PHOTO CREDIT: UZI PARNES
That’s Not What Happened (2021)
A podcast, juxtaposing memories from Alina Troyano aka Carmelita Tropicana’s childhood, obsession with food, and the legacies of queer figures that have been personally and historically transformative, reflecting on cultural loss, artistic legacy, and queer kinship. The first nine episodes traces her life in Cuba, with her family, her grandmother Mima, and father, a comandante who fought in Castro’s revolutionary forces. That’s Not What Happened, explores the difficult, humorous, and often imperfect process of remembering. This is the first iteration of my project Live Memoir.Commissioned by Soho Rep, Directed by Ela Troyano with Music by Marc Ribot.
PHOTO CREDIT: UZI PARNES
Live Memoir (Work-in-Progress)
What does it mean to perform one’s self in a culture where self-documentation is constant on social-networking platforms, on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, Instagram, and Snapchat? I am interested in how my own past as an immigrant and political exile fits in the current cultural and socio-political climate. My work has always drawn on my own lived experiences to creatively engage contemporary social issues. Live Memoir consists of a solo performance and publication, both of which will be organized into chapters that juxtapose memories from my childhood, my obsessions (especially with food), and the legacies of queer figures who have been both personally and historically transformative. Live Memoir will mix autobiography with fiction, fantasy, and sci-fi styles of writing to reflect on questions of cultural loss, artistic legacy, and queer kinship. Live Memoir will be a hybrid performance/publication.
Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! (Work in Progress) A collaboration with playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins. The play touches on the relationships between social and artistic legacies. It explores how art relates to history and history relates to art, with updates based on the artists’ personal experiences. The work centers the exchange of personas: Branden performs as Carmelita, and Carmelita as Branden. These performances ask what it is to miss what you never knew, and explore the uses and abuses of nostalgia, as well as the mystery of remaining viable. The Jacobs-Jenkins/Tropicana Project received a Creative Capital Award (2016) and a MacDowell Fellowship (2016).
Memories of the Revolution
The First Ten Years of the WOW Café Theater (nominated for a Lambda Literary Award 2016)
Holly Hughes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Jill Dolan, Editors
Scripts, interviews, photos, and critical commentary documenting the riotous beginnings of this long-lived experimental theater space for women
Memories of the Revolution - The University of Michigan Press link