REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT

REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT

April 14 – May 13, 2007
  • By José Rivera
  • Directed by Shirley Serotsky
  • THE SANCTUARY THEATRE at Casa Del Pueblo Calvary Methodist Church

Two Helen Hayes Nominations:
Outstanding Director, Resident Play
Outstanding Lead Actress, Resident Play

Strange things happen in a moonlit backyard on the edge of the California Desert. The cat talks with a dangerously seductive coyote and the moon plays his violin for a lonely woman awaiting her husband’s return from war. When he arrives, broken and distant, the reality of their relationship seems as strange as the apparitions in the desert night. Jose Rivera, a contemporary master of magical realism and the painful and gritty realities of human relationships, has created a suddenly relevant play that explores the scars of war both on those who fight it and those who get left behind.

This production is sponsored in part by generous contributions from Pete Miller & Sara Cormeny, Victor Shargai and an anonymous donor.

Season 7 was sponsored in part by the Dobranski Foundation

“. . . a reminder courtesy of a playwright who’s got fever-dreams in his blood, that the collision of passion and cold, hard reality can leave you bruised under all the blush.”

Washington City Paper

FEATURING

Scott McCormick
Yasmin Tuazon
Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey
Danny Gavigan
Cesar A. Guadamuz
Andrew Price

Designers

Set Robbie Hayes
Lights Andrew F. Griffen
Costumes Pei Lee
Sound Matthew Nielson
Props Jean Ann Douglass

STAFF

Stage Manager Cecilia Cackley
ASM Ashley Hollingshead
Dramaturg Jacqueline E. Lawton
Asst. Lighting Design Connor Dale 
Asst. Set Design Justin Titley

PRODUCERS

Randy Baker
Jenny McConnell Frederick

MEDIA

PRESS

“Gabby (Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey) and Benito (Andrew Price) handle the hard drama skillfully – both completely engulfed in their characters and their depression.”
DC Theatre Scene
“SALVADOR DALI is a beautiful intertwining of such fantastical moments as the one described, and achingly real displays of human interaction.”
DCist
A beauty with an ugly name. That’s REFERENCES TO SALVADOR DALI MAKE ME HOT, the whimsical yet absorbing romantic drama getting a wise, passionate production by Rorschach Theatre.

Director Shirley Serotsky has sure instincts with Rivera’s shifting style, and her lead actors circle each other with devastating familiarity, trading barbs with supple romantic insinuation or weary brittleness as needed. Gabriela Fernandez-Coffey gives a fierce yet vulnerable reading of the wife, who has reached such a desperate pitch of loneliness that she flirts with the nearby teenager (the wide-eyed, infinitely florid Cesar A. Guadamuz).

As Benito, Andrew Price, his voice like a blade, brings a necessary machismo and dangerous edge to the play. But he also registers the hurt and dead-end frustrations, both in the military and in the marriage, that make Benito’s drama as rich as Gabriela’s.
The Washington Post