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MISSION AND HISTORY

arca images’

MISSION

Arca Images creates, produces, and promotes original contemporary theater and new adaptations of classic plays for Miami’s diverse English-Spanish bilingual audiences, as well as related Hispanic performing arts including music. Arca works with local artists and presents complex works that reflect the region’s multicultural character, while contributing to the evolution of theater as a contemporary art form through educational programs for local youth and adults.

OUR HISTORY

Arca Images was created in 2001 and is now led by co-founder Alexa Kuve in the capacity of Executive Producing Director, and Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Nilo Cruz in the capacity of Artistic Director. Co-founder Larry Villanueva is also still heavily involved as resident director, instructor and actor. Kuve and Villanueva created the organization combining over a decade of history in theater, film, and TV in the Miami community, producing a number of diverse plays for both English and Spanish speaking audiences.  In 2012, Nilo Cruz joined the organization launching it into a period of intense and rapid growth. 

Since 2013, Nilo Cruz has been the Artistic Director of the company and since then has staged Hortensia y el museo de sueños, the World Premiere of Sotto Voce (presented in conjunction with New York’s Theater for the New City); Hurricane; Belleza del padre, El color del deseo and Three Inner monologues, Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya,Cruz’s Lorca en un vestido verde, Baño de luna, Ricardo Calderon’s Neva, Sarah Ruth’s El cuarto de al lado and Exquisita Agonía, written by Mr. Cruz and nominated to a Pulitzer Prize 2019 as Best Drama, all of these in co-production with Miami Dade County Auditorium. Tsunami(written by Cruz), is also a production of ARCA Images with the University of Miami and South Miami-Dade Cultural Arts Center, for which it received a Carbonell Award as best original play. Recently we presented Historia de amor by renown French writer Jean-Luc Lagarce, directed by Cruz. 

Among the company’s productions are Chambelona, a short film written and directed by Larry Villanueva, and the plays: Allá afuera hay fresco by the same playwright, Sueño Americano by Eduardo Pardo, Las Brujitas del Downtown, a collective creation, A 2.50 la Cuba Libre by Ibrahim Guerra with Teatro Viernes and La Repetición by Anton Arufat, with Maderamen Theater Group.

ARCA participated in the First Latin American Festival of Theater in New York (2009) with the monologues Carne and Relato Sospechoso. Other productions include Talco by Abel González Melo, which received the distinction of Best Play of the Year 2010 by the Miami Herald, La Retirada de Moscú, by William Nicholson and more than than 12 plays directed by Larry Villanueva and co-produced with the School of Arts and Minds.