LOS KENTUBANOS

LOS KENTUBANOS: Work-in-progress showing

FRIDAY January 10, 2025, 3pm, INTAR

Tracy Hazas’s LOS KENTUBANOS is inspired by a quest for asylum and the origin story of a Kentucky Cuban family. Set during Operation Peter Pan—the mass migration of unaccompanied Cuban minors to the US in the ‘60s—the play weaves archival letters, interviews, Senate hearings and family stories to consider how migration and changing political tides implicate strangers across borders. When our systems fail us, how might we save each other?

The performance will last approximately 45 minutes. We invite you to join us for beverages and a generative feedback session moderated by Shayoni Mitra, Barnard College Theatre Department, immediately following the presentation. Thank you for being here in support of Los Kentubanos!

Team

Written and performed by Tracy Hazas

Developed and directed by Kathleen Capdesuñer

Sound design by Germán Martínez

Costume design by Caitlin Cisek

Tech: Kat Guerrero

A Note from the Playwright

Los Kentubanos chronicles the parallel experiences of two families—one Cuban and one Midwestern—that eventually become joined through the Cuban family’s emigration to the U.S. I imagine the full-length version of this piece drawing on this narrative of migration and displacement to examine the relationship between Cuba and the United States. What you are about to see are selections primarily from the Cuban side.

14,000 unaccompanied children were brought from Cuba to the US in the two years of Operation Peter Pan. My father and aunt were among them; they came to the US in 1961 at the ages of 15 and 13, respectively. A family in Indiana became their hosts, welcoming also my grandparents when they arrived from Cuba in 1966. I have always been fascinated by this half decade, which has had so much impact on my family and the way it navigates the world.

After they met and married, my parents relocated from Indiana to Kentucky, where I grew up. Los Kentubanos is the term used to describe the now-flourishing Cuban community in Louisville. When I left Kentucky in 1999, there were fewer than 500 Cuban immigrants in the state; there are now over 50,000.

This piece utilizes archival documents and interviews from New York University’s Cuban Letters Collection, the Digital Library of the Caribbean, Columbia University’s Cuban Voices collection, U.S. Senate hearings on the “Cuban Refugee Problem,” and local journalism covering the crisis. Some scenes are based on this verbatim material; others are experiments in reconstructing and physicalizing an imagined place.

Thank You

Nemuna Ceesay, Charlotte Hazas, Jerry Hazas, Oliver Kramer, Beth Lake, Shayoni Mitra, Natascha Porpora, Kris Thor; Lou Moreno, Nidia Medina, Alejandra Maldonado Morales and all the staff at INTAR.

Support for this project was provided by a PSC-CUNY Award, jointly funded by The Professional Staff Congress and The City University of New York.