Can you taste that? It’s AGUARDIENTE, a new musical that, like the Latin American liquor it’s named for, promises to entice all your senses. Created by Luis Salgado and Daniel Alejandro Gutiérrez, the show—whose full title is AGUARDIENTE, Where Magic Transcends Borders—will dance and sing at GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington, D.C., April 30-May 24. A full-circle moment for the creatives, who met in Colombia and started working together 15 years ago, this multilingual new work promises to conclude the company’s 50th anniversary season with a bang.
GALA has long brought artists and audiences together across borders and languages, and this show is no exception. “GALA is the vessel where we are all getting to play like children in the importance of our language,” said Salgado, who directed their Spanish-dominant versions of In the Heights, Fame, and On Your Feet!
Four years ago, while collaborating with Salgado for the U.S. national tour of On Your Feet!, Gutiérrez got his first U.S. credit as the show’s music director. Now AGUARDIENTE gives an opportunity for both to claim writing credits and tell a story that celebrates their art and friendship. Though they wouldn’t consider it autobiographical, the show includes one character from Colombia and another from Puerto Rico, like Gutiérrez and Salgado, respectively, who are writing a show about the characters Azuquita (sugar) and Anís (the flavor in aguardiente).
In drawing on Caribbean rhythms and the tradition of Gabriel García Márquez’s realismo mágico, the production creates a “mestizaje,” as Gutiérrez put it, of American musical theatre and more culturally specific sounds and structures through the celebration of cumbia, bomba, and currulao. It promises to evoke specific memories among Latine and Caribbean audience members, and universal experiences around love and home for all. And multi-sensory immersion will heighten emotional experience: I don’t want to spoil too much, but let’s just say this collaborative duo plans to experiment with the smells and sounds of a Latin American kitchen. If you crave the scent of cafecito, this show just might get you hooked.
