The weather is heating up and so is our country’s political climate, so it’s only natural that Burque’s art community follows suit. New Mexican playwright Patricia Crespin is addressing human rights issues that are still making headlines today with her stage adaptation of Margarita Engle’s Lion Island: Cuba’s Warrior of Words, and the play opens at the National Hispanic Cultural Center (1701 Fourth St. SW) just in time for spring. Co-produced by the Vortex Theatre, the theatrical debut of Lion Island will run at the NHCC from April 4 until April 13. Directed by RayRey Griego, the play will be performed by a cast rich with homegrown New Mexican talent. Lion Island’s all-local team of actors and crew have been featured in a crop of local productions over the years, and many of them have worked together in the past. The play is sure to pop with some of the city’s most organic stage chemistry starting this coming weekend.
The play, like the book before it, explores the concept of civil rights and the impact of peaceful protest. It is set in late-1800s Cuba.
“Audiences will be able to see this tiny, isolated island where slavery and forced labor are a reality. Freedom isn’t really guaranteed,” Crespin says. “Considering the temperature of the country right now, things are really unsure, uncertain. Freedom is being questioned today.”
Crespin, who is the first to adapt Engle’s novel for the stage, says all of her plays are dedicated to weaving traditional Latino folklore with serious contemporary issues. She says two of her goals as a writer are to create roles for underrepresented Latino actors and to showcase stories that resonate with their cultural identity. In addition to educating modern audiences about Chinese diaspora in Cuba in the 19th century, Crespin says she wants the play to spark questions with viewers about the world we live in today. She hopes the emotional impact of the play will stick with them long after they leave the theater.
“Using local actors, and [a local] director and playwright bridges together a relationship that the National Hispanic Cultural Center has always had with Latino artists,” she says. “I think it’s important for local artists to do work like this, because it’s nice to have an interpretation from someone who may live in an entirely different place but has the same sort of experience.”
Lion Island is Crespin’s fourth collaboration with the NHCC. Other NHCC productions written by Crespin include 2011’s The Medea Complex, 2015’s The Sad Room and 2018’s El Corrido de Jorge.
Jesus Bañuelos plays the lead role of Antonio in Lion Island. The part is based on the nonfictional figure of Antonio Chuffat, a young man of mixed African, Chinese and Cuban descent who worked as an indentured servant in Cuba in the 19th century and became an advocate for workers’ rights within his farming community.
“Antonio made history by traveling from one plantation to another, gathering these stories of humanity and sending them to a Chinese diplomat,” Crespin says. “He got the system abolished, and they stopped sending Chinese forced labor workers to Cuba. So the peaceful way is usually the smarter way to go.”
The all-local cast includes Daniel Lucero who plays Antonio’s father, Hector Corona who plays Wing in his first leading role since graduating with his theater degree from UNM in 2024 and Donielle Torres who plays Wing’s twin sister Fan, the romantic interest in the play. Original music and sound effects for the play are created by Vivian Fernandez.
Director RayRey Griego is a multi-faceted filmmaker who is versatile both on stage and behind the scenes. He designed the lights and shined as an actor in the Vortex’s production of Guards at the Taj and directed Rudolfo Anaya’s Farolitos of Christmas, a play that also featured Bañuelos performing the role of Doña Josephina.
“We are honored to bring this powerful story to the stage,” Griego says. “Lion Island is a celebration of resilience, cultural heritage and the voices that have shaped our collective history. Audiences will be transported by its beauty, depth and relevance to today’s world.”
Margarita Engle, who wrote the original book that inspired Crespin’s script, is an award-winning Cuban American author of young adult fiction, picturebooks and verse novels such as Rima’s Rebellion; Your Heart, My Sky; With a Star in My Hand and The Surrender Tree: Poems of Cuba’s Struggle for Freedom, which won a Newberry Honor award. Many of Engle’s books are based on true events and tell stories of forced labor, war and resistance during Cuba’s fight for independence in the 19th century. Lion Island is the final chapter in Engle’s series of loosely connected historical verse novels about the struggle to end contract labor in Cuba.
Crespin says she notices a lot of mixed emotions in our country right now, including the desire for Americans to lash out physically when they feel their rights have been violated. She says people have gotten out of control lately — she uses certain people’s violent reaction to Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss as a recent example — and she has grown tired of seeing stories about people dying turn into old news, only to be replaced by another violent headline. In Lion Island, liberty is obtained with words and change is achieved through peaceful channels. Crespin hopes audiences will remember Antonio’s story and follow his example in their own lives.
“I think we can accomplish much more by keeping a cool head. Hopefully, that will be something we do in this country and in New Mexico,” Crespin says, emphasizing the play’s timely historical message. “There’s a lot of fighting going on, and a lot of anger gets turned into violence. Violence gets turned into murder, but nothing gets accomplished.”
For tickets to Lion Island, visit the NHCC website (nhccnm.org/event/theatre-lion-island-cubas-warrior-of-words/). There is a special Preview Night performance on April 3 for just $5.
There will be a free morning show for APS students on April 11. Call the NHCC at 505-724-4771 if you’d like to attend or bring your class.
Lion Island
April 4 – April 13
National Hispanic Cultural Center
1701 Fourth St. SW
$26
$24 for children 10 years old and younger, seniors and NHCC members