Carmelita Tropicana

Select Works

Online: Podcast & Performances

Theater for One (2020 – 2021)

Pandemic Flight is a short eight-minute monologue written by Carmelita Tropicana questioning an ex-lover’s bi-racial relationship during the pandemic. Directed by Rebecca Martinez, and performed by Zuleyma Guevara for Theater for One, a mobile state-of-the-art performance space for one actor and one audience member conceived by Artistic Director Christine Jones.

Rad Women for Pandemic Times (2020)

Commissioned performance to be streamed online as part of the Park Avenue Armory’s 100 Years 100 Women initiative celebrating the centennial of the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote. Carmelita’s Rad Women for Pandemic Times is a short video performance paying tribute to visionaries Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz, Ida B. Wells and Octavia Butler. Written and performed by Carmelita Tropicana, videography Ela Troyano.

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. 

Link. https://soundcloud.com/carmelitatropicana

Plays

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). 

Schwanze-Beast (2015) (Writer and Performer) Schwanze-Beast follows a woman/bear hybrid and a cyborg on the run from a totalitarian regime. Set in three days at a safe house, with live stream surveillance video, it questions recent stereotypes of immigrants and the growing xenophobic discourses in Europe and the U.S. The audience is implicated at the end of the performance as they discuss and vote on whether to allow the characters to emigrate to their community. Schwanze-Beast was developed through a residency at the Vermont Performance Lab culminating in a workshop presentation at the Progressive Performance Festival in 2015. 

Post Plastica (2012/2013) (Written by Alina Troyano/Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyano. Performed by Carmelita Tropicana) Post Plastica is collaboration with filmmaker/director Ela Troyano. The work consists of a live performance with video, public lectures based on themes related to the performance, a gallery photo exhibit, and an installation in the lobby of El Museo. In the performance, the audience is offered a glimpse into a future in which celebrity culture has pitched a battle between the primacy of virtual and artistic lives. Post Plastica was commissioned by Performance Space 122, and presented at El Museo del Barrio. An adaptation of the work was presented as part of the Out in the Tropics Festival in Miami. 

Ole! (2008) (Writer and Performer) Ole! is a solo monologue about failure, loss, and a meditation on time. In our modern day world of self-help ethos, a fast fix for a broken heart sends Carmelita Tropicana to the Cartuja monastery in Sevilla for a visitation with the mystic nun St. Teresa of Avila. This work has been presented at the Cornell University Resoundingly Queer Conference, Ithaca (2012), University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, (2011) DePaul University, (2011), Andy Warhol Museum (2011), INTAR & TeatroStage at Joe’s Pub (2008). Ole! was developed as part of The New York Theater Workshop residency in Dartmouth (2008). 

With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit?/Con Que Culo Se Sienta la Cucaracha (2004) (Writer and Performer) With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit?/ Con Que Culo Se Sienta la Cucaracha? The play uses the saga of Elian Gonzalez, the shipwrecked Cuban boy at the center of a heated custody battle as a springboard to discuss Cuban politics from within and outside the island. Inspired by a popular Latino fairy tale Perez y Martina, the story is narrated from the perspective of a cockroach, a street-smart survivor, (a stand in for modern Cuba) and an imperious parrot representing the old colonial Cuba). With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit? was commissioned and produced Off-Broadway by INTAR Theater, New York (2004). It was presented as a work-in-progress at the CLAGS Conference in Austin Texas (2001), and performed at the Blacktino Queer Performance Festival, Northwestern University, Chicago (2008) and the Mark Taper Forum’s New Festival for Now, LA (2007). Excerpted iterations were shown at Animal Acts: Beasts of the Northern Wild Performance Festival and Symposium at Michigan University, Ann Arbor (2013) and The Highline, NY (2016). The play received a Playwriting and a Latino Initiative Fellowship from the Mark Taper Forum, Center for Theater Group. An excerpt work was published in the book Animal Acts: Performing Species Today (2015). 

