Miami’s poet Richard Blanco just made a surprise announcement. It got a standing ovation
Big names tossed about at opening night of the Steve Martin and Edie Brickell Broadway musical “Bright Star” at Actors’ Playhouse at the Miracle Theatre.
But a hometown star earned the evening’s first standing ovation.
Richard Blanco, Barack Obama’s inaugural poet and Miami-Dade County’s first poet laureate, will see the Florida premiere of his first play, “Sweet Goats & Blueberry Señoritas,” at Actors’ Playhouse in Coral Gables as the regional theater’s 36th season opening show in November.
After the theater’s founding executive producing director Barbara Stein made the announcement from the stage, a beaming Blanco, taking a mock bite out of the National Humanities Medal hanging from his neck that he received from President Joe Biden in March, said “Sweet Goats & Blueberry Señoritas” should resonate with Miami’s audiences.
The play, written with journalist and playwright Vanessa Garcia, who earned her masters of fine arts at the University of Miami, had its U.S. debut at Maine’s Portland Stage on Jan. 1-Feb. 12, 2023.
“Sweet Goats & Blueberry Señoritas” tells the story of Beatriz, a Cuban-American baker living in Maine, the circle of friends she calls family, and the complicated relationship she has with her mother. The play is set in past and present Maine and Miami.
“Sweet Goats” is scheduled to run Nov. 8-Dec. 3 at Actors’ Playhouse. Other shows for the 2023-2024 season include “A Rock Sails By,” “Hundred Days,” “Caroline or Change” and a featured musical whose title can’t be announced until May 23, Stein said.
In 2013, Blanco, a Class of ‘86 graduate of Westchester’s Christopher Columbus High School, read his poem “One Today” at President Obama’s second inauguration. He was the nation’s fifth inaugural poet and first Latino and gay man to have that honor.
“Sometimes you look at your life and almost feel like it was scripted,” Blanco told the Miami Herald during a video call in March.
“Bright Star,” directed by David Arisco, runs through April 16 at Actors’ Playhouse.