This month’s reading features Augusto Amador’s Kissing Che. This full length play with eight characters played by five actors takes place in Miami, Florida, 1984. Four years after the Mariel Boatlift, a man named Reina is dying in a nursing home claiming to have been Cuba’s last famous drag queen and to have had a passionate love affair with the Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. Tamika, an African-American nurse, strikes up a friendship with him. United by untold pasts, shared confessions change their lives forever against the background of Cuba in the late 60’s and 70’s, when Castro regime begins it’s systematic and brutal persecution of homosexuals.

Kissing Che is the first play in Amador’s Latin-American Dictator Trilogy series. It was developed through the Public Theater in NYC and was presented at the Public Theater Spotlight Series, Blank Theater, Celebration Theater and Skylight Theater. Kissing Che is published in the Proscenium Theater Journal.

Kissing Che was named in HowlRound’s, “101 Plays by The New Americans, or on Latinidad”.

Theatre can inspire action. ACTivate is ACTLab’s newest series of readings in collaboration with both theatrical and civic partners. Together we share a play about important contemporary issues. Local civic and service organizations are invited to be part of the conversation following the play and share knowledge and action steps.