydia Stryk, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Carter Lewis, Oni Faida Lampley Liz Duffy Adams, and Theresa Rebeck.  As a director, Ms Greco’s New York premieres include Tracey Scott Wilson’s The Story and the OBIE Award-winning Lackawanna Blues by Ruben Santiago Hudson at The Public Theater; Katherine Walat’s Victoria Martin: Math Team Queen and Karen Hartman’s Gum at Women’s Project; Emily Mann’s Meshugah at Naked Angels; Laura Cahill’s Mercy at The Vineyard Theatre and Nilo Cruz’s Two Sisters and a Piano at The Public Theater and A Park in Our House at New York Theatre Workshop.  Ms. Greco directed the national tour of Emily Mann’s Having Our Say as well as the play’s international premiere at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg, South Africa. Regional credits include the critically acclaimed revival of David Mamet’s Speed-the-Plow and the West Coast premiere of David Harrower’s Blackbird at American Conservatory Theater; Romeo and Juliet at Oregon Shakespeare Festival as well as productions at La Jolla Playhouse, McCarter Theatre Center, Long Wharf Theatre, Intiman Theatre, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis, Coconut Grove Playhouse, Playmakers Repertory Company and The Cleveland Play House.  She has developed work with dozens of writers at Sundance, The O’Neill, New Harmony, New York Stage and Film, New Dramatists, The Public Theater, and South Coast Rep.

Prior to producing at the Magic, Ms. Greco served as Producing Artistic Director of NY’s Women’s Project, where she produced the world premiere of Diane Paulus and Deirdre Murray’s musical Best of Both Worlds as well as plays by Lynn Nottage, Karen Hartman, Caridad Svitch, Rinne Groff and Lisa D’Amour.  She also served as Resident Producer at the McCarter Theatre in Princeton where she conceived and launched their new play second stage initiative and produced the work of Athol Fugard, Emily Mann, Ntozake Shange, Jon Robin Baitz, Anna Deveare Smith, Doug Wright, Jane Anderson, Adrianne Kennedy, Nilo Cruz, and Joyce Carol Oates among others.

Ms. Greco received her MFA from Catholic University and is the recipient of two Drama League Fellowships and a Princess Grace Award.

⁺Member of Stage Directors and Choreographers Society, the union for stage directors and choreographers.