Teatro Visión Announces 2004-2005 Season.

Teatro Visión, a San José-based Chicano theater company, announced it will celebrate its 20th anniversary this 2004-2005 season with two audience favorites — the heartwarming comedy, Real Women Have Curves, and the hard-hitting contemporary drama, Santos & Santos. The company will also usher in its second decade with a new milestone; its first musical production ever called, 4 GUYS NAMED JOSE…AND UNA MUJER NAMED MARIA.

“This is going to be a great celebratory season,” said Elisa Marina Alvarado, Teatro Visión’s artistic director. “We’re giving our Bay Area audience a colorful offering of comedy, infectious Latino rhythm and contemporary drama, all in traditional Teatro Visión style addressing issues significant to the Latino community.”

Additionally the company has committed to producing two of the season’s three plays in Spanish, as well as English, a move driven by the overwhelmingly positive response it received to last season’s El Vagón, Teatro Visión’s first Spanish-language production that ended up being a box office hit.

“When Teatro Visión first began, it was intended to be a new way to raise awareness about public policy issues affecting the Latino community,” said Raul Lozano, executive director of Teatro Visión. “We’re happy to say that 20 years later we’re still doing that, but in a much bigger way expanding our production portfolio and reaching more people in both the English- and Spanish-speaking communities.”

Bay Area Lacks Spanish-Language Programming

According to the U.S. Census, the Latino population more than doubled between 1990 and 2000 making it the nation’s largest ethnic minority group. In Santa Clara County alone there are approximately 680,000 Latinos, about 29 percent of whom are Spanish-speaking, yet the Bay Area is not on parity when it comes to Spanish-language arts programming.

Because the Bay Area’s Spanish-speaking community has been so greatly underserved in the area of theater, Teatro Visión has committed to expanding its number of Spanish-language productions during the 2004-2005 season and beyond.

Performance Dates and Ticket Information
Teatro Visión performances are at the Mexican Heritage Plaza theater in San Jose on the following dates:

October 7- 31, 2004:
Real Women Have Curves by Josefina López

December 2-18, 2004:
4 GUYS NAMED JOSE…AND UNA MUJER NAMED MARIA Book and Song Selection by Dolores Prida Conceived by David Coffmann and Dolores Prida

May 19 – June 5, 2005:
Santos & Santos by Octavio Solís

For more information at http://www.teatrovision.org