About the Play:

The Lady from Havana is a full-length comedy by Luis Santeiro. The Cuban generation gap and clash of cultures is dramatized through the relationship between a mother and daughter who were split when the daughter emigrated from Cuba to Florida.

The Lady from Havana explores the bittersweet relationship between a recently exiled Cuban aristocrat, her daughter and a feisty maid. Dignity and hilarity go hand in hand when an old Cuban dowager reluctantly comes to live with her middle-aged daughter in Miami, bringing to America her pride, her maid and her black market connections. In Act One, Mama, an elegant older woman from Cuba, arrives at the Miami home of her daughter, Marita, with her former maid, Zoila, in tow as well as a host of misgivings about living in exile in the United States. As the mother and daughter circle each other warily, the clash of cultures, generations and character create one confrontation after another. But there's little doubt that Mama is beginning to assimilate, even attempting to work the new system as an Avon lady. Act Two opens in a funeral parlour, with three elderly Cuban American ladies sitting watch over a corpse which is gradually revealed to be Mama. It is ten years later and, in one of the funniest funeral scenes ever written, a great deal is revealed about survival and the amazing, and often comical, resilience of the human spirit.

The Lady from Havana was commissioned and originally produced in 1990 by INTAR Hispanic American Arts Center in New York City.

Cast: 3 female

What people say:

"These people, even if wildly accentuated for comedic purpose, ring true and ring beautifully absurd." — New York Post

"The anger of the characters is real … but Mr. Santeiro, keeping his eye steadfastly on the absurdity of the human condition, makes it all ridiculous." — New York Times

"Whereas tragedy and sorrow can't always be shared as a common experience, a laugh is a laugh in any language. It's like a Band-Aid that covers all kinds of emotional scars. The Lady From Havana sticks it on right where it's needed." — Sun-Sentinel (Florida)

About the Playwright:

Luis Santeiro is a Cuban-American playwright and television writer. Born in Cuba and raised in Miami, he turned his real life experiences into inspiration. He has written numerous successful plays drawing on his Cuban roots and creating mirror-like characters from his family and childhood. He has been nominated for twenty Daytime Emmy Awards and has won fourteen, twelve of these during his twenty-nine-year career a member of the Sesame Street writing staff.