Theatre

Below you will find some of my most recent work as a playwright.

Most Recently:

ICH BIN EIN BERLINER: An Audio Play with Visual Companion
Commissioned by Theatre Lab @FAU
Streaming Through: April 5-May 23, 2021 In Person Events (Streaming live): April 3-5, 2021 for the launch

Critical Responses so far:

Christine Dolen (Artburst) says:
"Ich Bin Ein Berliner embraces the personal and the resonantly universal...[Garcia's] play is, by turns, funny, thought-provoking and deeply moving."

Carolina del Busto (Miami New Times) says:
"As she speaks, it’s clear how stories flow out of her almost effortlessly, like a quiet stream in the woods — and yet, as powerful as a storm."

John Thomason (Boca Magazine) says:
"I’ve been vocally anti- “virtual entertainment” since the pandemic started, but I’m finally humbled: Here is a profound work of creativity that perfectly meets the moment."

Jenna & The Whale

Virtual Reading of New Play Jenna & The Whale to Benefit North Star Projects & The Sol Project

By BWW News Desk
Broadway World
June 25, 2020
More info here

Playwriting Pair’s Whale of A Tale Gets A Big-Time Virtual Reading

By Christine Dolen
Miami Herald
June 25, 2020
More info here

A monologue and a scene from Jenna & The Whale, for The Arsht Center:

Grace, Sponsored by Monteverde

WP Pipeline Festival
WP Theatre
April 16-19, 2020
The WP Festival has moved online.
Please check out @WPtheater on insta. As well as: @GraceSponsoredByMonteverde @MonteverdeMoonshine @CatInSearchOfGrace @vgarcia43

More info here

The Amparo Experience
Written by Vanessa Garcia
Directed by Victoria Collado
Produced by Team Enterprises, Bacardi, Broadway World, and Abre Camino Collective

Extended Again and Again:

MORE About the Amparo Experience:

Vanessa Garcia & Victoria Collado discuss “The Amparo Experience”
Immigrant Archive Project, 2019

‘Amparo Experience’ tells the story of family behind Havana Club
NBC 7
April 12, 2019

More info here

Amparo

Written by Vanessa Garcia
Directed by Victoria Collado
Produced by Team Enterprises, Bacardi, Broadway World, and Abre Camino Collective

Read More Here

Photos by Roberto Chamorro

Miami Trailer

New York Trailer

 

Bacardi Recently Produced a ‘Sleep no More’-Like Live Experience Recreating 1950s Cuba – Rake an Exclusive Look Inside
Business Insider
By Tanya Dua
April, 7, 2018
Read More Here
Read more under Press

My short play, FREEK! is anthologized below.

The play is about a young teenaged rafter that arrives in Miami from Cuba, grows rubber feet, and battles her bullies.

1000 Miles

ESTATE -- April 19, 20, & 22, 2017

Estate Estate - Challenging the laws of the land.

An ordinary wedding transforms into an extraordinary journey through time, space, and culture. Lace up your walking shoes and unleash your imagination as you follow a Bootlegger, a Bride, and an Indigenous Guide across the lush landscape of a Florida estate, and straight down to its underbelly.

Plays collaboratively written by Stephanie Ansin, Hannah Benitez, Vanessa Garcia, and William Hector, under the guidance of Master Playwright Kenny Finkle.

For more, please visit: www.deeringestate.org/estate-site-specific-plays/

My short play “The Crocodile’s Bite,” anthologized below.

Monologues from full-length plays “Grace, Sponsored by Monteverde” and “The Cuban Spring” also anthologized below.

The Final 30, Sam French OOB Festival.

My short play The Crocodile’s Bite has been chosen for the Sam French Final 30, it will be produced by Juggerknot Theatre.

For more about The Crocodile's Bite in NYC, click here

The Crocodile’s Bite has also been named a finalist for the City Theatre National Short Playwriting Award.

Grace, Sponsored by Monteverde (A Full-length play)

The Cuban Spring
by Vanessa Garcia, 
a full length play about family secrets, the dangers of migration, and the tension between generations
World Premiere Sept. 2014 @

Press for The Cuban Spring:

Playwright Vanessa Garcia Tackles Identity in Exile in Her New Play 'The Cuban Spring'
By Amy Reyes / Miami.com / Oct. 15, 2014
Read More Click Here

Top Theater Events of 2014-15 By Christine Dolen
Miami Herald / Sept. 19, 2014
Read More Click Here 

Photo from The Cuban Spring Presented at New Theatre Oct. - Nov. 2014
by Eileen Suarez

Creative Mornings Talk, February 2014. Topic: Rebel.

Lasso by Vanessa Garcia. A One Act Play premiered at New Theatre, Miami. Finalist for City Theatre's National Short Playwriting Award.

THE UNDERGROUND -- A Show About Making Art in the 21st Century
On September 21st and 22nd, The Krane and New Light Theatre, launch a brand new theatre piece/ event called THE UNDERGROUND. The Show starts its run at GAB Studio in Miami --105 NW 23rd Street Miami, Florida -- on September 21 and 22, at 7 pm each night. THE UNDERGROUND continues its life in Fort Lauderdale at The New Light Theatre at Gallery 101 -- 3354 NE 33rd Street, Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33308 -- on Oct. 12 and 13 at 7pm.
2013 Brings The Underground to LA and Back to Miami...
See:
www.thekrane.com for more details.

PRESS:

"THE UNDERGROUND" digs a hole in Wynwood
By Neil De La Flor, Published in Knight Arts Blog, Sept 17, 2012
http://www.knightarts.org/community/miami/the-underground-digs-a-hole-in-wynwood

“You can’t be deep without a surface,” author Jonathan Lethem writes.
Sometimes surfaces are physical barriers that block us from seeing what’s beneath. Sometimes surfaces are also imaginary barriers that we erect out of fear of failure or success. Sometimes digging beneath and breaking these surfaces yields unexpected beauty or truth or happiness or whatever it is we may be seeking. But sometimes when we dig we find nothing. And, then what? Give up. Of course, not. It just means it’s time to go to the theater.

[Photo: Gema Calero | “The Underground.”]

On September 21st and 22nd, The Krane and New Light Theatre, will preview “The Underground,” “a show about what it means to be an artist in the 21st century.”

The theater piece follows Maude, a young woman who moves back in with her parents after graduating with an architecture degree. Like many twenty-somethings (and thirty-somethings, forty-somethings, etc.) Maude doesn’t know what to do with her life and a world of the limited possibilities.

Maude does what most rational humans would do when confronted with an existential crisis: she digs a hole. As Maude struggles to find meaning in her life, she goes into the dark to find the light. Her parents are freaked out, but let her dig her way to a meaningful life. Maybe this is a metaphor for how to find our way. Shred the plan. Dig a hole. See what we find. Devised living.

“The Underground” is devised theater. “This means that we didn’t start out with a script. Instead, the script arose out of the rehearsal process,” says Vanessa Garcia, founding artistic director of The Krane. “I had a set of ideas I wanted to deal with — about art and what it means to make art today — and we took it from there.”

From there, “The Underground” is revealed.

“The Underground” runs at two locations. Location 1: GAB Studio in Wynwood, 105 NW 23rd St., Miami on September 21 & 22 at 7 p.m. Cost: pay what you can. Location 2: The New Light Theatre at Gallery 101, 3354 NE 33rd St., Fort Lauderdale, FL, 33308, October 12 & 13 at 7:00 PM, Cost: $12. For more information contact Vanessa Garcia at vgarcia43@yahoo.com and/or 305-450-9931 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting            305-450-9931      end_of_the_skype_highlighting.

Website: www.vanessagarcia.org