SolFest 2023

The Sol Project in partnership with Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater and North Star Projects welcomes you to the sixth annual SolFest: A Latiné Theatre Festival with PlayPenn as our community partner for 2023! The festival will kick off with the second annual SolFest Picnic in the Park on Sunday, August 27, followed by four days of Latiné work, including works in progress, short pieces, solo and ensemble work, panels and screenings. The festival's readings will take place in the heart of the theater district at Pregones/PRTT theater.

The programming for SolFest 2023 will include the following:

August 27 @ 3 PM in Central Park
SolFest Picnic in the Park
SolFest kicks off the festival with their second SolFest Picnic in the Park. Come join us in community and celebration in Central Park for our sixth year of SolFest, and meet some of the artists participating in this year's festival.


August 28 @ 7 PM at PRTT or watch on northstarprojects.org
North Star Projects: Art Share Evening
Monologues and Short Works
Written by the 2023 LPC Summer Jam Playwright Fellows
Join us for an evening of monologues and short scenes featuring the work of the inaugural cohort of playwrights from the Latinx Playwrights Circle Summer Jam, a week-long writers' workshop led by program director Darrel Alejandro Holnes (SolFest 2019 Playwright) which provides fellows with an opportunity to delve into the business of playwriting and elevate their craft. The readings will be followed by a post show panel with the playwrights. The LPC Summer Jam was presented in partnership with the Dramatists Guild of America this past month, July 23-28.


August 28 @ 8:30 PM at Quad Cinema
NSP Latiné ShortsFest (NSPLSF)
Presented by North Star Projects
Curated By Andrés Nicolás Chaves and Adriana Gaviria
Join us for our inaugural NSP Latiné ShortsFest during SolFest! The evening will include seven short films featuring Latiné filmmakers Andrés Nicolás Chaves, Emma Cuba, Andrew Garcia, Eunis Levis, Juan Pablo Palacios Zuñiga, Emilio Subía and Melina Valdez followed by a short conversation with the artists.


August 29 @ 7 PM at PRTT
READING: Publik Private
Written by eppchez yo-sí yes
Directed by Santiago Iacinti
Some private things have to be made public if we want to live—in the way that our bodies become public when we go outside, where we will be perceived. Publik Private grapples with the past, as the protagonist attempts to reconcile their ancestors’ own gender expansiveness with the roles those same ancestors played in erasing queerness through colonization and genocide.


August 30 @ 7 PM at PRTT 
Reading: Excerpt of bala.fruta./bullet.fruit.
Written and performed by Jesús I. Valles
My first bullet burrowed through the head of a would-be Mexican president, a seed, stretched root-systems of street blocks, through a school hallway, a dance club, a Wal-Mart, killing grounds made sapling’s feast, made soil of my head and bloomed there, into these words, into my living.” A harvest of bullets and the fruits they yield, bala.fruta./bullet.fruit. is a meditation on what it means to make life possible in the shadow of the gun, to ask, “What is the opposite of a bullet?”

Reading: Red Eyes
Written by Michael León
Directed by Estefanía Fadul
For Carlos, sexual desires come with terrifying results—the visions of a haunting Red-Eyed figure. After a surprising blowout at the grocery store prompts his fiance to put their wedding on hold, Carlos unwillingly seeks help for his volatile outburst. As he takes a journey backward, Carlos unlocks repressed memories of toxic masculinity, childhood trauma and insurmountable grief.

Special Event: Post-Show Aftercare Discussion
With Poet and Facilitator Paul LaTorre in collaboration with Robleswrites Productions Inc.
Paul LaTorre, known on stages as Paul con Queso, is a professor, publisher, performing poet, host, facilitator of workshops and healing spaces, activist and advocate from Newark, NJ. His work as a poet and facilitator centers healing, especially for masculine identities. He believes in trauma-informed teaching and much of his work centers around the intersection of survivorship and mental health. Robleswrites Productions Inc. is a 501c3 organization that creates literary events that foster intergenerational communal healing, literacy, creativity, and equity for the Bronx and beyond by supporting and publishing writers of color with a special focus on women writers.


August 31 @ 7 PM at PRTT
Reading: Excerpt of Picked Up
Written by Alexis Elisa Macedo
Directed by Adriana Gaviria
As a mom too young and taken too soon, Maricela’s been twisted by her mother-in-law into a blueprint of what mistakes not to make for her daughter Cynthia. But, when their not-so-little girl returns home from her first semester away at college, and with her boyfriend, “Jorge,” on her arm…her father Juan is worried that Cynthia is paying the price of his unwillingness to stand up to his mother, and defend the love of his life.

Reading: Excerpt of Lottery Boy
Written by Edwin Sanchez
Directed by Jorge B. Merced
To quote Cyndi Lauper
Money changes everything
I said money, money changes everything
We think we know what we're doin'
We don't know a thing
It's all in the past now
Money changes everything
You're a 15-year old boy living in a trailer.  Overnight you become a multimillionaire, but you have to keep it a secret or risk losing it.  What do you do?