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c/o New Dramatists
424 West 44th Street
New York, NY 10036
(212) 757-6960
(212) 265-4738 fax
Email:
newdramatists@newdramatists.org
Octavio Solis is a playwright and director living in San Francisco. His works, MAN OF THE FLESH, PROSPECT, THE SEVEN VISIONS OF ENCARNACION, and BETHLEHEM, have been mounted at Intersection for the Arts, the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, the Dallas Theater Center, the Magic Theatre, South Coast Repertory, the San Jose Repertory Theatre, Teatro Dallas, Latino Chicago Theatre Company, New York’s Imua Theatre Company, El Teatro Campesino, and Thick Description. BURNING DREAMS, co-written with Julie Hebert and Gina Leishman, was produced by the San Diego Repertory, and his collaborative project with Erik Ehn, SHINER, was mounted by Dallas’ Undermain Theatre. Solis has received NEA Playwriting and McKnight Fellowships, a National Theatre Artists Residency, the Roger L. Stevens Award from the Kennedy Center, the Will Glickman Playwrights Award, a Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Grant, a TCG/NEA Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, and a grant from the Pew Charitable Trust.
BETHLEHEM
Drama 2M, 5W
Multiple Units
A dark work about self-knowledge and the nature of evil, where the devil
lives in a godless world. Lee, accompanied by his photographer
girlfriend Dru, arrives in El Paso to interview Mateo, (a convicted
murderer recently released), over a period of a few days. During the
intense interview process, Lee so empathizes with his subject’s life in
the past that he merges his own past with it in order to reenact it. The
bloody conclusion draws upon the dangers of defining the nature of evil.
Commissioned by American Conservatory Theatre, San Francisco. Readings:
New Work Now at the Public Theater.
MAN IN THE FLESH
Two-act Comedy 4M, 4W
Flexible Set\
A comic retelling of the Don Juan story. Juan Tenorio, a landscape
gardener, falls in love with the young daughter of the family whose estate
he is working on. Resolving to seduce her, he grapples with his libido,
other women of the household, and the eerie ghost of his own mother.
Fracas, his buddy, provides the comic narrative.
Commissioned and produced by Teatro Dallas (1988); South Coast
Repertory Theatre (1990); The Magic Theatre, San Francisco (1990); San
Diego Repertory Theatre (1991); Latino Chicago Theatre Company (1991);
Long Beach Playhouse (1997).
PROSPECT
Full-length ComicDrama 3M, 3W
Two Unit Sets
Scout spends a night in hell as Liza, a beautiful stranger, and her
boyfriend, Vince, pick him up in a Dallas bar and take him home to
continue partying. There he encounters Elena, a crusty, foul-mouthed
Latina dying of cancer, who drags him deeper into her anguish as she drags
him closer to the past he has so long denied. Complications arise when
winter, a drug dealer who suspects him of muscling in on his turf, crashes
the party with his weird and deadly assistant Red.
Deep Ellum Theatre Garage, Dallas, TX (1989); Latino Chicago Theatre
Company (1992,1993); El Teatro Campesino (1993); Magic Theatre, San
Francisco (1995).
SANTOS & SANTOS
Three-act Epic Tragedy 8M, 5W
Flexible Set
Based on a true story, the play tracks the rise and fall of an El Paso law
firm run by the three Santos brothers. After Tomas, the youngest, joins
the firm and discovers that his brothers are involved in drug smuggling,
he forms an unholy alliance with the racist Judge Benson who at Tomas’
urging, places an anonymous call and causes the death of a trusted
colleague, Camacho, and the arrest of his brother Mike. Nothing less than
the assassination of the Judge can atone for his crimes against the family
law, which clashes with the American system of justice.
Commissioned by the Eureka Theatre and co-produced with Thick
Description Company (1993); Dallas Theater Center (1995); Mixed Blood
Theatre Company (1996); Teatro Vista, Chicago (1996); Campo Santo, San
Francisco (1996); Teatro Vision, San Jose, CA (1997).
EL PASO BLUE
A Blues Ballad Act with Music by Michael Hawkeye Herman
Flexible Set 3M, 2W, 1 Guitar Accompanist
Al repays a debt to his buddy Duane by taking the rap for a botched
robbery; but before going to the pen, he commits his drunken sot of a
wife, Sylvie, to the care of his estranged father, Jefe. In the year they
are together, Jefe and Sylvie fall in love and hide out in an abandoned
ranch when they hear of Al’s early parole. As Al and Duane hunt them down,
they run into a weird street kid named China who tests Al’s motives and
his love.
Commissioned and produced by the Intersection of the Arts, San
Francisco (1994); San Diego Repertory Theatre (1995); Teatro Vista/Next
Theatre, Chicago (1997); Oregon Shakespeare Festival (1999).
LA POSADA MAGICA
A Christmas Play in Two Acts with Music by Marcos Loya
Flexible Set 4M, 4W and Assorted Musicians
Gracie, a young girl of 13, still mourns the death of her little brother
and won’t celebrate Christmas to spite God. Along comes a Posada, a
procession of singing celebrants who re-enact the search for an inn that
Mary and Joseph conducted centuries before. Gracie joins their procession,
determined to blow out all their candles to dispel Christmas from her
heart; but as she does so, magical things begin to happen.
Commissioned and produced by South Coast Repertory Theatre (1994-98);
San Jose Repertory Theatre (1995); La Compania de Albuquerque (1996).
EL OTRO
Two-act Drama 5M, 3W
Flexible Set
A girl and her two fathers on a journey to the other side. Romy is wedged
between a father she adores, Lupe, a lowlife drug dealer with a dark past,
and Ben, a squeaky clean Ft. Bliss soldier who hardly knows her. She tries
to commit suicide by taking peyote and instead receives the vision of her
bloody conception and the premonition of a coming death.
Commissioned and produced by Thick Description (1998).