Inspired by Intentional Diversity
Mainstage
Production:
Postponed
to Spring 2022
Full Circle Presents
Spring 2021 Virtual Event Series
Event #1:
Reading of Selected Scenes From
Atacama
by
Award-winning Latinx American playwright
Augusto Federico Amador
Featuring Cast Members:
Lara Trujillo* and Pedro Bayon**
*Full Circle Core Artist
**Member of Actors' Equity Association
Saturday, February 27, 7:00 p.m.
Sunday, February 28, 3:00 p.m.
Readings Followed by
a Conversation with Playwright Augusto Federico Amador
Note: Full Circle cancelled its May 2020 production of Atacama due to Covid. We'll be presenting a main stage production of this show Spring 2022.
POSTPONEMENT OF ATACAMA 2020
With our community's expanding concerns about COVID-19 and given Full Circle’s commitment to the health and safety of our staff, artists, audience, and other participants, we have made the decision to postpone our May 2020 production of Atacama to Spring 2022.
We’ll announce Atacama's new dates later this year and provide you with updates about our presentation of this compelling and brilliant play by Augusto Federico Amador.
Thank you for your continued interest, support, and understanding, and we look forward to seeing you at our production next season!
And we'd like to give a very special thanks to the wonderful production team who have so graciously and generously supported our decision to postpone Atacama.
Note: We will be refunding the full cost of all Atacama tickets purchased to this date.
For more information and updates, continue to visit our website and email us at
ABOUT ATACAMA
Set in the extraordinary landscape of Chile’s gorgeous Atacama desert, Amador’s play takes the audience on a powerful, metaphoric quest that begins with the meeting of two strangers in this vast desert. Both have come in search of the sun-bleached, shattered bones of their children, who were “disappeared” years earlier--killed by the brutal General Pinochet regime (1973-1990,) then buried in the Atacama Desert.
With the unfolding of the past and present lives of these two mysterious figures (Ignacia, played by Lara Trujillo, and Diego, played by Pedro R. Bayon), Atacama transforms into the realm of magical realism. The play then metaphorically and powerfully explores universal themes of human polarization—gender and intergenerational tensions, religious and political divides—that can lead to transgression and tragedy, as they did in Chile. Chile’s painful history becomes a metaphorical lesson for all humanity as this play grapples with political forces that tear families and countries apart because of opposing views, choices, and actions—all so painfully relevant to the world today. And in the end, the play magically explores transformative possibilities that can lead from national and family transgression, to remorse, reparation, forgiveness, and redemption.
Selected by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre for its list of 50 outstanding plays highlighting “intersecting social identities,” Atacama was given its world premiere in September 2018 by Teatro Paraguas both in Santa Fe and in Albuquerque, performances coinciding with the 45th anniversary of the U.S.-backed coup d'etat in which the democratically elected socialist government of Salvador Allende was overthrown by the army under General Pinochet on September 11th, 1973.
Full Circle chose to produce Atacama because of the play’s tremendous relevance to our contemporary lives, and for its issues at the heart of Full Circle’s mission of diversity and social justice.
Atacama will soon be published in Spanish by Teatro Sin Paredes (Mexico City) in a collection of five plays by noted North American playwrights, including works by celebrated writer Caridad Svitch and Pulitzer Prize winner Quiara Alegría Hudes.
Atacama Creative and Production Team
Lara Trujillo
Director
Cast member: "Ignacia"
Lara Trujillo is a vocalist, actor, educator and director, and has served as music director for productions ranging from light opera to classic musical theater. As a performer she has appeared with the Minnesota Opera; The Gilbert & Sullivan Very Light Opera Company; Mu Performing Arts; Chanhassen Dinner Theater; Teatro del Pueblo; Theater Latte Da; Flying Foot Forum; Mill City Summer Opera; History Theater, most recently in River Road Boogie: The Augie Garcia Story; and the Ordway Center, most recently in In the Heights. Lara co-wrote Full Circle Theater Company’s initial production of Theater: A Sacred Passage. Lara co-directed Full Circle Theater Company’s staging of 365 Days/365 Plays, in directorial collaboration with Full Circle’s Artistic Leadership team, and directed Full Circle’s initial staged reading of Atacama in 2018.
Pedro
Bayon
Cast Member: "Diego"
Pedro R. Bayon is making his Full Circle Theatre debut. He recently played King Basilio for Pangea World Theatre’s production of Sueño, at The Lab Theatre. Recent productions include: Neighbors, at the History Theatre; The Sins of Sor Juana, at Ten Thousand Things; and In The Heights, at The Ordway Center for the Arts. Some of his other credits include Mixed Blood Theatre (Minnecanos, Elemeno Pea, Safe At Home, Quinceañera, The Pajama Game, among others), History Theatre (River Road Boogie: The Augie Garcia Story, To Kill a Mockingbird, Los Rumbaleros), Park Square Theatre (The House on Mango Street, Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue), Frank Theatre (Ambient Love Rites), among others. Let us not forget Los Desaparecidos 5 (“The Disappeared”) of the world. Their souls will always be within us!
Playwright
Augusto Federico Amador is one of the rising Latinx playwrights in America. His play Atacama, will be given its area premiere by Full Circle Theater in 2022, and was selected for Steppenwolf Theatre’s The Mix List of plays featuring casts of intersectional and intersecting social identities. Mr. Amador’s plays have been produced across the country at venues including The Public Theater (NYC), San Diego Repertory Theatre, Los Angeles Theater Center, Teatro Paraguas in Santa Fe, and the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque. His original TV pilot, 86'd, is currently in development with Wise Entertainment for a first look at Amazon Studios
Mr. Amador’s plays have been finalists for several prestigious awards, including the Terrence McNally Award, the BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition, and the National Latino Playwriting Award from the Arizona Theater Company. His playwriting fellowships include: The Public Theater in NYC, The Humanitas Prize in Los Angeles, the Latino Theater Alliance/L.A., and the Lincoln City Fellowship in NYC.
Mr. Amador was born and raised in Silicon Valley and is the son of a Peruvian father (music composer) and an Austrian mother (culinary chef). Augusto’s previous careers include: coffee house proprietor, car salesman, assistant tile setter, running numbers for a bookie, and of course, long suffering waiter.
For links to all his plays:
Augusto
Federico
Amador
“This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through grants from the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.”
.png){kind=logo}
