SCSU Student Mentorship Makes "El Coquí" Soar

Curtis Brown Photography, courtesy of Long Wharf Theatre.

Alex was hunched over a drafting table, his mind ablaze. On the pages in front of him, a Puerto Rican superhero was taking shape, ready to throw down for his community. Across the room, El Chupacabra slipped in through a window, a slick, gravel-voiced vision in yellow and orange. A column of light glowed neon green behind him.

In the front row, college senior Dahlia Greenberg followed along, her eyes flitting from the script to the stage, and back to the script again. Only when a voice bubbled up from the back of the theater—"Okay! We’re gonna take this a little bit under tempo!”—did she pause for a moment, and take in the fantastical universe around her.  

This month, Greenberg is one of several Southern Connecticut State University (SCSU) students working on El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom, running at Long Wharf Theatre through February 23. Written by Matt Barbot and directed by Kinan Valdez, the production unfolds at SCSU’s John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, as part of Long Wharf’s second season in itinerancy.  

Performances run Wednesdays through Sundays at the John Lyman Center for the Performing Arts, where a creative team has transformed the stage into a black box theater. Tickets and more information are available here. 

“I love Long Wharf’s new mission to develop communities,” said Valdez, an educator at the University of California, Santa Cruz who grew up in El Teatro Campesino and later produced its first independent feature. “The fact that we’re here at Southern, that’s the natural community. And aligning with the mission of Long Wharf is critical for me.”

“I am always interested in providing pathways and entry points into the arts for anybody,” he continued. “And so I always love seeing students make discoveries about what is possible in the field that we work in. I think this is part of the wonderful thing about what Long Wharf is doing.”  

Set in Brooklyn, New York in the early 2000s, El Coquí Espectacular tells the story of Alex (Jason Sanhez), an aspiring comic book artist and Nuyorican who is struggling as much with his own identity as he is to craft and popularize the stories he wants to tell. At home, he’s caught in an in-between, explosively creative in the midst of a family (Susanna Guzmán as his mother, Patricia) who doesn’t totally get it, and has been swayed by the gospel of capitalism (Xavier Cano as his brother, Joe) and profit, even if it’s at the expense their own community.  

Enter El Coquí, a crime-fighting superhero named after the small, singing tree frog that has become a national symbol of Puerto Rico (for those who have heard it, its chirping, bird-like call is instantly recognizable). As Alex shape-shifts in and out of character—complete with a vejigante mask that he keeps under his bed—he meets unlikely allies, including a photographer named Yesica (Melissa Francesca Duprey), who has her own vision for what his superhero can and should be. 

Maybe because it’s a superhero play, Alex must contend with a villain named El Chupacabra (Michael John Improta, in a wickedly fun performance), an entirely psychological presence named after the blood-sucking monster in Latin American and diasporic folklore. Meanwhile, another villain comes in the form of highly-processed, sugar-drenched soda that is marketed to Puerto Ricans in the play, despite its very real threat on their health (soda and sugar feel like the perfect metaphor for white supremacy: they brings together colonialism, consumption and profit in one place)

The result is at turns funny, candid, thoughtful, and deliciously Boricua, from the titular superhero and a mix of lilting Spanish and English to a Puerto Rican flag that hangs on the back of Alex’ bedroom door, adorned with careful, hand-drawn designs in black marker. Indeed, Barbot has come up with a work woven with humor, sharp wit, high-stakes fantasy and a battle with identity that feels both highly specific and deeply universal. 

Aaron Kleinman, Tyler White, Dahlia Greenberg and Jennifer Barragan. Lucy Gellman Photo.

As the play comes to life in the Lyman Center, theater students have jumped onboard to assist with every aspect of production, from checking sight lines and taping the floor to getting feedback from Barbot and Valdez, who were on site for rehearsals (click here for an interview with the playwright). At a final tech rehearsal last week, many of them fanned out across the half-lit house, coats and jackets slung over chairs where an audience would soon be for previews. A voice overhead gave a five-minute warning, and actors slid into their places.  

Onstage, the cast was preparing for a fight scene between Alex and El Chupacabra, whose physical presence in the show is very real despite the fact that he lives in Alex’s imagination. Fight director Gabriel Rosario, who grew up in Puerto Rico and now lives in New York, stood as if he was preparing to conduct a piece of music.  With a voice that had a cold, reptilian edge, Improta hopped onto a bed, its mattress sagging beneath his feet.

“Alright, let’s hold please,” said production stage manager Izzy Patt, their voice crisp and precise. “So, we’ve got some fight changes—”

From her place in the front row, Greenberg seemed to make a mental note. She leaned back just slightly, watching Rosario get ready to do his thing. On cue, Alex rose and took on some new source of strength, prepared to give El Chupacabra all the fight he had in him. 

“The only reason you’ll be going to the parade this year is you’ll be wearing a mask,” El Chupacabra taunted and hissed, his voice slippery and low, not quite human. “A thin layer of Papier-mâché between you and your shame!” The cackling felt imminent. 

There was a beat, then Patt’s voice came back in, firm and chipper. “Okay, we need to talk through this transition for actors!” Somewhere in the back of the house, senior Aaron Kleinman made a note of the shift, and settled in for another go at the scene. For weeks, he’s served as a script supervisor and comic book consultant on the show.

During their lunch break, several SCSU students weighed in on what has made the experience so meaningful. Kleinman, an interdisciplinary studies major who wants to write for animation after he graduates, said he’s glad to be putting his own knowledge of comics to use. Before college, he worked at the Hartford-based hobby shop Comics & Collectibles for five years. It’s helped him jump into the show, lending both advice and personal items like some of his own comic book posters.  

