Rachel Chavkin is directing an industry reading of Waiting for Snow in Havana, a new musical built from Carlos Eire’s memoirs of a Cuban boyhood, on Friday, November 13, at Open Jar Studios.
The reading is a closed, developmental presentation for invited industry guests rather than a public performance, and no production dates have been announced. The details were first reported by Playbill; the producer, Maria Elena de la Noval, has not issued a release.
The source is Eire’s account of growing up in Havana before the revolution and of Operation Pedro Pan, the airlift that took more than 14,000 unaccompanied Cuban children to the United States between 1960 and 1962. The musical draws on both of Eire’s books, Waiting for Snow in Havana and its follow-up, Learning to Die in Miami.
Sarah Gancher and Karen Zacarías wrote the book. Benjamin Velez wrote the music and shares the lyrics with the poet Richard Blanco. Or Matias is music supervisor and Alejandro Senior music director, and casting is by Kristian Charbonier of Telsey Casting.
The reading company is Benji Santiago (Carlitos), Mariand Torres (Mother), Omar Lopez-Cepero (Father), Pablo Torres (Grande), Christopher Ramirez (Eugenio Grande), Isabella Esler (Eugenio), Dario Alvarez (Manuel), Danny Bolero (Amado/Brother Roberto), Elisa Galindez (Miranda), Julian Lerner (Tony), Anthony Lee Medina (Armando/Tony Grande), Ella Noriega (Chachi), Naomi Serrano (Rafael/Yoyo), Lorraine Velez (Inocencia) and Aléna Watters (Lucy).
Chavkin won the Tony Award for directing Hadestown. Blanco, the poet at Barack Obama’s second inauguration in 2013, wrote last year about an evening sharing early demo songs from the score with an audience, as the team kept developing it.
