Bay Street Theater introduces audiences to new voices in its 8th annual Title Wave: The 2022 New Works Festival which runs from May 6 to May 8. The plays are stories we haven’t heard which make us feel joy and humanity and take us on new journeys. One of the works is “Atacama,” a play by Augusto Federico Amador. Thirty years after the dirty wars waged by the General Pinochet regime on the Chilean people, Atacama follows two strangers, a mother and a father, who search the Atacama Desert for their buried loved ones and discover there are darker truths awaiting them underneath the hard sands.
Amador is a widely recognized rising star on both stage and in television. His playwriting fellowships include: The Public Theater in NYC, The Humanitas Prize in Los Angeles, Latino Theater Alliance/L.A. and Lincoln City Fellowship in New York City. His plays have been produced across the country. Amador is also a recipient of the Disney/NBCUniversal/NHMC TV Writers Fellowship as well the prestigious Humanitas Prize New Voices Award in television writing.
Amador is thrilled to have the opportunity to be in the Hamptons for the first time at Bay Street Theater and to work with actors Socorro Santiago and Jose Febus and director José Zayas. “In order to get a great piece of work done you need to collaborate,” says Amador, “especially when you have amazing actors. I talk with them and ask what do you think your character says too much of and what is your character not saying enough of.” Describing his superpower as empathy, Amador has an astute ability to tap into the human condition. “I never went to college much less for writing,” he says, “It goes to show it’s about telling a story. In my imagination I can hear the characters speaking. I put them in a situation and raise the stakes then listen. I let them write themselves into a corner, then I let them write themselves out. They start taking me places.”
Writing characters which defy stereotypes is also key for Amador who in his own life points out the voice of the Latino population is hardly monolithic. “I thought if I am going to write this play it can’t be she’s all victim and he’s all evil,” He explains. “It’s about making them complicated. I tap into the feeling that as we mature there is a certain type of regret and nostalgia and awareness of mortality. Within that are beautiful silences, and the play has a lot of those silences.”
Amador credits his family for his love of the arts. “I grew up in San Francisco. My mother is from Austria, a culinary chef and my father a composer from Peru. I grew up with classic French cooking while listening to old school jazz.” He ended up moving to LA to pursue a career in acting but couldn’t find his voice. A novelist friend said he should try play writing, and like a match made in heaven, his voice came through loud and clear. He moved to New York and was discovered at one of his readings by the Public Theater which invited him for a fellowship.
Unlike many of his MFA fellows, he had a diverse life experience to pull upon which included being a numbers runner for a bookie, childhood trauma survivor, coffee house proprietor, car salesman, marble setter, and of course, long suffering waiter. Amador thus infuses his work with both specificity and universality. “In ‘Atacama’ the two characters could be Jewish or Armenian of African American or reflect what’s happening in Ukraine. They are two seniors with regret or mortality that people can really relate to. The twists and turns are the cherry on top. It’s about walking in someone’s shoes and emotionally understanding them. When you understand people as humans you can change people’s hearts,” he explains and adds with a laugh, “It’s not like talking to everyone’s avatar.”
“Atacama” is at Bay Street Theater Saturday, May 7, at 2 PM. The full production is currently at Full Circle Theater in St Paul, Minnesota.
