Monday, June 23, 2025
“I left everything in Texas and I came here,” GALA Hispanic Theatre Artistic Director Gustavo Ott told attendees at The Georgetowner’s June 19 Cultural Leadership Breakfast, held at 1310 Kitchen and Bar.
In May of 2023, shortly after the Venezuelan-born Ott began as Teatro Dallas’s executive artistic director, Hugo Medrano — who founded GALA in 1976 with his soon-to-be wife Rebecca Read — died at age 80. The following January, Ott became his successor.
“GALA has been very important in my career,” explained Ott, a playwright, director, novelist and translator who called the company, its name an acronym for Grupo de Artistas LatinoAmericanos, the “cathedral of Latino theater in this country.”
Ott’s first produced play in the U.S., “Pavlov: Dos Segundos Antes del Crimen/Two Seconds Before the Crime,” was mounted by GALA in 1995. Several others followed, including the final production of GALA’s 2023-24 season, a revised version of his GALA-commissioned 2009 musical, written with composer Mariano Vales, about Eva Perón: “Momia en el Clóset/Mummy in the Closet.”
GALA’s current season opened with Ott’s “Las 22+ Bodas de Hugo/The 22+ Weddings of Hugo” (the protagonist was named for, but not modeled on, Medrano), directed by José Zayas, and is now wrapping up with Rubén León’s “Botiquín de Boleros Columbia Heights/Columbia Heights Bolero Bar,” a cabaret directed and choreographed by Valeria Cossu. In Ott’s adaptation, the show takes place on Nov. 6, 2024 (Election Day, you may recall).
Ott encouraged the breakfast attendees to catch “Botiquín de Boleros,” which closes on June 29, and perhaps dance with the actors. “The audience participation is crucial,” he said. “We tell them … this show was possible because you were there.”
Outlining the upcoming season, Ott — who founded Teatro San Martín in Caracas, leading it for two decades — credited his mentor Medrano, saying that GALA’s “Golden Season” plans were almost complete when he arrived.
First up, in September, will be Manuel Puig’s “El Beso de la Mujer Araña/Kiss of the Spider Woman,” directed by José Luis Arellano. In February, Zayas will direct a contemporary version of Federico García Lorca’s “La Casa de Bernarda Alba/The House of Bernarda Alba,” relocated to Texas. The musical “Aguardiente: Soul of the Caribbean,” a world-premiere commission by GALA from Luis Salgado, a member of the original cast and choreography team of Lin-Manuel Miranda’s “In the Heights,” will open on April 30 (possibly on its way to Broadway).
Also in the 2025-26 lineup: Cornelia Cody’s world-premiere children’s musical “Héctor, El Niño Eléctrico/Héctor, The Electric Kid” in October; the 21st annual Flamenco Festival, Fuego Flamenco XXI, in November; GALA Film Fest: Latin American Innovation in early December; Ángel Vázquez’s “West Side Story” spoof “The Other Side Story” in mid-December; Jorge Díaz’s children’s play “Ratón de Biblioteca/The Library Mouse” in March; and “Me Llaman La Lupe/They Call Me La Lupe,” Luis Caballero’s revue about the popular Cuban singer of the 1960s whose later years were troubled, in June.
It is “a very political season,” said Ott. “Our community” — heavily Latino Columbia Heights — “is kind of threatened and it shows.” The recent protests against Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids weren’t far from the historic Tivoli where GALA performs: “The riots were right here and the theater over there.”
“We have to talk about these things a little bit,” he commented, adding that the community uses GALA as “a refuge” and “a way to understand themselves.” Though we are “in a very difficult moment,” Ott said, “we are ready.”
A prolific playwright whose work has won awards in half a dozen countries, Ott expounded on his artistic philosophy, quoting Dostoevsky, among others, and referring to “the complexity of beauty” and fiction as a “tool.”
“We work with faith” in the theater, he said. “We have our priests, we pray to Shakespeare. Maybe we’re a church and we don’t know it.”
Responding to an attendee’s question about how he writes for people from so many Latin American countries, all quite distinct, Ott talked about the shared “attitude toward life” rooted in the Spanish language (the world’s fastest growing, he noted) and in Spanish literature and heritage. However, Ott — who grew up on a sugarcane and coffee farm in western Venezuela, and whose brothers joked that he spoke “peasant” — acknowledged the variety of perspectives arising from geography, nationality and class.
Another attendee brought up Venezuelan American playwright Moisés Kaufman. Saying that he knew Kaufman, who was raised in Caracas’s “strong Jewish community” and came to the U.S. in his 20s, Ott praised his 1997 play “Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde” and described Kaufman’s plays as “more American … more universal in a way” than his own.
Asked about casting, Ott said GALA holds open auditions, with preference given to local artists. Out-of-town cast members, some of whom work with GALA regularly, are put up in people’s homes. There are also New York auditions to fill gaps, especially in the case of dancers; though there are D.C.-based dancers as good as in New York, he said, there aren’t enough of them.