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Play Time! International Children’s Theatre Festival Includes An International Line Up

The Knight Arts Challenge awarded Teatro Prometeo a matching $50,000 grant from the Knight Foundation to fund Play Time!, an international children’s theatre festival, which runs from November 17 to 23 during the Miami Book Fair International.

“The schedule is insane, but great,” said Joann Maria Yarrow, director of Teatro Prometeo. “Where else can you go to see all these different companies and experience the Book Fair at the same time.”

Seven companies are scheduled to perform during four days. Some days include six performances at the various venues.

Prometeo is a community theater program at MDC founded more than three decades ago at MDC’s Wolfson Campus with the mission of preserving the Spanish language and Hispanic culture through theater. Seven international companies from Colombia, Chile, Argentina and Italy are collaborating with two other local companies – Adriana Barraza Acting Studio and Cuatro Gatos. All shows are bilingual.

The event is jointly directed by Melissa Messulam, Engagement Manager at the Arsht Center for the Performing Arts and Jacqueline Briceño, former director of Teatro Prometeo, who currently teaches acting at the Adriana Barraza Acting Studio. Jim Hammond, puppet artist for The Lion King, is contributing to Play Time! Hammond conducted a two week workshop at Teatro Prometeo.

I have seen the direct connection which exists between children’s theatre and its young spectators, the imaginative power and levels of sensibility this art category generates in them,” said Briceño.

Briceño is directing a play called “Gotas,” (drops) as part of Play Time!, which she wrote and has directed before for the Adriana Barraza Black Box. In the play she accentuates the importance of water for the planet in a bilingual setting.

The performances will take place in three different locations; Teatro Prometeo at Wolfson Campus (300 N.E. 2nd Ave., Room 1101), the Koubek Center (2705 S.W. Third St.) and the Little Haiti Cultural Center (212 – 260 NE 59 Ter.). All performances are free. The Book Fair has presented free performances for children before, but this is the first time they have received the Knight Foundation Grant. To date, BB&T Bank, Miami Book Fair International and Miami Dade College have partially matched the grant.

“It is a fantastic collaboration, it really makes the world our playground,” Yarrow said.