About
Alina Troyano (aka Carmelita Tropicana) is a performance artist, playwright and actor. Troyano burst on New York’s downtown performing arts scene in the eighties with her alter egothe spitfire Carmelita Tropicana and the irresistible archetypal Latin macho, Pingalito Betancourt. This was followed by performances as Hernando Cortez’s horse and La Cucaracha Martina, based on Tropicana’s childhood fairytales in Cuba.
Alina Troyano (aka Carmelita Tropicana) is a performance artist, playwright and actor. Troyano burst on New York’s downtown performing arts scene in the eighties with her alter egothe spitfire Carmelita Tropicana and the irresistible archetypal Latin macho, Pingalito Betancourt. This was followed by performances as Hernando Cortez’s horse and La Cucaracha Martina, based on Tropicana’s childhood fairytales in Cuba.
In Tropicana’s work, humor and fantasy become subversive tools to rewrite history. Her performances, plays and videos have been presented at such venues as the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, the Thalia Theater in Hamburg, Centre de Cultura Contemporanea in Barcelona, the Berlin International Film Festival, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, Dance Theater Workshop, the Mark Taper Forum’s Kirk Douglas Theater, Performance Space 122 and the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Tropicana has received numerous awards, including the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman and New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowships. In 1999, she received an Obie for sustained excellence in performance.
