Eduardo Machado - Böcker

Drama Charcters: 2 male, 3 female Interior Set As Fidel Castro storms Habana, a wealthy Batistlano is forced to flee to America with her husband and unborn child. Adria begs her cook, a proud and loyal woman who values her mistress's friendship, to promise she will protect the mansion from the communist upheaval. Over the next forty years Gladys keeps this promise, despite tremendous emotional and physical loss. When Adria's daughter vacations in Cuba and comes to see her mother's old house, Gladys is forced to confront harsh truths. Not only has Adria forgotten her, but now Glayds is accused of leading a life of betrayal in a house that isn't hers. Gladys's struggle mirrors the cultural divide in Cuba that separates the delicately preserved past from the need to survive that is molding a rough-hewed future from the majestic determination and nobility of the Cuban people. "Completely riveting."-Newsday "First rate...Machado uses the kitchen as a metaphor to examine the oppression and betrayals of both exile and revolution. A shining theatrical experience."-The New Yorker "Powerful. [The] writing is political and unflinching."-Miami Herald

Full Length Play / 6m., 4f. / Unit Set / Dark Comedy In the Eye of the Hurricane is Machado's fourth play based on the tribulations of his family in Cuba. It is 1960 in a small Cuban town. A family gathers for a sumptuous, leisurely lunch of shrimp and avocado only to find Fidel Castro is nationalizing the family bus company: the business in which the entire family has invested all of its energies and all of its resources. The business is the symbol of the family and everything they want: money and a lot of it. Machado describes In the Eye of the Hurricane as a play about "the moment.It's about when their lives were really in crisis. It's not about recalling. It's not about getting there. It's about the moment when you lose everything." Appeared at the Humana Festival of New American plays at the Actors' Theatre of Louisville.

Full Length Play / 6m., 4f. / Unit Set / Dark Comedy In the Eye of the Hurricane is Machado's fourth play based on the tribulations of his family in Cuba. It is 1960 in a small Cuban town. A family gathers for a sumptuous, leisurely lunch of shrimp and avocado only to find Fidel Castro is nationalizing the family bus company: the business in which the entire family has invested all of its energies and all of its resources. The business is the symbol of the family and everything they want: money and a lot of it. Machado describes In the Eye of the Hurricane as a play about "the moment.It's about when their lives were really in crisis. It's not about recalling. It's not about getting there. It's about the moment when you lose everything." Appeared at the Humana Festival of New American plays at the Actors' Theatre of Louisville.

Full Length Play / Dark Comedy / 2m., 3f. Tossed into the United States after a revolution that backfired and an invasion (at the Bay of Pigs) that failed, with no possessions other than what jewelry they could sneak out, Mr. Machado's Cubans cope with exotic institutions like Halloween and the Presbyterian Church and suffer through menial jobs where they work beside Mexicans they look down upon as wetbacks. The play captures the bafflement and determination of a family uprooted by the Castro revolution and exiled in the U.S. The story Machado tells speaks directly to every citizen of the modern world who can't go home again.

Characters: 3 male, 1 female Multiple Sets In Havana Journal, Ruth, a disillusioned writer and radical, leaves the halls of American academia to travel to Cuba. She hopes to find people there who share her beliefs and validate her struggle. It's not until her return to Columbia University that she is confronted by the realities of sacrifice and idealism. "The writing is smart and funny." - The New Yorker "The Castro era in Cuba may be in its endgame, but, as Mr. Machado suggests, it remains relevant to the assaults of a new century." - The New York Times "Machado's ability to combine seriousness of purpose with humor in crisp dialogue is admirable" - Back Stage