12 June 26 – July 2, 2025 miaminewtimes.com | browardpalmbeach.com NEW TIMES isms. The immersive, site-specific production took over Lincoln Road with vignettes play- ing out in empty stores or in the middle of the street. Audiences were divided into tracks and experienced the flow of the show differ- ently. While the story unfolded through short snapshots, it all converged in the end as the entire audience encountered the final scene together. The show featured major local play- ers, like Carmen Pelaez as a chef and restau- rant owner, Marcela Paguaga as an influencer, and Gregg Weiner as a restaurant host. BEST LOCAL PLAYWRIGHT Brandon Urrutia brandonurrutia.webnode.page/purpose “Born in Hialeah, raised in Miami, wants to die in the Sedano’s check-out line” is the descrip- tion of Brandon Urrutia’s character Brandón in Lo siento, mi español es tremendo mal. It’s a one- person play about a Cuban-American who la- ments the distance a language barrier created between them and their late Spanish-speaking grandmother. The self-described Cuban- American loser performed the autobiographi- cal solo show at the Atlanta and Edinburgh fringe festivals. In addition to its international reach, the play received the very local and very meaningful “As Miamense as Possible” award from Miami’s nonprofit Antiheroes Project. Urrutia is also cofounder and artistic director of the absurdist and experimental theater com- pany LakehouseRanchDotPNG, which puts on productions and hosts a community-building play-reading series. They reached a milestone this year as Next Stage Press published Kevin and the River Flan, which includes this play- wright’s note to anyone producing it: “Please be advised that none of the Spanish in this script is translated. I grew up unable to fully under- stand the language and that aspect of my life is represented in my work. I did not get subtitles, neither do you.” BEST DIRECTOR (THEATER) Michel Hausmann Miami New Drama miaminewdrama.org Call him the Energizer Bunny of directing. At the end of January, Michel Hausmann had two original plays being staged under his direction for Miami New Drama. Lincoln Road Hustle was an immersive show with plenty of moving parts and 14 actors performing mostly in out- door spaces along blocks of Lincoln Road (Hausmann also conceived Hustle). Simultane- ously, Bad Dog (he tapped playwright Harley Elias to write the Art Basel spoof for MiND) was on stage inside the Colony Theatre. If you add it up, there were 18 actors under his direc- tion, all performing at one time in two different shows. Add to it that Hustle wasn’t just one play but was made up of five short plays that all con- verged in a hysterical finale. We’ve observed that Hausmann’s beard has gotten grayer after this past year. Must be that hustle. BEST THEATER COMPANY Plays ºf Wilton The Foundry 2306 N. Dixie Hwy. Wilton Manors 33305 954-826-8790 playsofwilton.com Ronnie Larsen has delivered a series of knockout punches with his LGBTQ+ focused Plays of Wilton (POW) since he planted roots in South Florida. The California-born play- wright, producer, actor, artistic director was introduced to Broward’s gayborhood in 2018 when Empire Stage presented his best- known work Making Porn, and that’s when the gay gods of theater fate intervened. This season, Larsen began presenting POW in the Park! with free outdoor shows. In March, the beloved musical A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum kicked it off. In May, swivel chairs had the audience surrounded by the cast of The Sound of Music in Wilton Manors’ Richardson Park, along with no shushing allowed as singing along was en- couraged. Larsen read a play that he thought seemed ripe for a musical, so he turned it into one and produced it. A Shonda paired the most unlikely lovers — a gay Southern Baptist cowboy and an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic Jew. Big and boisterous, he isn’t one to stand in the shadows. Case in point, the artistic director starred in his original play An Evening With Divine as the drag icon and movie star. Plays of Wilton made it to off-Broadway in 2024. Larsen’s semi-autobiographical play, The Ac- tors, played for a little more than a month, and he took some local actors and South Flor- ida director Stuart Meltzer with him to the Big Apple. BEST SPANISH-LANGUAGE THEATER COMPANY Arca Images 305-934-5103 arcaimages.org While productions in Spanish are a mainstay in Miami theater, Arca Images has made it easy for non-Spanish speakers to enjoy the plays. While it’s usual for translations to be shown as text, it can be a challenge to read what’s going on and get into the action on stage. For Arca-produced shows, headphones are provided and a live translator in another room of the theater watches the stage and provides real-time translation. For some shows, there will be two versions of the same play: one in Spanish and, on alternating nights, an English version. The works pre- sented are by some of the most lauded Span- ish-language playwrights in the world by international casts. BEST DANCE COMPANY Karen Peterson Dancers 8700B SW 129th Ter. Miami 33176 305-298-5879 karenpetersondancers.org Dance is for everyone. Period. Miami’s Karen Peterson Dancers (KPD) are made up of both dancers who are disabled and
