TeatroStageFest '08

For the second year, several New York City theater companies will team up with colleagues from Latin America, the Caribbean and Spain to present a two-week celebration of Latino performance at several locations around the city. The festival, which includes plays, concerts, comedy, panel discussions and even a high school playwriting competition, starts on Monday, when Bianca Marroquin, Broadway’s current Roxie Hart in “Chicago,” performs a solo evening at Joe’s Pub, offering a mix of her original songs, show tunes and Mexican standards. teatrostagefest.org

Other festival participants include the stalwart New York company Repertorio Español, now in its 40th-anniversary season, which will present “Doña Flor y Sus Dos Maridos” (“Doña Flor and Her Two Husbands”), a surreal Brazilian comedy about a woman living with — and sleeping with — both her new husband and the ghost of her dead ex. Among the visiting troupes are Teatro La Zaranda, from Andalucía, Spain, offering the absurdist clown tale “Los Que Ríen Los Últimos” (“Those Who Laugh Last”), above, and Grupo Doble Ve, from Buenos Aires. That Argentinean troupe will perform two one-act plays, “Harina” (“Flour”) and “Guardavidas” (“Lifeguard”), to be presented in Spanish with live English translation.

From ‘Theater Listing’ in the NYTimes by Steven McElroy