Current Student Julián Mesri Joins Ingenio as a 2019 Playwright

By
Robbie Armstrong
September 27, 2019

Current Playwriting student Julián Mesri has been invited to write for Milagro Theater’s INGENIO Milagro program. Tracy Cameron Francis directed Mesri’s play Immersions for a one night only reading on September 20, 2019.     

The INGENIO Milagro program returns for a third year at Milagro Theater, providing three Latino/a playwrights an experienced and nurturing laboratory for the development of their new work. Milagro Theater’s commitment to new work and the development of Latino/a artists in all disciplines is what lead to the creation of this unique program, the purpose of which is to give playwrights an opportunity to work on their plays, and for audiences to experience them at the development stages. The week of rehearsals culminated in concert-style readings of the plays, as well as a workshop for Ingenio and local playwrights.

Mesri billed Immersions with the following synopsis, “In a typical apartment in an American city, a group of post-collegiates play out their varied malaises while a Spanish lesson goes on behind them. Rents are overdue, small startups are dreamt up, and medical school is bemoaned over. But it’s more than just post-grad ennui and foreign languages in the air. Strange things (and smells) are afoot, and soon their sheltered world begins to be taken over by another world (and family) in their apartment. Soon, the world inside the apartment grows as the scenes multiply and overlap in linguistic counterpoint, and two groups of people begin to understand each other less and less. In the midst of this cacophony of two worlds, when we find that our home is not what (or where) we think it is, we ask ourselves, who is invading who? A dark bilingual comedy about who and how we misunderstand.” 

Mesri is an Argentinian-American composer, playwright, and director. His recent plays include Red, (Sanctuary Festival, HERE Arts Center), The Gauchos Americanos (Teatro Extranjero, Buenos Aires) and the musical Bethlehem (St Paul's Theater, BAX Space Grant). His production of Lope de Vega’s Fuenteovejuna at Repertorio Español won the 2013 Gilberto Saldivar Outstanding Production HOLA Award. He has served as Translator for both the Lark US/Mexico Exchange as well as PEN World Voices. He served as Artistic Director for the 2013 PEN World Voices: New Plays from Spain festival. He is a Usual Suspect at New York Theatre Workshop, where he was a 2012-2013 Emerging Artist of Color Fellow. As a member of Panorama Sur, his work was showcased at the Buenos Aires International Theater Festival in 2015. He was also the 2010-2011 Van Lier fellow at Repertorio Español. He was awarded an ASCAP Scholarship to the NYMF Song Writing Workshop, and is currently an auditor at the BMI Workshop. Mesri is also an adjunct professor of Performing Arts at Pace University.