The Cuban Vote

Carmen Pelaez (Playwright, Carolina) wrote her first solo play Rum & Coke, which she performed in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami, culminating in an award-winning Off-Broadway run in 2008. In 2012, she won the HBO NYLFF Short Film Competition with “The Acting Lesson” and followed up with the short, “A Queen Without His Crown.” Most recently, she directed the short film “Mango Season,” for which she received an Honorable Mention at the 2020 Miami International Film Festival. In 2020 she was commissioned by Oolite to create the short documentary, “Caridad y Gallo” as part of their Close Quarters Series. Carmen starred in Arroz Con Lech y Powerball by Mariana Serrano and Kathy Martini’s Sombras Nada Mas. Carmen has proudly worked on President Barack Obama’s Cuba Policy team and is on President Biden’s Cuba advisory team. She has also written for NBC Latino, Marie Claire, The Huffington Post, and The New York Times. She was recently featured in John Leguizamo Does America (Miami). Currently she’s developing two series, Tropical Beasts and Ventanita, as well as her first feature adaptation, The Cuban Vote. Most recently she was commissioned by The Huntington Theatre to adapt Antigone and by Miami New Drama to write Museum Play and Caridad. Carmen is a 2023 MacDowell Fellowship recipient and a 2023 Ellie Award recipient. She is a graduate of The American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association

Gabriel Alejandro (Alex) is a Puerto Rican actor, teacher, and improviser. He has trained and performed in Colombia, Denmark, Greece, Puerto Rico, and Washington DC. Previous credits include: Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: As You Like It; Keegan Theater: The Wilting Point; Shakespeare Theatre Company Academy: Macbeth, Measure for Measure, Pericles, Twelfth Night; Odin Teatret: Barter; Worlds Elsewhere Theater Company: The Roaring Girl; Fractal Theater Collective: Untitled Horror Project; SINE QUA NON ART: Kosmos. Education: (BA) University of Puerto Rico, (MAT) New York University, (MFA Candidate) George Washington University. IG: @galejandro

Fabiolla da Silva (Blanca) is a local actor, deviser, and teaching artist. She is excited to be collaborating with Folger again after working in their last production of Love’s Labor’s Lost. Other recent credits include: Taffety Punk Theatre Company: La Salpêtrière; 1st Stage: The Last Match; Prologue Theatre: World Builders, The Revolutionists (Helen Hayes Award for Best Supporting Performer in a Play); The Kennedy Center: Girl Power!; Workhouse Arts Center: Women Playing Hamlet; We Happy Few: La Llorona; Adventure Theatre MTC: Fantastagirl and the Math Monster (Helen Hayes Award nominated for Best Ensemble); Chesapeake Shakespeare Company: Measure for Measure; Convergence Theatre: Guerrilla Theatre Works: A New Nation. Films: The Importance of Finding the Other, That Engagement Thing, and Autumn’s Room. Fabiolla holds a BA in Theatre Performance from James Madison University.

Mariela Lopez-Ponce (Ofelia) is an actor and director based out of Boston, MA. Folger Theatre: debut. Regional: Teatro Chelsea: Atipico 3 New Play Festival (Director); 1st Stage Theatre: Mojada; Teatro Chelsea/Apollinaire Theatre co-production Don’t Eat the Mangos (Elliot Norton for Best Director); Hartford Stage/Huntington Theatre/Alley Theatre touring co-production of Quixote Nuevo; Wellesley Repertory: Sonia Flew; Apollinaire Theater: Hamlet, A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes (Elliot Norton Award), Blood Wedding; Lyric Stage Boston: Water by the Spoonful, Living Out (Ana, IRNE Award for Best Actress); TheatreZone: Bodas de Sangre; Company One: Twilight LA; Lexington Players: The Lion in Winter. Mariela is a founding and board member of Teatro Chelsea, and a member of Actors’ Equity Association.