“I see it as an opportunity to hone myself a little in a more professional setting, compared to what I’m used to,” he said. “It feels very familiar—the difference is, there are just more people, and they have more professional phrasing about what they say.”

While he wants to write for animation, “I feel that knowing how every facet of the arts works only makes you stronger,” he added. That’s one of the things he’s valued most about the chance to help on El Coquí Espectacular. 

Greenberg, a junior studying theater and arts administration, added that it’s given students a space to learn beyond their classes and productions in the theater department (all of them also had high praise for Mike Skinner, the chair of and an associate professor in the department). She recalled sitting on opposite ends of the theater, checking sight lines—that’s theater jargon for whether the audience can see the actors—and standing in for actors as the crew dry teched the show.

“It’s been very collaborative,” she said. “It’s been great, where we kind of know that our primary function is to observe and offer help when necessary, but we’ve still been invited into that collaborative space and asked our opinions. It just makes us feel like we’re able to contribute to it, which I really appreciate.”

“The biggest thing that I’ve been very grateful to learn is just how things work within the union, specifically,” she added. “Getting to learn about that has been a very good experience for me.” 

For senior Jennifer Barragan, an assistant production intern who hopes to one day attend the David Geffen School of Drama (DGSD) at Yale, it has been a life-changing experience. A transfer student from the Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa in Sinaloa, Mexico, she began her studies at Southern two years ago. 

Even then, she knew that she wanted to pursue theater. So when the chance to help out on a professional show came through, it was a no-brainer. Since late December, she’s helped tape the floor, put up screens, set up the rehearsal rooms and helped with bringing in props. She was amazed, she said, that she got to work as closely as she did with Valdez, whose own roots as an educator shone through every time they spoke.   

“They have been really kind and willing to share their knowledge, so open and friendly, so open to us asking questions,” she said. “It’s amazing that they’re willing to share these experiences with the students and with everyone else in the production.”

The work has helped her become a stronger and more knowledgeable creative, she added. When Barragan applied to graduate school and didn’t get in last year, she initially felt a sense of defeat. Then she began working with the cast and creative team at Long Wharf. It totally changed her understanding of the moment. 

“Now that I have this perspective, I feel like a different person,” she said. 

A New Haven Connection 

Photo Courtesy of Long Wharf Theatre. 

Within the production, that focus on growth and mentorship has also trickled down to the cast. Long before he was ever El Chupacabra, and even before he was a member of the New York Neo-Futurists, Improta was a Puerto Rican kid growing up in New Haven, where he attended Betsy Ross Arts Magnet School (BRAMS) and the ACES Educational Center for the Arts (ECA). For him, El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom is a sort of homecoming. 

“It feels full circle in a really beautiful way, being able to come home,” he said in a phone call last week. “There was a moment last night where I walked off stage, and my body felt tingly. My head, my scalp felt tingly. Not an itch — a tingle. It was like a soul connection. Like, this is where I need to be.”

Improta grew up in the Ninth Square and later North Haven, the child of “a mostly single mother” in the apartments across from what was once the Coliseum. At home, he caught the theater bug very young, when his mom brought a Star Wars poster home from her job at Pizza Hut. 

The image, which pictured the characters Yoda, Luke and Dagobah, became his North Star. He found and studied the scene that it featured, asking his mom to run lines with him when they were at home together. He joined a theater camp in Wooster Square, playing an animated White Rabbit in a production of Alice In Wonderland that left him giddy. 

“After that I never stopped,” he remembered. “I knew that that's what I wanted to do.”  

Meanwhile, he also grew his Puerto Rican identity, with frequent trips to visit his grandmother in the eastern region of Las Piedras, Puerto Rico. In New Haven, he spent in the city’s Fair Haven neighborhood when he was back stateside (he still has a soft spot for El Jibaro, a barbershop that sits across the street from Family Academy of Multilingual Education on Grand Avenue). 

In and outside of the classroom, New Haven helped him reach his dream. As a student at BRAMS, he studied dance alongside Nikki Claxton, who celebrates her 25th year in the district this spring. In high school, he headed to ECA, where theater faculty members like Ingrid Schaeffer and Peter Loffredo helped build a launchpad to professional theater. 

At Bregamos Community Theater, he was in early productions of Aaron Jafferis’ Kingdom, a drama about the Latin Kings that ultimately went on to Rotterdam. He said he also credits Stephen Dest, through whom he knew and acted with the late Henry Green, with planting those early creative seeds. 

From New Haven to UConn to where he made a home in New York, “I have always wanted to be in more Latino rooms,” he said. He’s known Barbot for years, and admired his work—but not always been able to tap into shows with Latine characters. He’s also a big believer in the power of storytelling. So when El Coquí Espectacular and the Bottle of Doom came across his radar, he was thrilled to be part of the show.

“Any time I find myself in a production, in a play that speaks to the moment, I feel pretty grateful,” he said. At the Lyman Center and through Long Wharf, he’s been able to build a kind of theater family with fellow cast members. There’s Spanish in the rehearsal room, as well as in the script. Cast members have bonded over Bad Bunny songs. In Duprey’s dressing room, there’s a Puerto Rican flag with a light blue triangle for independence. 

“Something like El Coquí has been a real blessing. I recognize these people in New York, but I also recognize them in New Haven too,” he said. “I think about what Long Wharf is doing [in itinerancy], and I think about how much I wish it had been that place when I was growing up.”

When asked his wildest dreams for the show, Improta added that “I hope that there are young Latinos in the audience. I hope that the younger version of me that is out there right now is going to see the show.”