Single Wet Female (2002) (Written and Performed by Marga Gomez and Alina Troyano/Carmelita Tropicana) Single Wet Female combines film-noir satire with socio-sexual performance critiquing gender politics and issues of cultural assimilation in a spoof of the 1992 cult classic film Single White Female. Marga Gomez plays Margaret, a high femme Caucasian in a blonde wig, and Carmelita plays Cammy, the uber butch. Drag King Murray Hill appears in the role of the boyfriend in one of several videos presented on monitors designed to frame the pink stage set—a bathtub and a bed filled with teddy bears in real scale mixed with a toy living room set. The production design brought out the hyperbolic femme themes. Single Wet Female was presented at Performance Space 122, New York (2002), at the Off Center Theater in Austin, Texas (2005) and the Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco (2002). 

Chicas 2000 (1997/1999) (Writer and Performer) Chicas 2000 is a science fiction cloning satire tackling issues of commodification and censorship, all the while lampooning ethnicity and race. It introduces to an American public the word chusma and a fictional disease called chusmeria: shameless, loud, gross, tacky behavior, in short, tasteless with attitude. The performance satirizes the ways in which chusma is a word often used in Latino/a culture to denigrate and pathologize the lower classes and people of color. The set was as brash and colorful as the language. Chicas 2000 was commissioned by Dixon Place for the Toyota Comedy Festival and presented at Dixon Place (1997), Performance Space 122, New York (1998); Theatre Offensive, Boston (1999). 

Milk of Amnesia/Leche de Amnesia (1994) (Writer and Performer) Milk of Amnesia/Leche de Amnesia takes the form of a travelogue drawing on Troyano’s personal experience, going back to Cuba for the first time. The title points to the idea of assimilation and forgetting, where milk is a metaphor for everything being whitened, highlighting the difficulty of the immigrant experience: how sometimes, in order to become something you have to give up something else. The themes of being bilingual and bicultural are exploited formally as the performance uses a “writer’s” voice (Alina Troyano) pitted against that of Carmelita Tropicana. Milk of Amnesia was commissioned by Performance Space 122 from the Joyce Mertz Gilmore Foundation and sponsored by the Suitcase Fund a project of ideas and means in cross cultural artist relations. Select presentations include: Theater Offensive, Boston (1994); Centre de Cultura Contemporanea in Barcelona as part of a major exhibition of Cuban works titled Cuba La Isla Posible (Cuba the Possible Island) (1995); The Institute of Contemporary Art in London (1995); The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Monterrey, Mexico (2001); New World Theatre Amherst (1996); and Yale University (2007). Adapted iterations include The Highline, New York (2016) and NYU Performing the Archive symposium for the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (2013). Select publications include TDR/The Drama Review (1995) and the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology O Solo Homo: The New Queer Performance (1998). 

Memorias de la Revolucion (1986), Candela (1989), and Carnaval (1991). Memorias de la Revolucion, Candela, and Carnaval are a trilogy of plays with music and media. All are campy, multimedia spectacles that used large casts and chronicled the adventures of Carmelita like a comic strip heroine. Each is set in different time periods, with identity politics embedded into the narrative and musical numbers. 

Memorias de la Revolucion (written by Uzi Parnes and Carmelita Tropicana/Alina Troyano; directed and designed by Uzi Parnes). The play follows Carmelita Tropicana who reenacts her memoirs as the daughter of the Cuban Revolution pre-Castro, one not yet written in the history books. A failed assassination has her escaping Cuba by rowboat. At sea, the Virgin appears and commands her to fight in a new International Cultural Revolution that will give dignity to Latin and third world women with art as her weapon. The play was presented at WOW theater (1986) and Performance Space 122 (1987) in NY. An excerpt of the play appears in the Lambda nominated anthology Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Café Theater, a book Troyano/Tropicana co-edited with Holly Hughes and Jill Dolan (2015.) 

