"Lighting designer Ayun Fedorcha must have taken lessons from Rembrandt... "Los pecados" recounts the tale of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz, a 17th-century Mexican poet, intellectual and courtier who at age 20 entered a convent, where she was eventually forced to give up writing. Director Abel López and his creative team, including Fedorcha and several fine actors, tell the story with sad eloquence, showing Juana to be a victim of Machiavellian power plays and humanity's fear of the new... The wonderful Ana Verónica Muñoz fills the title role, playing Juana at two points in her life. As a young lady-in-waiting, Muñoz's face radiates a youthful exuberance, and she moves with an energy and decisiveness that seem downright adolescent. As for the older Juana -- well, if it is tough to act in a wimple, the actress betrays no sign of it...Muñoz facially expresses the degrees of rebelliousness, disappointment and, eventually, despair that motivate the nun's behavior...Aminta de Lara... is hilariously loud, deadpan and truculent as Xochitl, Juana's Aztec maid...Mel Rocher does a charismatic turn as Juana's would-be seducer...and Hugo Medrano brings an aptly weary air to the role of Juana's confessor. Menchu Esteban is lively and imperious as the vicereine, and in her few scenes as Sister Sara, Juana's fellow nun, she manages to convey the envy and frustration seething within the religious order... Harmonious, philosophical and relatively quiet, "Los pecados" will not be for everyone -- but it is for those who appreciate striking visuals and subtle, spare, intelligent writing."

Celia Wren, The Washington Post (May 3, 2006)

“...'Te quiero, muñeca’ ['I Love You, Doll'], written by Ernesto Caballero and directed with clockwork precision by Harold Ruiz, often seems like a digitized pastiche of several seminal writings with feminism as the subject.... Sometimes the ideas get lost, sometimes they resonate, and sometimes they disintegrate on impact... Still, ‘Te quiero...’ has been built to entertain, and it never disappoints. Credit the success to Ruiz’s knack for comic timing, and to the cast with the best chemistry in town....”
Christopher Correa, Washington Theatre Review (September 19, 2005)

“...Abel López’s handsome staging [of 'Real Women Have Curves'] pops off the stage at GALA’s swank new Tívoli Theatre digs... Marycarmen Wila and Barbara Bonilla-Burnett are charmingly sassy and salt-of-the-earthy as two of the older workers, and if the younger cast members don’t always feel quite as relaxed as their more mature colleagues-well, that’s one of the nice things about maturity, now isn’t it? Real women do have curves, of course, even the skinny ones and the young ones, and if nothing else, Josefina López enjoys herself while tracing ‘em. Chances are you will, too.”
Washington City Paper (May 13, 2005)

"…director Hugo Medrano's compelling and accomplished revival of Federico Garcia Lorca's 1934 Andalusian tragedy ['Yerma']… If Yerma's agitated vigil for a baby that will not come seems a formula for a monumental downer, Medrano's production finds a variety of balms. From the rendering of a sun-dried hamlet by set designer Tony Cisek to Munoz's beautifully calibrated portrait of a woman on the verge, this 'Yerma' satisfyingly allows a host of intense colors to bleed into a play that can sometimes seem starkly black and white…. 'Yerma' is one of the signature works of lyrical naturalism by Garcia Lorca, a celebrated dramatist executed by right-wing forces in Spain less than two years after the play's premiere. It also happens to be the play with which GALA is inaugurating its new home -- the most opulent lodgings in its 29-year history -- in the renovated Tivoli Theatre in Columbia Heights. The balcony of the old movie palace has been retrofitted for GALA's 270-seat performance space. The perch seems symbolically apropos for the peaks that the company is admirably trying to scale… Among the many strong performances, Miriam Cruz's turn as a lusty, plain-spoken village elder, and Cesar A. Guadamuz's portrayal of a townsman who might have made Yerma happy, are particularly supple. With this full- bodied 'Yerma,' Medrano asserts a mature grasp of Garcia Lorca's work. As a result, a tale laced with melancholy throws open the doors felicitously on a new phase in GALA's evolution."
Peter Marks, The Washington Post (February 22, 2005)

"After 29 years of hopscotching from temporary shelter to shelter, struggling to attract audiences, GALA is indeed beginning again, this time -- a casa, home at last -- in a 270-seat space in the historic Tivoli, a reconstruction that, fittingly enough for this group, melds elements of the old and the new, from the ornately decaying ceiling dome to the chain-metal "clouds" floating in the lobby. Fitting too, that this motley band from across the Hispanic diaspora, formed with a mission to preserve Latino culture, is taking on Garcia Lorca, the martyred poet and playwright, a Spaniard whose life and work serve as symbol for fighting against oppression."
Teresa Wiltz, The Washington Post (February 13, 2005)

"For 29 long years, GALA Hispanic Theatre's loyal actors and patrons have been searching for a home to call their own. They finally found it at the historic Tivoli Theatre, and Friday was the time to celebrate. 'No one knows how fabulous this is if they haven't been with GALA for three or four moves,' said Joel Atlas Skirble, GALA board president. 'It's a miracle!' Beginning with the red-hot carpet outside the Columbia Heights landmark to the flaming red 'Targetinis' donated by sponsor Target inside, it was clear that the Latin spirit was en la casa…. 'I was here a long time ago and they told me their dreams,' said stage and screen legend Rita Moreno, who has donated rent money over the years. 'I thought, 'Well, good luck,' but by God, they did it.'"
Roxanne Roberts, The Washington Post (January 10, 2005)

The Stage Is Set: GALA becomes the first permanent national Hispanic theater
by Mark Holston, Hispanic Magazine (December 2004)

When the curtain goes up in early January on the premier production of GALA Hispanic Theatre in its elegantly appointed new venue, the audience will be focused as much on its surroundings as what unfolds on the stage. In recent years, the story of Washington, D.C.’s venerable Spanish-language theater company’s efforts to survive and advance to a new phase of existence has been laden with the kind of dramatic moments and cast of characters any director would kill for. GALA was virtually homeless, lacked sufficient funds to sustain its ambitious programs, and was desperately in need of a permanent place to hang its hat.

Hard work on the part of its longtime staff, star-quality assistance from one of the Hispanic world’s leading ladies, and support from a wide range of government and private sector partners proved to be the winning combination that moved the story from its troubled opening act to a glorious finale. GALA, which is the acronym for Grupo de Artistas Latino Americanos, has arguably been the country’s leading Spanish-language theater for close to three decades. Since 1977, GALA has produced close to 150 plays in both Spanish and English, has presented music, dance and poetry, and has cultivated relationships with actors in Mexico, Cuba and a number of other Latin American nations while providing a cultural focal point for the growing Hispanic community in the nation’s capital.

To read the entire article, click here.