Set in Tucson, Cycles follows the lives of an unlikely pair of teens who bond at Pima County’s juvenile detention facility and support each other as they struggle to navigate the state’s system.
Written by playwright Milta Ortiz and performed by StoryWorks Theater, Cycles is a documentary play based on the Arizona Daily Star's year-long investigation into Arizona’s foster care system — the characters are based on real sources and no names have been changed.
This event is free and open to the public. If you haven't already, register for a free ticket at tickets.tucson.com.
StoryWorks: Cycles written by Milta Ortiz
When: Thursday, Aug. 27 at 7 p.m.
Where: Access to livestream at tucne.ws/cycles
Tickets: Event is free to attend. Register at tickets.tucson.com.
Program
StoryWorks, The Arizona Daily Star and Borderlands present:
Cycles
Written by Milta Ortiz
Directed by Jennifer Welch
Featuring:
Patty………...………………………Natalia Storie
Alexei…………………………………Stracey Posey
Aracely……………………………….Liliana Espinoza
Liana / Little Boy…………….Sarah Marie Haro
Judge Karen Adam…………….Katie McFazden
Production Team
Producer……………………………..Jennifer Welch
Technical Director / Video Artist.….Adam Cooper-Terán
Choreography……………………….Milta Ortiz
Stage Manager…………Saun’Rae Nez and Kayla Banks
About StoryWorks
StoryWorks is a documentary theater company that engages artists with journalists throughout the process to create original plays that reveal emotional, as well as factual truths of investigative reporting. The intention of StoryWorks is not to re-create the reporting on stage but to transform it into a theatrical work of art. Since launching this national project in 2013, StoryWorks has developed twelve new plays with Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, HuffPost, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Kansas City Star, NJTV, KCPT, The Arizona Daily Star and Mississippi Today.
Producing Partner
Borderlands Theater is a professional theater company recognized nationally and internationally for the development and production of theater and educational programs that reflect the diverse voices of the U.S./ Mexico border region. Although focusing on the Latino/Chicano/Mexicano voice as the core voice to nurture and support, Borderlands works interactively with all voices of the region. The “border,” both as a physical and social landscape, is a metaphor for Borderlands’ work. The metaphor allows, invites and even demands, both a regional and an international understanding of what it represents. Border people, in the best sense of the word, are citizens of the world.
Supporting Partners
Community Foundation of Southern Arizona, USC Annenberg/Center for Health Journalism, ProPublica and The Solutions Journalism Network. Support for this project was made possible in part by Projecting All Voices, a program of ASU Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts and ASU Gammage, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Bios
Milta Ortiz (Playwright) is a theater maker and writer from the Bay Area, who now calls Tucson home. She is a 2020-21 Mellon Projecting All Voices Fellow at Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and Arts and ASU Gammage, where she will research African ancestry in El Salvador for a performance piece and begin working on Anita, a musical set in Tucson. Recently, she finished Pilar and Paloma, a play commissioned by Pima Community College, where she also directed The Sun Serpent in 2019. Her play Judge Torres premiered to a sold out run at Milagro Theatre in January 2019 and continued on to a college national tour. She received NEA and NALAC grants to develop and produce her play, Sanctuary, which premiered to a sold out run at Borderlands Theater in September 2018. She devised, wrote and directed Solving for X for the Working Classroom (2016-17). Her play, Más, was produced at San Diego State University (November 201), Su Teatro (March 2017), and co-produced by Laney College (March, 2016) and Ubuntu Theater Project (May 2016). Más premiered to a sold out run at Borderlands Theater (September 2015) and was nominated for a Steinberg-ATCA Award and toured Arizona Universities (in 2016/17). Más was developed at Borderlands Theater through an NNPN residency, NALAC and TPAC grants, and produced thanks in part to NEA funding. Other produced plays include A Tucson Pastorela (18th, 19th, 20th, 21st), Sonoran Shadows, Disengaged, Fleeing Blue, and solo play Scatter My Red Underwear. Milta teaches theater at Pima Community College. She earned an M.F.A. from Northwestern University’s Writing for the Screen and Stage program, and a Creative Writing B.A. from San Francisco State University. She is associate artistic director at Borderlands Theater and mom to a creative second grader.
Jennifer Welch (Director / Producer) is a documentary artist and creator of StoryWorks, a groundbreaking documentary theater company that transforms investigative journalism into theater and audio dramas. Since launching StoryWorks in 2013, Welch has developed plays with Reveal and The Center for Investigative Reporting, HuffPost, The Kansas City Star, NJTV, KCPT, the Arizona Daily Star and Mississippi Today. Each play has reached a different region of the country and helped to drive social change by exposing America’s structural inequality and the costs of human injustice. In doing so, her work reveals not only the factual truths, which are verified by deep investigative reporting but the emotional revelations that theater conveys. She is also a contributing producer for “Reveal,” the Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast from CIR and PRX. Welch is a 2017 recipient of the Midwest Innocence Project’s Sean O’Brien Freedom Award and was named a 2019 Preserver of Mississippi Culture by the Mississippi Humanities Council. She is based in San Francisco, California and Clarksdale, Mississippi.
