Directed by Alejandra Cisneros
Produced by Playwright’s Arena
Golden Tongues: Flickers
A director aims to succeed in early 20th-century Hollywood by adapting a centuries-old comedy written by his ancestor. While conjuring marvels and mischief, he ignores the all-too-real perils that surround him.
Flickers takes place in 1912 Los Angeles during the earliest era of silent films. Beatriz, an aspiring actress, struggles to make her mark in the fledgling film industry while working with the eccentric director Alarcón, who is fixated on producing a film of La Cueva de Salamanca, a play by his noted Mexican ancestor, seventeenth-century playwright Juan Ruiz de Alarcón. Against the backdrop of a rapidly growing city and a burgeoning film industry they struggle with its downsides: ambition, treachery, prejudice, and creatives eager to claim the latest genius idea as their own. Using La Cueva de Salamanca both as source material and plot device, Burbano recreates the magic of the first days of film in a witty play filled with tongue-in-cheek quips, while exploring how identity and racism play out amid the transformative power of cinema. Where Alarcón’s original play is concerned with the advantages and perils of the magic, Flickers explores how creativity and new technologies can be used for imaginative, original, and entertaining storytelling, or, instead, for derivative narratives that just solidify the problematic status quo.
Golden Tongues is a collaboration between Diversifying the Classics and Playwrights’ Arena. Since 2013, the Golden Tongues initiative has commissioned and staged new adaptations in English of Hispanic classical plays by Los Angeles playwrights.
Flickers will be a staged reading in English.
Diana Burbano was named as part of the Los Angeles Times’ “Latino Vanguardia”. Diana is a resident artist at Center Theatre Group, The Latino Theatre Company, and Breath of Fire Latina Ensemble. She is a Colombian immigrant, a playwright, and an actor. Diana’s play Ghosts of Bogotá premiered at Alter Theatre in 2020. Sapience opened at Moxie Theatre in San Diego in 2022. Fabulous Monsters, a Latinx Punk Rock play, rocked The Public Theatre of San Antonio, featuring the music of FEA in 2023.
She was in the Geffen’s Writers Lab in 20-21 and has commissions with Center Theatre Group, Artists Repertory Theatre, Breath of Fire Latina Theatre Ensemble, HERO Theatre, and Livermore Shakespeare Festival. Residencies include Marfa Live Arts, Milagro Ingenio, Workshop Theatre Lab at Echo Theatre, and the Mercury Company for Artists Repertory.
Diana has been awarded the Advance Gender Equity in the Arts Grant 2022, the Bay Area Rella Lossy Award, and was a 2021 Jane Chambers Awardee for excellence in Feminist Playwriting. She is currently representing Southern California on the Dramatists Guild council.
Cast
Aneleh Rodriguez
Oscar Basulto
Alexa Mora
Raul Vega Martinez
Cristina Fernandez