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Puerto Rican Independence Declared on Stage in United States of Banana

Curtain Call Raphael Corkhill and Giannina Braschi

Angela Sperazza, Hadley Boyd, Hayley Carson, Allen Kennedy

Juan Arturo Vilar playing Segismundo

Epic farce by Giannina Braschi tackles global warming, the disintegration of the American Empire, and the liberation of Puerto Rico.

Puerto Rico is a state of exception, a state of emergence, an emergent state.
— Giannina Braschi, United States of Banana
NEW YORK, NEW YORK, USA, June 20, 2015 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Adapted for the stage by Colombian director Juan Pablo Felix and based upon the postcolonial novel by Giannina Braschi, "United States of Banana" dramatizes the post-911 American psyche around the politics of empire and independence. The play was presented by Columbia Stages in New York City in June 2015.

"Braschi's take on US relations with our southern neighbors in Latin America and the Caribbean, most especially Puerto Rico, is an eye opener. The ire and the irony make for an explosive combination," noted the late publisher of Grove Press Barney Rosset.

The work features Hamlet, Zarathustra, and Giannina on a quest to liberate the Puerto Rican prisoner Segismundo from the dungeon of the Statue of Liberty, where he has been imprisoned by his father, the King of the United States of Banana, for more than 100 years for the crime of being born. The text was inspired by the Spanish classic drama "Life is a Dream" and the German vanguard play "Hamlet-Machine" by Heiner Muller. The work depicts New York City as "the Darwinist capital of the capitalist word" and U.S. imperialism over Puerto Rico as doomed as “a chicken with its head cut off”.

Juan Pablo Felix is a theater director and acting coach from Bogota. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship and studied directing at Columbia University under the mentorship of American master Anne Bogart, the artistic director of SITI. He served as casting director of the Oscar-nominated film "Maria Full of Grace.”

Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi, a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow, best known for the postmodern poetry classic "Empire of Dreams," the best-selling Spanglish novel "Yo-Yo Boing!" and the radical work of political fiction "United States of Banana." She is considered one of the most revolutionary voices in Latin American literature today and has won numerous literary awards and honors, such as: Ford Foundation, Danforth Scholarship, New York Foundation for the Arts, National Endowment for the Arts, Reed Foundation, InterAmericas Foundation, Yale University Press, and Puerto Rican Institute for Culture.

The lively play closed on June 20, 2015 and the mixed genre book by the same title is available through Amazon.com

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Columbia University Theater Arts
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