Natalia Storie (Patty)is grateful to be a part of this production with Storyworks. She studied theater at the University of Arizona and in international workshops in London. Natalia's a member of the International Thespian Society and has worked locally with TADA, Beowulf Theatre Company, Winding Road Theater Ensemble, SheWorxxx, and most recently with Borderlands Theater as an actor and most recently as a board member. She has also participated in Tucson’s Fringe Festival co-writing and costarring as one half of comedy duo, Nickels and Dimes.
Stacey Posey (Alexei) is a Tucsonian pursuing a degree in Theatre Arts. With her degree she'll get a Teacher Certificate for secondary education. Ms. Posey is currently attending UA. She recently received her Associates Degree at Pima Community College (PCC). She has performed in PCC, Tartuffe, as Madame Pernelle and Singin’ In The Rain, as Assistant Director #3 . While working on Tartuffe, she took in two jobs as an actress and Prop Master. She has done Tech as a Prop Master for Mama Mia, Assistant Stage Manager twice for Polaroid Stories & The Sun Serpent and Costume Designer for The Sun Serpent. She would like to thank her family, and her theatre family at PCC.
Lilianna Espinoza (Aracely) This is her second play, the first she played Amoxtli in Pima Community College’s Production of The Sun Serpent. She has also been in two short films called Dysphasia and Saria. Lilianna is a Tucson born native who studies film at Pima Community College. In her free time she enjoys writing, singing songs and painting.
Katie McFadzen (Judge Karen Adam) is an Associate Artist with Childsplay and has worked as an actor, teaching artist, and director with the company since 1993. Favorite Childsplay acting credits include: The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Ella Enchanted, Flora & Ulysses, Seussical, The BFG, and Getting Near to Baby. Additional acting credits include: A Year With Frog and Toad with Childsplay/Seattle Children’s Theatre; Lost and Foundling with Childsplay/Geva Theatre; Mamma Mia, Bloody, Bloody Andrew Jackson, and The Women with Phoenix Theatre; Good People, The Pursuit of Happiness, and Parallel Lives: The Kathy and Mo Show with Actors Theatre; How the Other Half Loves, The Great Gatsby, and a one-woman version of A Christmas Carol with Arizona Theatre Company (also produced at Childsplay in 2017); Rasheeda Speaking and The Wedding Band with Black Theatre Troupe; Small Mouth Sounds, Speech and Debate and The Year of the Rooster with Stray Cat Theatre. Directing credits include: The Trump Card and The Cake with Stray Cat Theatre; The Snowy Day and Other Stories with Childsplay; and The Way North and The Mysterious Disappearance for The Phoenix Theatre Company’s Festival of New Works. Katie holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting/Directing from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and a Master of Fine Arts in Theatre for Youth from Arizona State University. She is a Faculty Associate in ASU's Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law where she co-teaches Persuasive Speech.
Adam Cooper-Terán (ACT) (Technical Director / Video Artist) is a critically-acclaimed video, sound, and multimedia artist from Tucson, Arizona, better known for their collaborations with various theater companies, performance artists, musicians, rabble-rousers, and activists. Their work has featured across the globe in universities, museums, basements, and streets as large-scale projections, musical interventions, and installations of digital storytelling. As a performer, Adam incorporates live video and audio mixing into ritualized improvisations, which have led to highly personal and political spectacles rooted in ceremony and social justice. For more information and overview of their work, visit ANTRAL.NET.
Saun’Rae Nez (Stage Manager) is delighted to be a part of the Cycles production team. Saun’Rae is from the Navajo Nation Reservation and has moved to Tucson to work as an actor, playwright and theater artist.
Arizona Daily Star Reporters
Patty Machelor covers issues pertaining to children and families as well as people living with disabilities. She previously reported on court cases, with an emphasis on juvenile court. She has worked for the Arizona Daily Star since 2001.
Perla Trevizo is a reporter for ProPublica in Texas. She previously was a member of the Arizona Daily's Star investigative team, focusing on border and immigration. She is the recipient of the Dori J. Maynard Award for Diversity in Journalism, French-American Foundation Immigration Journalism Award, and a national Edward R. Murrow for a story done in collaboration with Arizona Public Media. She has also been a Livingston and Peabody award finalist.
Sarah Garrecht Gassen is the Opinion Editor and a columnist at the Arizona Daily Star and directs the Star's Apprentice and Internship program. She teaches at the University of Arizona School of Journalism and regularly appears on public affairs radio and television. Sarah earned her master’s degree in journalism in 2010 from the UA with a focus on disability as a newsroom diversity issue. She’s worked with the New York Times Student Journalism Institute, advised high school instructors on opinion writing and blended journalism with youth development through work with a non-profit youth writing program.
Emily Bregel is a Baltimore native who has worked for 11 years as a reporter for daily newspapers in Tucson and Chattanooga, Tenn. She is currently living in Sonora, Mexico, where she works as a freelance reporter, English teacher and occasional organic farmer.