Cuban Odyssey “Isla” Makes Its Off Broadway Debut

“Isla,” the Spanish word for “island,” is the title of a Caribbean coming of age story, telling the saga of three women who fled Communist Cuba in the 1960s shortly after Fidel Castro came to power.

It just opened at the WP Theatre at 2162 Broadway on the Upper West Side where it runs through August 29th. It is a visually sumptuous play loosely based on the life of Samantha Blain who became a multi-disciplianry artist and founder of the theatrical company Hit the Lights! The 75-minute true saga follows her family’s exodus to Miami via the 1960’s Freedom Flights. Blain, in the role of her Aunt Lulu, allies with her older and younger sisters, Carmen and Alina, respectively, to chart a path to an uncertain and newly imagined future.

With a set that can only be described as a kinetic picture book in a state of continuous transformation, the audience goes on the family’s odyssey thanks to cinematic projections, recorded interviews with Blain’s mother and aunts, and an extended cast of handmade shadow puppets that revitalize this carousel slide show of generational memories.

The all-ages performance features a full original songbook and a driving Latin jazz-influenced score composed by Blain and musician Claron Hayden, and performed live.

Straus News caught up with Blain to discuss how “"Isla"” explores the immigrant’s journey and how those who uproot their lives come to terms with the things to keep and the things to leave behind

What’s the central theme you want audiences to take away?

The humanity of these characters. This is a family that is undergoing some extreme traumatic change, and through that, finding resilience with each other. They’re people just wanting a better life for themselves and making some really hard decisions.

The show has a magical quality. Can you expound on that?

A lot of the work we do at Hit the Lights! is through shadow puppetry, playing with light and dark, and magical themes. We really pump that up for this show. We bring the island to life, revealing this magical nature that helps them escape.

How do you handle this emotionally weighty subject of an exodus, especially for younger audience members?

That is something we really wanted to balance very carefully, and that’s why I think puppetry is so powerful. It is this universal, visual style that people can understand. It doesn’t need words. When you have music underscoring the puppetry, it allows you to tell really hard things in a really digestible way. As much as all this heaviness is there, there is a lot of fun and a lot of surprises within the show.

People, definitely for our younger viewers, think what they’re seeing is just so cool.

What aspects of the Freedom Flights are most important to the narrative?

I think the history of knowing [that people] escaped on the Freedom Flights is really important. More importantly, the decisions leading up to that are really what we’re focusing on, the impetus to leave.

Are there particular real-life details that guided the story?

Oh, my gosh, yes. All the audio interviews. You hear my Aunt Lulu, that’s the character I play; her voice is really prevalent in the show. I would say she’s the through line, because she is the most comfortable talking about this very traumatic thing for my family.

I also want to add that Lulu is an amazing artist, and she wrote this poetry book, and it’s so beautiful. We used the poetry as little chapters and stanzas to lead us throughout the show.

Is that why you chose to portray Lulu and not your mom?

Lulu had a really solid point of view of how that experience was for her at that time. My mom, Alina, was younger, so her memories are so different.

Why add projections, recorded interviews, and shadow puppets into the mix with the actors?

Hit The Lights! has been around for about 13 years now, and one of our core visual storytelling styles is shadow puppetry, paired with music. We always have those in every original show that we do.

In this show, we elevate it to include actual puppets that the actors will manipulate on stage to build out their characters.

As much as puppetry can take you into this world, we wanted to ground it with humans, which is why we added the audio interviews.

What is the character development of the three sisters over the course of the play?

All of them come to their own realizations.

The eldest sister, Carmen, her trajectory is really interesting, and through the audio interviews, I actually learned a lot about her role in the decision to leave. She goes from “No, this is my home,” to “We need to get out of here.”

For Lulu’s middle sister character, she was already sensing, “We need to leave now, and it has to be the three of us.” It’s so torturous for her because she was leaving a lot behind.

And then, for the youngest sister, Alina, who was my mom, she was a wild child, out and about, really social, and she sees the clubs and the places that she loved shut down, and it’s like, “Fun doesn’t exist here anymore. The life I knew doesn’t exist. You’re right. We do need to go.”

Do you think people who support ICE would change their point of view if they saw this show?

I would hope that anybody, whether or not they support ICE, would take a moment to realize there’s a whole life that people leave behind, decisions being made before even crossing the border to get into this country that we do not know about. I would hope people will say, “Wow, they’re real people with real stories that lead them to this point.” I hope we inspire that conversation.

What do you want the audience to leave feeling?

Hope and curiosity for what their own stories are. It’s a privilege to have your Abuelitas and all your elders around, and a privilege to have parents who want to share things. I hope that those who can will learn about their lineage.

“ISLA” is currently at the WP Theater, 2162 Broadway, until August 29. Tickets ($35-$85; 15 for $15) are available for advance purchase at www.hitthelights.org.

Lorraine Duffy Merkl is the author of the novel “The Last Single Woman In New York City.”