Candela (written by Uzi Parnes, Ela Troyano, Carmelita Tropicana/Alina Troyano; directed and designed by Uzi Parnes). The play tells the story of Carmelita Tropicana as she battles the Mafia in Havana and Las Vegas. Choreographer Ishmael Houston Jones plays Cuba’s famous choreographer at the Tropicana, Roderigo “Rodney” Neyra on film. Candela is a revue within a revue, Cuba seen from afar but from within, self-reflective structure. Presented at Dance Theater Workshop (1989) and Performance Space 122 (1990) in NY. The play was also part of the Nuevo Latino Dance and Performance Program sponsored by Dance Theater Workshop that toured Boston, Albuquerque, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, and Mexico (1989-1991). 

Carnaval (written by Uzi Parnes and Carmelita Tropicana/Alina Troyano; directed and designed by Uzi Parnes). The play begins in the Lower East Side at a time when the AIDS epidemic was in full force. Hoping to escape the harrowing times, Carmelita time travels and ends up in Havana where she meets a Jewish refugee from the SS St. Louis—a real-life ship loaded with Jewish refugees that was docked in Havana’s harbor, but whose passengers were not allowed to disembark and were sent back to Europe. Carnaval received commissioning funds from INTAR and a staged reading. It was presented at Performance Space 122 (1991). An excerpt of the play was published in Bridges to Cuba issue of the Michigan Quarterly Review (1994). 

The Boiler Time Machine (1986) (Writer and Performer) The Boiler Time Machine was a musical developed through INTAR’s Musical Theatre Lab and later adapted as a solo. A boiler-cum-time machine sends Carmelita to France where she ends up at Gertrude Stein’s salon with Picasso, while her butler ends up in Spain at a home resembling Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba. The musical was developed by two writing fellowships from INTAR Theater. It received a stage presentation at INTAR Theater (1986), was presented at Performance Space 122 (1989) in NY and the New Langton Arts, San Francisco (1990). The script was published In a Different Light: Visual Culture, Sexual Identity, Queer Practice. (1995) 

FILM 

Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst is Your Waffen (1994) (Written by Alina Troyano/Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyano, Directed by Ela Troyano, and Performed by Carmelita Tropicana) The film introduces Carmelita Tropicana, a New York City Lower East Side self-described “superintendent/performance artiste”, a political activist by day and nightclub entertainer by night. Carmelita and her cohorts end up in jail after defending an abortion clinic. The film is a cultural dissection of stereotypes and blends different genres such as the American musical with the Mexican ranchera, television commercials and experimental film. Select awards include the Teddy Award at the Berlin International Film Festival (1994), the Stolichnaya Critics Award and the Audience Award at the San Francisco Gay and Lesbian International Film Festival (1994). The film had a U.S. and German theatrical release and has screened throughout Latin America, Europe, Australia and Japan, and was broadcast on PBS. 

SELECT PERFORMANCES 

Manifesto Destino (2015) (Writer and Performer) Carmelita Tropicana juxtaposes her latest Performance Art Manifesto with writings by Valerie Solanas, author of the SCUM Manifesto, Sor Juana, 17 th Century poet nun and supporter of women’s rights, and José Marti 19 th Century Cuban revolutionary and literary figure who chronicled life in the U.S. for Latin America. Dressed in an updated 17 th Century nun’s habit (B&W latex with daring cutouts), Carmelita traces her entry into performance with her first New York Foundation for the Arts Artist’s Fellowship for Performance Art in 1987. She delivers her manifesto: one that is continuously updated to acknowledge new developments in the field, e.g., Marina Abramovic’s concepts of reperformance. The work also included readings and commentary on José Marti’s essays and Sor Juana’s love poems. The performance was created for the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics: Encuentro Manifest, Montreal (2014). 

