Plays written by Octavio Solis
MARFA LIGHTS
PASTURES OF HEAVEN
QUIXOTE NUEVO
SE LLAMA CRISTINA
OUTSIDE LANDS
MOTHER ROAD
HOLE IN THE SKY
Synopses:
Marfa Lights – (5M 3W) Jorge undergoes a horrific hazing at the hands of his frat brothers and is abandoned near-naked, hog-tied and blind-folded in the stark cold West Texas desert. But when night falls, and the strange Marfa Lights dance around him, a mysterious girl named Meiken finds him, and mistaking him for an angel, takes him though a series of ordeals in preparation for a long-sought miracle. Meanwhile, the other boys and one of their girlfriends feel a nagging need to “finish the job” and begin their hunt for him. Only one pledge brother, Sonny, resolves, with the help of a foul-mouthed Goth girl stranded along the road, to save him before they can do any more damage. Thus begins a magical night of revelations and transformations among the haunted plains of Texas.
The Pastures of Heaven – (6M 5W) A modern adaptation of this early novel of interconnected stories by one of our country’s most talented and prolific playwrights. This richly theatrical play—commissioned especially for Cal Shakes—celebrates the art of storytelling as it depicts comic and heartbreaking characters in search of happiness in the seemingly idyllic landscape of Steinbeck’s own Salinas Valley.
Quixote Nuevo – (casting flexible) Embracing both aching humanity and earthy humor, Octavio Solis’s adaptation of Don Quixote is a colorful, action-packed re-imagining of the Spanish epic adventure. In his quest for the bygone days of chivalry, our aging hero jumbles reality and imagination as he forges a noble but messy trail across the plains of La Mancha.
Se Llama Cristina – (2M 2W) A man and woman waken from a drugged-out night to find their baby missing. The pair decide to relive their history to try to set things right. This haunted, poetic journey moves from darkness to a glimmer of light.
Outside Lands – (casting flexible) A story of love, paranoia and self-censorship in the Sunset District of San Francisco. Azad, a Professor of Persian Literature and his wife Diana, who deals in imported rugs, hire a young Mexican immigrant to care for their infant girl, but her resemblance to a lost poet in Teheran unearths buried secrets that haunt them all. The characters of the “Outside Lands”, as this zone was once called, swarm around the story like suspects in a literary noir: a man with a parrot who quotes Borges, a homeless woman obsessed with Watergate, a neighbor with acute sensitivity to barking dogs, a mysterious pair of assassins who may or may not be real, and a talking disembodied head.
Mother Road – (casting flexible) Terminally ill William Joad needs to find an heir to his sprawling Joad ranch in Sallisaw, OK. He is mortified to find that the only surviving descendant of Tom Joad who came to California with the “Okie” migration in the 1930’s is a young Mexican-American named Martin. Together, they ride the Mother Road from Bakersfield, Ca to Oklahoma and forge the new character of the nation inside each other and in the people they encounter along the way. An epic work inspired by John Steinbeck’s novel The Grapes of Wrath.
Hole in the Sky – (5M, 3F) A young woman returns home to find her family and community in a bitter fight over who owns the local groundwater during a devastating California drought. Caught between loyalty to her family’s ranch and fear – of wildfire, of loss of identity and culture, Connor finds her small town trying to figure out how to live with nature when nature doesn’t seem to want them there: “We’d get along with the environment a whole lot better if we didn’t have to live in it.”
BIO:
Octavio Solis is a playwright and director whose works Scene With Cranes, Quixote Nuevo, Mother Road, Hole in the Sky, Alicia’s Miracle, Se Llama Cristina, John Steinbeck’s The Pastures of Heaven, Ghosts of the River, Lydia, June in a Box, Gibraltar, The Ballad of Pancho and Lucy, The Seven Visions of Encarnación, Dreamlandia, El Otro, Prospect, El Paso Blue, Santos & Santos, La Posada Mágica, Prospect and Man of the Flesh have been mounted across the country at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, California Institute of the Arts, Hartford Stage, Huntington Theatre, Magic Theatre SF, Center Theatre Group, Theatre @ Boston Court, California Shakespeare Theatre, Yale Repertory Theatre, INTAR, Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Dallas Theater Center, South Coast Repertory Theatre, San Diego Repertory Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, Cornerstone Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theatre, Shakespeare Dallas, Shadowlight Productions, Mixed Blood Theatre Company, Circle X Theatre Company, Tides Theatre, El Teatro Campesino, Teatro Vista, Teatro Dallas, Teatro Visión, Venture Theatre, Thick Description and Campo Santo at Intersection for the Arts. His collaborative works include Cloudlands, a musical co-written with Adam Gown and Shiner, co-written with Erik Ehn. Solis has received the 2019 Distinguished Achievement In The American Theatre award from the William Inge Center for the Arts, the 2018 Imagen Award for his consultancy on Disney-Pixar’s Coco, the 2015 Distinguished Achievement Award from the Texas State University Black and Latino Playwrights Conference, the 2014 Pen Center Literary Award for Drama, the United States Artists Fellowship for 2012, the 2003 National Latino Playwriting Award, the 2000-2001 National Theatre Artists Residency from TCG and the Pew Charitable Trust, the 1998 TCG/NEA Theatre Artists in Residence Grant, the 1998 McKnight Fellowship grant from the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis, the 1995-97 Playwriting Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the 1994 Will Glickman Playwright Award. Solis was recently inducted into the Texas Institute of Letters and is a Thornton Wilder Fellow for the MacDowell Colony, New Dramatists alum and member of the Dramatists Guild.
His book, Retablos: Stories From A Life Lived Along The Border, published by City Lights Publishers, received the 2018 Silver Indies Award for Book of the Year and has been chosen by the National Reading Group Month’s Committee for the Great Group Reads 2019 Selections.
* Please note that some titles are handled by Dramatists Play Service, Samuel French, Dramatic Publishing, Broadway Play Publishing, and Playscripts.com. Please ask if you don’t see a particular play.