The Presence of Absence (a Cuban nocturne)
Donation protected
Dear family, friends and community, please consider supporting the presentation of my upcoming play, The Presence of Absence (a Cuban Nocturne).
Learn more about the play, the opportunities ahead, and the impact of your support, below:
Project Overview
The Presence of Absence will be presented as a staged reading at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee in October 2023 and at the ENT Center for Performing Arts in Colorado Springs in April 2024. Future readings are in the early planning stages at several locations including New York City, Miami and Rhode Island.
Your financial support will help us further develop, expand and promote this effort by helping to:
- cover the costs of renting the theatres and rehearsal spaces where the play will be presented;
- compensate the actors, director, and the creative and technical teams;
- purchase props and costumes;
- provide programs and circulating promotional materials;
- support a range of corresponding events on the campuses and in the communities where the play will be presented.
Play Overview
The past few years have been challenging for all of us in so many ways. Indeed, we continue to live in difficult times. As a teacher, writer and artist, I have increasingly focused my work on the importance of healing, belonging, forgiveness, and connection to family, community and place. I believe these are values that we as individuals and as a nation desperately need to embrace. To that end, and in my capacity as an artist, I have been working on a play titled The Presence of Absence (a Cuban nocturne) that addresses these issues through the eyes of a Cuban exile.
The Presence of Absence is a memory play that chronicles the lives of several generations of Cuban women. The action of the play is set in both pre- and post-revolutionary Cuba; and the plot pivots on Margarita, an exile residing in the United States, who attempts to come to terms with her divided identity, a traumatic past she has suppressed, and her fear of sharing her heritage with her daughter, Lily. The play emphasizes the importance of preserving history, culture and memory and also addresses more universal issues regarding mental health, intergenerational trauma, the repression of memory as a survival mechanism, and inherited or genetic memory. Ultimately, The Presence of Absence testifies to the power of forgiveness of self and others, and speaks to our collective need for healing.
Please share this request with family, friends and colleagues in your networks, whom you believe would be interested in supporting a project like this.
Thank you for supporting this project!
-Andrea (Andy) O'Reilly Herrera
Photo credit: Carol Dass
Organizer
Alexandra Herrera
Organizer
Manitou Springs, CO