Recycling Atlantis (2014) (Collaboration by Uzi Parnes, Alina Troyano/Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyano; Carmelita Tropicana Writer and Performer in her own solo performances) Recycling Atlantis, a homage to the artist, philosopher and educator Jack Smith features performances by Carmelita Tropicana, including her signature solo Performance Art Manifesto and expanded cinema with projections by Troyano and Parnes. The show celebrates Smith’s radical philosophies on the role of art in society through an interactive exhibition project, produced live over the course of three evenings. Recycling Atlantis revisits Smith’s performance manifesto and his proposed “free paradise of abandoned objects” and “community movie set.” Both of these utopian projects were realized within gallery space, where audiences were invited to contribute objects and take part in performances. Presented at the 80WSE Gallery and curated by Jonathan Berger. 

TITLE, for Camp/Anti-Camp (2012-2013) (Writer and Performer) Solo performance created specifically for the Camp/Anti-Camp: A Queer Guide to Everyday Life Performance Festival, a mashup or remix of Tropicana’s signature camp works, including Tropicana in a gorilla costume reenacting Marlene Dietrich’s musical number Hot Voodoo in Blonde Venus. The event included U.S. and Canadian camp and queer life experts’ events in a three-day multi-disciplinary celebration, with performances and panels. Presented at the Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin (2012) and the Kunstlerhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt (2013). 

Carmelita’s Three Muses Performance for FeMUSEum (2011) (Writer and Performer) The FeMUSEum project was a pop-up museum bringing together four generations of performance artists: Lois Weaver, Bird la Bird, Amy Lamé, and Carmelita Tropicana) to pay tribute to the lineage and legacy of performance and femininity. Tropicana performed as her three muses: Sor Juana, the 17 th Century poet nun; Lady Bully, a bulldog; and Marlene Dietrich. For her daylong installation as Sor Juana, Carmelita wrote poems with a quill and sold them to the audience members while describing life in a cloistered convent. FeMUSEum was commissioned by the AHRH-funded project Performance Matters for the Trashing Performance symposium in Toynbee Hall, London. 

The Box after Nayland Blake (2009) (Writer and Performer) Originally a site-specific performance responding to Hysteria, an art piece by Nayland Blake and included in his retrospective at Location One Gallery. The performance centers on a mysterious cardboard box suggesting a makeshift home for a homeless person. As it moves, Tropicana, unseen inside the box tells stories—some relating to hysteria, mostly about the death of different pets. She throws chocolate kisses to the audience and discusses the housing market crash and subprime mortgages adding AfroCuban aphorisms. One of Tropicana’s most abstract pieces, it remains mysterious since the performer is never physically revealed and the language is spare and simple. The Box has been presented at the Location One Gallery (2009), Dixon Place (2011), Joe’s Pub (2009), El Museo del Barrio (2009), Camp Anti Camp Festival in Berlin (2012), and at Michigan State Theater as part of the Penny Stamp Lectures Series (2011). 

Pingalito Betancourt: The Constructivist Art Movement for El Museo del Barrio (2009) (Writer and Performer) Pingalito Betancourt, sporting painted overalls with the inscription “New York in 1921” delivers a lecture that “mansplains” the Constructivist Art Movement to the audience, referencing art works on view at the museum and highlighting visual artist Joaquin Torres Garcia. Performed at El Museo del Barrio alongside the exhibition Nexus New York: Latin American Artists in the Modern Metropolis. 

YoTube (2008) (Writer and Performer) YoTube was a performance and video screening based on the then fairly new social media platform: YouTube. Presented at the VI Internacionales Encuentros de Arte y Genéro, a yearly conference that deals with art and non-binary gender at Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo. 

Cry la Jack (2007) (Writer and Performer) Signature Tropicana performance, Cry à la Jack contrasts Jack Smith’s thespian trick of cutting an onion onstage to cry with the more traditional Konstantin Stanisvlaski “method” acting. Tropicana confesses her obsessions with celebrity culture, tabloid magazines, and the state of American politics. Through this crying ritual she engages the audience to cry with her over something meaningful. Presented at the Grimm Rosenfeld Gallery (2007). 

