Its striking to see a show that speaks toemigrationwhen most narratives here tend to focus onimmigration.
Saheem Ali:Im the one who left, right?
Ramirez:I grew up around a lot of people who were experiencing a kind of shared nostalgia.
Wesley Wray as Young Ibrahim and company inBuena Vista Social Club.
As the years passed, their memories of it seemed to just get brighter and nostalgia seeped in.
Every time we go to the 50s, we see it as how this woman remembers things.
I think I grew up like that.
Natalie Venetia Belcon (Omara) and David Oquendo
This is a whole other perspective.
This is a whole other place.
Were you excited, through this project, to explore the parallel versions of yourselves that stayed behind?
Leonardo Reyna (Young Rubén), Da’von Moody (Young Compay), Ashley De La Rosa (Young Haydee), and Isa Antonetti (Young Omara)
Ramirez:One hundred percent.
Did you hear who got sick?
Did you hear who got married?
Mel Semé as Ibrahim
Though, in some ways, theyre living in the exact same dimension.
Those connections never go away.
Were not using the songs to push the story but using the story to push songs.
Isa Antonetti as Young Omara
The shows band always gets this wonderful, rousing ovation at the end, and its so deserved.
Its all for them and the music.
How could we hint at different spaces or periods without a projection saying, Now youre in 1959?
Photo: Matthew Murphy
It was about how the poetry of the music could translate to a poetic way of telling the story.
The only song that doesnt have a performer who we know as a character is Chan Chan.
Thats the one song embedded within the story that the band sings, but the storytelling continues with movement.
The person singing that song, as Marco put it the other day, is the song itself.
What did you learn, or want to change, from the Atlantic Theater production?
Now its all story, in terms of movement and design thats nonverbal.
The dancing seems more integrated now.
What kind of conversations did you have with choreographers Patricia Delgado and Justin Peck after that run?
How could we go deeper so that Omara is witnessing something that is primal and deeply rooted in them?
Growing up in Africa, my friends and I would do that.
We didnt have theater, but we had performances where we danced to drums.
It felt like something very organic to the telling of the story.
Saying the quiet parts out loud, as opposed to leaving them quiet, felt right.
What have you noticed from the response to the show?
Hearing people applaud at the opening chords of a song….
This conversation has been edited and condensed.