Thony Mena (Benji) was born in the Dominican Republic, raised in the DC/Maryland area, and is based in LA. He’s a natural goof with a gentle seriousness and just loves to tell stories. Recent credits include: Curious Theatre Company: Sanctions, Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, Water By The Spoonful, and The Happiest Song Plays Last; 1st Stage: The Brothers Size; Theater J: Another Way Home. Thony is a graduate in Theatre at the University of Maryland, College Park.

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association

Jonathan Nichols-Navarro (Gilberto) was most recently seen in Elián and The Cuban Vote at Miami New Drama, where he won the 2022 Carbonell Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Play. Before that, he played Alfred Molina/Gilbert Cruz in The Play You Want at the Road Theatre in Los Angeles, where he is a company member. Other plays include Nowhere on the Border (Road Theatre); El Huracán (Yale Rep), The Year To Come (La Jolla Playhouse), Seven Spots on the Sun (Boston Court), Little Children Dream of God (Road Theatre), Element Pea (South Coast Rep), Anna in the Tropics (South Coast Rep), Beauty of the Father (Seattle Rep), Julius Caesar (Hartford Stage), Measure for Measure (Lincoln Center), Hamlet, Necessities, As You Like It, La Fiaca (Old Globe Theatre). Films/TV include: Pay it Forward, Grey’s Anatomy, Major Crimes, CSI, Without a Trace, The West Wing, Friends, Family Law, Chicago Hope, Judging Amy, NYPD Blue, Payne, Becker, Oliver Bean. Studied at The Juilliard School and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. 

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association

Andrew Quilpa (Stage Directions) makes things up and writes them down. He was recently in Night of the Living Dead (Rorschach Theatre) and Witch Wartsmith’s Halloween Spooktacular (Puppet Company). Local credits: Faction of Fools Theatre Company: Love Like Tuesday, Missed Connections; Adventure Theatre MTC: Fantastagirl and the Math Monster; Rorschach Theatre: She Kills Monsters, 410[GONE]. Andrew has voiced a wide array of characters for Feminist Fairytales podcast, Flying V Theatre’s Paperless Pulp anthology podcast, and The COIL Project Variety Hour on 94.3 FM WOWD-LP. Andrew is a company member of Faction of Fools Theatre Company, and The COIL Project. www.andrewquilpa.com

Nadia Guevara (she/her) is a director based in DC and NYC. She has worked across the country at The Kennedy Center, La Jolla Playhouse, Dallas Theatre Center, New York Stage and Film, Red Bull Theatre, The Old Globe, and Keegan Theatre, among others. She has been a guest director for American University, Texas Tech University, and Johns Hopkins University. Upcoming projects: Cinderella: A Salsa Fairy Tale (Imagination Stage), Spring Awakening (American University), Cell (Keen Theatre/Drama League DirectorFest), The Survival (National Queer Theatre/PACNYC) She is the 2022-2024 recipient of The Drama League Stage Directing Fellowship. In 2018, Nadia was named Actor of the Year, San Diego Critics Circle, and has since retired from acting. www.nadiaguevara.com

Kelsey Mesa (Director) Directing credits include Crimes of the Heart at the Catholic University of America; Fefu and Her Friends at the University of Maryland, College Park; The Pavilion, The Magi, and Wish List at the Hub Theatre; and Othello, Antigonick, She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, Riot Grrrls: The Trojan Women, Charm, and dREAMtRIPPIN’ at Taffety Punk Theatre Company. She has also directed for The Inkwell, The Source Festival, Rorschach Theatre Company’s Klecksography, Young Playwrights’ Theatre, the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival, and Theater Alliance’s Hothouse New Play Development Series. Her play, La Salpêtrière, premiered at Taffety Punk Theatre Company in October 2023. Kelsey is a company member at Taffety Punk Theatre Company, as well as the Manager of KCACTF and Theater Education at the Kennedy Center, where she coordinates the Kennedy Center Directing Intensive. She’s an alumna of Directors Lab North. In 2021, Kelsey received the Kennedy Center Gold Medallion, recognizing contribution to the teaching and production of theater, and to the development of KCACTF. Kelsey grew up in Miami, FL and is a graduate of Northwestern University.