Jon Marcantoni, a local playwright and founder of the Denver theater company Flamboyán, was nearing the end of the run of “Puerto Rican Nocturne” — his drama about the killings of two young, pro-Independence activists at Cerro Maravilla, during a time of particularly heightened tensions between those fighting for the Caribbean island’s independence and those wanting statehood — when he began writing “Empire of Solitude.”
Also centered on the Puerto Rican experience, the drama inspired by the poet Julia de Burgos begins a run at Buntport in early August.
In 2021, Marcantoni had been in talks with another writer about developing a story featuring the mid-20th century poet who died in July 1953 in New York City at the age of 39. (She was reinterred in Puerto Rico two months later.) When that collaborator departed for another project, Burgos wouldn’t let him go. He was compelled by her poetry and her biography to figure a way into her creativity and boldness, artistry and activism.
He spent time “deep diving into her poetry and reading everything I possibly could about her,” he recalled over coffee one morning. “Her poetry is incredibly confessional. Which was nice because I didn’t have to assume a lot, like, ‘Oh, how does she feel about this? How does she feel about that?’ She tells you.” Still, he wasn’t interested in telling her story in a conventional way.
“I like a good biopic,” Marcantoni said. “But most biopics are bad. It’s because the formula gets stale. Also, you’re trying to cover too many things in a person’s life, and it just becomes kind of a just-the-facts sort of thing. And the facts of a person’s life often miss who they were as a person.”
Having immersed himself, Marcantoni began noticing themes, which he teased into the play’s four characters: the Poetess (played by Lucinda Lazo), Feminine (Shyan Rivera), Revolutionary (Gisselle Gonzalez) and Wife (Jordan Hull).
“It was just this burst of creativity,” he said. “At times, I felt like I was channeling her in a way, writing out her poetry and just feeling that the essence of what she was putting out into the world. It was a very profound experience writing.”
The intricately woven drama is directed by Narely Cortes and begins its run on Aug. 9. Make that its theatrical run. In an intriguing experiment, Flamboyán has been putting episodes of the play on podcast platforms. The young theater company has also been airing episodes of another of its plays, “Cody,” by Denise Zubizarreta. Titled “Denise” for the podcast, the drama is structurally different from the theatrical script, but is still based on the playwright’s experiences in the military and her encounters with domestic violence. The drama features a late-night deejay who served at Guantanamo and a female caller who stirs up difficult memories. It got a staged reading in spring.
If “Nocturne” spoke to Marcantoni’s political convictions as a Puerto Rican-born writer and supporter of independence, “Empire” embodies his passion to honor artists, whose work is more complex than their ideological stances. Burgos’ concerns were overlapping. She was an activist in a leftist movement dominated by men. She was a Puerto Rican woman in a world that overvalued white colonial heritage over African roots and promoted marriage and motherhood as the singular values for women. All were positions Burgos rebelled against.
In Burgos, Marcantoni appears to have found not simply a muse and a neglected subject to delve into but also a kindred spirit who wrote of Puerto Rico’s abundance and articulated her anti-colonialist views with a revolutionary, upend-the-oppressors’ fervor. For all his low-key ways of expressing his thoughts, Marcantoni’s got a bit of the firebrand in him.
Born in Puerto Rico, Marcantoni moved to Colorado 10 years ago. Much of Denver’s Latiné arts and culture offerings come via Chicano and Mexican arts organizations, like the five-decades-old Su Teatro. A theater company centered on Puerto Rico’s history is notable not least because Denverites aren’t necessarily aware of the city’s Puerto Rican population. And Marcantoni would be the first to tell you that Puerto Ricans make up the second largest Latiné group.
Last fall, Marcantoni took the step of remaking Flamboyán — which he had launched along with an incubator for playwrights the year before —into a theater company focused on Puerto Rican life and artists.
Like Burgos, Marcantoni’s passion for his birthplace and its riven but also profoundly rich heritage is front and center. “Being a Puerto Rican in the Mountain West can feel isolating and challenging,” he began an email announcing the refocusing. “We do not fit the typical Latino narrative given our relationship with the U.S., which granted us citizenship in 1917 while controlling our resources, land, and people. Puerto Rican social and political identity is splintered within families, friend groups, and even within ourselves.
“Puerto Rico has maintained its national distinctiveness in spite of colonialism, racism, and economic highs and lows … . Puerto Ricans have the distinct experience of knowing the good and the bad of the U.S. in a way that no other Latino people do. Nothing about us is simple, yet it is all relatable to anyone who has yearned to belong.”
So how does he plan to invite new audiences into the theatrical experience? (It’s a question bedeviling many of the city’s creatives about their own theaters.) For Marcantoni, one answer is those podcasts.
“Podcasts have become one of the most influential and popular forms of media. There are a lot of people who may not feel comfortable going to a theater, and that could be for any number of reasons. Some people might just not like theater — or think that they don’t — and so they’re going to be more open to the podcast idea,” said Marcantoni.
“It’s a little bit of reverse engineering,” he added. “The first step with the podcast is mostly trying to get Puerto Ricans outside of Colorado interested in what we’re doing, exposing them to the stories that we’re telling and building connections that go outside of Colorado, but which indirectly puts Colorado on the map for them. For those other creatives to go ‘Oh, there’s interesting stuff going on.’”
This creation of a local, national, even global feedback loop is something that the best of our local arts organizations continue to practice: introducing local audiences to meaningful work from the nation and beyond and introducing audiences outside the region to the work of area creatives.
Flamboyán’s outreach won’t stop with podcasts. Some of it relies on wonderfully old-school community building. For the Buntport run of “Empire of Solitude,” Marcantoni plans on canvassing the Santa Fe arts corridor with flyers and pitching local businesses an exchange of discounted coupons. When Flamboyán had a release party for the podcasts in June, it was held at the Latiné woman-owned Raices Brewery Company, Artis. Flamboyán’s staged reading of “Cheyanne” by Cipriano Ortega last fall started with a performance by a local poet. So will “Empire of Solitude.” And artisan vendors will set up shop in the Buntport lobby during the run.
Marcantoni thinks of it as a communal marketplace. “You come into it and you’re mingling with people from around the city, and then you get to see a local artist performing,” he said, laying out what is more than a play but an experience. “It puts you in this mindset to then be open to the story itself and then this piece of theater.”
IF YOU GO
“Empire of Solitude”: Written by Jon Marcantoni. Directed by Narely Cortes. Featuring Lucinda Lazo, Shyan Rivera, Gisselle Gonzalez) and Jordan Hull. At Buntport, 717 Lipan St. Aug. 9-18. For tickets and info: Flamboyántheatre.com
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