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Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst is Your Waffen. (Art is your weapon) (1994), Film. Cast: Carmelita Tropicana, Sophia Ramos, Annie Lobst, Livia Daza Paris. The film introduces Tropicana, a New York City Lower East Side performance artist, who is a political activist by day and nightclub entertainer by night. The film is a cultural dissection of stereotypes and blends different genres- the American musical, the Latino telenovela, with experimental film.The film has aired on PBS and presented in festivals including Europe, Latin America and Japan. Winner of the Berlin Film Festival Teddy Bear Award, Stolichnaya and Audience Award at the 18th International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, San Francisco. •
Milk of Amnesia (1994), written and performed by Carmelita Tropicana, directed by Ela Troyano. Performance premier: Performance Space 122. Proust ate a Madeleine cookie and his childhood memories came rushing back; Carmelita ate a pork sandwich and she fell into a CUMMA – a collective unconscious memory appropriation attack. Milk of Amnesia is a travelogue that blends the persona of Carmelita with the more personal voice of her creator, and juxtaposes the memories of a horse in colonial Havana with that of a pig in Havana's modern day Special Period.
Milk of Amnesia has toured Nationally and Internationally with last presentation at Yale World Performance Project 2007. Milk of Amnesia has appeared in many anthologies including the award-winning Oh Solo Homo edited by Holly Hughes and David Roman. •
Single Wet Female (2002), written by Carmelita Tropicana & Marga Gomez, directed by David Schweizer. Starring: Marga Gomez, Carmelita Tropicana, Murray Hill (on video). Presented at Performance Space 122, Throws Like a Girl Festival, Austin (2005) National Queer Arts Festival, S.F. (2002), Nominated for GLAAD Award. Single Wet Female combines film-noir satire with goofball socio-sexual performance. It is a spoof of the film cult classic Single White Female. Marga Gomez plays Margaret, a high femme Caucasian in a blonde wig, and Carmelita is Cammy, the uber butch who awakens her desire for plantains and merengue. The play includes video with drag king Murray Hill in the role of the boyfriend. •
With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit? (2004), written and performed by Carmelita Tropicana, directed by David Schweizer. Commissioned and produced by INTAR Theatre, 2004. Presented at the
University of Michigan, Syracuse University (2006), Mark Taper Forum's New Theater for Now Festival at the Kirk Douglas Theatre and DePaul University (2005) and at the Black and Latino Theatre Festival at Northwestern University (2008). With What Ass Does the Cockroach Sit? is a monologue that uses the saga of Elian Gonzalez, a shipwrecked Cuban boy, as a springboard to discuss Cuban politics from within and outside the island. Inspired by a beloved Latino fairy tale Perez y Martina by Pura Belpre the piece is a story of survival narrated by Martina, a street smart Cuban cucaracha, and Catalina, an imperious parrot owned by a singer of the Nueva Vista Social Club. •
The Box/Meine Box (2008), written and performed by Carmelita Tropicana, designed and directed by Ela Troyano. Presented at Location One, New York (2008), Joe's Pub, New York (2009), Camp Anti Camp Festival, Hebbel am Uffer, Berlin 2012. Performance Art. A refrigerator box moves. Afro Cuban aphorisms in Spanish, English or German are given along with chocolate kisses and pet stories. It is a piece inspired by Nayland Blake's exhibition at Location One curated by Maura Reilly. • '
Post Plastica' (2012), written by Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyano, directed by Ela Troyano. Commissioned by Performance Space 122 presented at El Museo del Barrio. Cast (theatre): Carmelita Tropicana,
Becca Blackwell, Erin Markey. Part live performance, part film, part diva, part botox,
Post Plastica a glimpse into a future in which celebrity culture has pitched a battle between the primacy of virtual and artistic lives; in which revolutionaries keep secret bees underground; and in which a half-woman half-bear scientist battles the despotic ruling CEO. •
Recycling Atlantis (2014), live exhibition at 80WSE in New York by Uzi Parnes, Carmelita Tropicana, and Ela Troyano. Celebrated artist Jack Smith. • '''''' (2015), written by Carmelita Tropicana and Ela Troyano, with collaboration from Susanne Sachsse. Commissioned and presented by the Vermont Performance Lab. Includes performance, scientific lecture, and installation. It looks at a future and considers animals and their civil rights. •
Memories of the Revolution: The First Ten Years of the WOW Cafe (2016), with Holly Hughes (performance artist) and Jill Dolan. •
Give Me Carmelita Tropicana! (2024), co-written by Carmelita Tropicana and
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, directed by Eric Ting, starring Carmelita Tropicana, Octavia Chavez-Richmond, Ugo Chukwu, Will Dagger, Keren Lugo. Debuted at
Soho Repertory Theatre in 2024, running from October 23 - December 22. == Awards ==