This September, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity is coming your way. You can commemorate the 200th anniversary of Florida becoming a US territory with historic encounters, educational entertainments, and delicious experiences that bring you face to face with Florida’s past – all for free, and all family-friendly.
The Loco for Love Festival 2019 offers you first-person encounters with all kinds of characters from Spanish La Florida. You can meet NiNa the Galiceña horse, great-great-grand-daughter of stallions that Spanish settlers brought to the New World 400 years ago. You can also meet Nena the historic dancer, a Professor at Ohio State University, who will teach you dance moves that Spanish settlers brought to Florida along with their horses. You can even meet Cervantes and Shakespeare, famous authors in Spanish and in English, who are coming back from the dead to go head to head during the Loco for Love Festival, wrestling for the title of World Champion Storyteller (and campaigning for your vote).
Between encounters with historic characters, you can enjoy breathtaking entertainment. Dragoncillo Puppet Troupe is bringing actors from Texas, Michigan, Iowa, and North Carolina to present workshops, screen a 30-minute condensation of Don Quixote, and perform 3 shows that have just been created for shadow puppets, all based on plays from 1600s Spain: The Fabulous Johnny Frog, Second Hands, and The Ladies’ Man. Young dancers from the Panhandle Area Educational Consortium will carry you back to America before Columbus with “Un Poquito de México,” college dancers from the Southern Academy of Ballet Arts will transport you to the 1600s with a pas de deux from Don Quixote, and Cristyl Palacio will get your body moving in the present tense with “Salsa in the Streets.”
In recognition of the major milestone in Florida history that we mark this year – the 200th anniversary of Florida starting its transition from Spanish provincia to US territory – Theater with a Mission will premiere Florida for Sale, 1819. This brand-new play takes you back to 1819, to meet the Spanish ambassador and the US Secretary of State who negotiated the Florida Treaty, and to hear first-person perspectives from the free black citizens who lived in San Agustín when the Treaty was signed.
Accompanying these entertaining, educational treats for your mind will be delicious treats for your mouth. Real Paella Catering will cook authentic Spanish paella, madefrom scratch. You get to watch the chefs stir in the ingredients, share trade secrets, and smell the paella simmering before you sample it. For a historic take on foodways, History Channel experts Andrew and Cindy Batten will be demonstrating “Florida Fusion,” the unique combination of Spanish, Native American, and African cuisines that fed folks in La Florida from the 1500s to the 1700s. The Battens cook open-hearth, and keep open house, serving up their succulent desserts and hearty stews with songs from Florida’s multicultural past.
Loco for Love Festival 2019: It’s a world-class, hands-on, history-making adventure full of Drama, Dancing, Dueling, and Dining, and it’s coming to Tallahassee absolutely free this fall. For details, keep your eye peeled for upcoming issues of Conexión, surf over to www.theaterwithamission.com, and follow Theater with a Mission on Facebook and Instagram.
Ben Gunter