Virgin Cabaret (2003) (Writer and Performer) Tropicana interviews the audience asking for intimate confessions as she reimagines a queer transgressive Joan of Arc entrusted with a divine mission. Performance created for the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics Encuentro: Spectacles of Religiosities. 

Bon Bon New York (1999) (Writer and Performer) Carmelita dissects life in New York’s Lower East Side, giving a colonial critique through a monologue from her play Milk of Amnesia, and shares her thoughts on food culture from her essay“Food For Thought”. Tropicana discusses how the foods now associated with European culture originated in the Americas with Native people—how, for example, the potatoes that Spaniards use in their traditional tortilla Espanola came from Peru, where they were not only cultivated but also freeze dried (long before NASA was freeze drying food). Performance created for the Hispanic Literature Conference in Madrid and performed in Spanish followed by a talk by performance studies scholar José Esteban Muñoz. Presented at the Casa de America, Madrid Spain (1999). 

Lesbian Genders Performance (1998) (Writer and Performer) The performance contrasts two performance personae—Pingalito Betancourt and Carmelita Tropicana—to create a butch/femme binary. The binary is then complicated by a monologue given from the perspective of a clown fish, which is known to change genders, pointing to possibilities and the fluidity of genders in today’s world. Created for the Whitney Museum’s public program on Lesbian Genders, which included live performance and panel discussions. 

Bad Girls (Part 2) (1994) (Writer and Performer) Carmelita Tropicana and Pingalito Betancourt take over different galleries of The New Museum to discuss politics and art concluding with an “art game” that directly engages the audience. The performance involved the recreation of several iconic artworks as live tableaux: Duchamp’s Nude Descending a Staircase, Bernini’s The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa, and a tribute to the “baddest artist” Frida Kahlo. Created for the New Museum’s show dealing with transgressive gender representations. 

Performance Art Manifesto (1991- 2016) (Writer and Performer) Signature Performance Art solo originally created for a panel on Performance Art of the Dance Critics Association Conference in New York in its first iteration. Since then, the Manifesto has changed with deletions and additions to keep up with changing ideas and influences of performance art that include re-performance. It’s also an homage to Jack Smith whose experimental performances in the 1980’s were transformative for a generation of queer artists. Taking up Smith’s approach, Tropicana proposes “transformation” as concept through which to define Performance Art. She recalls how in Smith’s performance, a lowly toilet plunger was forever transformed into an objet d’art. Performed since its first iteration in 1991, select performances include: Grimm Rosenfeld Gallery (2005), Performance Space 122 Benefit (2011), Manifesto Encuentro, Montreal (2014), Hemispheric of Performance Art and Theatre Manifest: Manifesto (2015). 

Ayer y Hoy – The Decade Show (1990) (Writer and Performer) The performance juxtaposes the flamboyant persona of Carmelita Tropicana with a mix of more intimate autobiographical monologues. Offstage, Troyano describes personal experiences of coming to America and her decision to become a lesbian. Onstage, Carmelita tells of the origins of her life as a Kunst (art) maker. Created for The Studio Museum of Harlem as part of The Decade Show: Frameworks of Identity in the 1980’s, an exhibition co-organized by the New Museum, The Studio Museum of Harlem and the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art. 

Chicken Sushi (1987- 2015)(Writer and Performer) Carmelita observes the encroaching gentrification of the Lower East Side (where she lives) in the form of fancy sushi restaurants and decides to create a new cuisine with a signature dish: Chicken Sushi, which lampoons both Japanese and Latino stereotyping. Chicken Sushi has been performed live, screened as a short video, and exhibited in galleries, museums and theatres. Select performances include: New York Funk and Comedy Night tour to Munich, Erlangen and Hamburg, Germany (1987); Erase Una Vez… del Minimal al Cabaret; 70’s & 90’s, at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid and the Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporaneo, Sevilla (1996); The Knitting Factory NY (1988); King Tuts Wah Wah Hut (1985); Participant Gallery (2013); and NYFA’s Tricontagon Artists Exhibition at Westbeth Gallery (2015).