ABSTRACT
A historiography of Latine theater in Florida and of Florida theater, writ large, remains to be written. This chapter addresses this lack by focusing on Latine theater’s development in Miami. It begins by unearthing the University of Miami’s Hispanic Theater Program in the late 1930s and Alianza Inter-Americana’s activities in the 1950s. It proceeds to analyze early Cuban exile theater and the role it played in the development of a Cuban enclave as well as in the transformation of Miami from “the sun capital of the US” to a major world city. It continues with the changes introduced in the 1970s and 1980s by various theater groups – Teatro Prometeo, Teatro Avante, and New Theatre among them – and the International Hispanic Theatre Festival (IHTF). It examines the challenges that Latine theatrical spaces face in Miami due to gentrification and Latine theater’s response to it by the refurbishing of warehouses and other non-theatrical spaces into small blackbox theaters. It also considers Microteatro and Miami New Drama, the two newest additions to Miami’s Latine theater scene. It concludes by presenting some of the challenges Miami’s Latine theater needs to address as it continues to find a place in US society.
