A Celebration of Puerto Rican and Nuyorican Voices
Following performances in Texas this week, the production arrives October 15 at Manhattan’s Puerto Rican Traveling Theater with music, poetry, humor, and Spanglish that connect Puerto Rico with its diaspora
NEW YORK, September 30, 2026 — Hispanic Heritage Month comes to a close on October 15, but in the heart of Manhattan’s theater district, the stories, accents, and voices of the Latino community will continue to resonate.
Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (Pregones/PRTT) welcomes Leave a Message After…THE BEEP on that day, a musical theater production that transforms poetry, Spanglish, music, and stories from Puerto Rico and its diaspora into a celebration of identity, belonging, and memory.
Before arriving in New York, THE BEEP is being presented this week in Dallas, Texas, as part of the Festival de Latinidades, where it will give two performances before beginning its New York season.
Its arrival in Manhattan holds special significance. Pregones/PRTT represents decades of Puerto Rican and Latino theater-making in New York. Puerto Rican Traveling Theater was founded in 1967 by legendary actress Miriam Colón, while Pregones Theater was co-founded in 1979 by Rosalba Rolón. Following their merger in 2014, the organization maintains venues in the South Bronx and Manhattan’s theater district, preserving a space where Latino stories take center stage.
Puerto Rico and New York Speak the Same Language
In THE BEEP, those stories are heard in English, Spanish, and, significantly, Spanglish: the everyday language of generations of Puerto Ricans and Latinos who have built their lives between two cultures.
The production brings together the Nuyorican fire of Jesús Papoleto Meléndez, Magdalena Gómez, and Mariposa Fernández with the voices of island writers such as Francisco Félix Canales, Rubén Ramos Colón, and Amarilis Tavárez Vales. It also incorporates texts by essential figures in Puerto Rican literature such as Jesús Colón, Manuel Méndez Ballester, Julia de Burgos, and Judith Ortiz Cofer.
The result is a musical and theatrical journey through an experience deeply familiar to millions of Latinos: what it means to belong to more than one place, to live between languages and generations, to migrate without leaving one’s roots behind, and to build a home far from the island.
The adaptation and direction are by Pregones/PRTT Artistic Director Rosalba Rolón, with compositions and musical direction by Desmar Guevara.
“Every scene in THE BEEP is a clarion call: seductive, provocative, urgent. The anthologized poets, storytellers, and playwrights summon us across time and geography into this now,” says Rolón.
A Work to Celebrate Who We Are
The New York season symbolically coincides with the close of Hispanic Heritage Month, an opportunity for the Latino community not only to celebrate its culture, but also to support the spaces that for decades have kept its stories alive on New York stages.
THE BEEP speaks particularly to the Nuyorican experience: to those who learned to move between Puerto Rico and New York, between English and Spanish, between what they inherited and what they built.
And it does so without asking audiences to choose a language or an identity.
The production is presented in English and Spanish, with supertitles, and is recommended for ages 12 and older.
This new staging also marks the 20th anniversary of THE BEEP. The piece first appeared in 2006 as part of Pregones/PRTT’s summer tour and was later expanded for the main stage. For 2026, the script has been reimagined to incorporate new voices, in collaboration with the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC) and its MAC en el Barrio program.
PERFORMANCE INFORMATION
Leave a Message After…THE BEEP
- Dates: October 15 through November 22, 2026
- New York Previews: October 15 through 21
- Venue: Puerto Rican Traveling Theater
- 304 West 47th Street, Manhattan
- Schedule: Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays at 7:00 p.m.; Saturdays and Sundays at 3:00 p.m. Selected Wednesday matinee performances will also be offered.
- Tickets: Starting at $30, with discounts for students, seniors, and groups.
- Running time: Approximately 75 minutes, with no intermission.
- Cast: John Burgos, Gabriel Leyva, Jackie León, Anna Malavé, and Diana Pou, joined by Álvaro Benavides, Anthony Carrillo, Desmar Guevara, and Sergio Reyes.
- Original artwork by Karina Cruz Ortiz.
The actors and stage managers employed in this production are members of Actors’ Equity Association, the union of professional actors and stage managers in the United States.
This program is made possible, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and from the New York State Council on the Arts, with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. Pregones/PRTT is a recipient of The Latino Theater Company’s National Latinx Theater Initiative. The collaboration between Pregones/PRTT and the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC) is made possible, in part, by the Wallace Foundation. For a complete list of our supporters, visit PregonesPRTT.org/funders/.
Amarilis Tavárez Vales — Born in Camuy in 1974, Tavárez Vales studied sociology and psychology at UPR Río Piedras and holds a master’s degree in Women’s and Gender Studies. Her poetry collections include Realid(h)ades, Hastío, and Larga jornada en el trópico, and her work has appeared in numerous anthologies of contemporary Puerto Rican poetry.
Francisco Félix Canales (Dalmau) — Born in 1990 in Río Piedras and raised in Carolina, Canales is the author of the poetry collections Sobre los domingos, Salario Mínimo, and Norte Invertido. He holds a master’s degree in Hispanic Studies from UPR Río Piedras and began doctoral studies in Comparative Literature before returning to Puerto Rico.
Jesús Colón — Born in Cayey, Puerto Rico, in 1901, Colón moved to Brooklyn at age sixteen and became known as the “Father of the Nuyorican Movement,” writing about labor, race, and the migrant experience throughout decades of journalism and narrative writing. His best-known work, A Puerto Rican in New York and Other Sketches (1961), is considered one of the first books in English written by a Puerto Rican author about the Puerto Rican experience. The Red Rose, a Pregones/PRTT musical production, celebrates his life and work.
Jesús Papoleto Meléndez — A founding figure of the Nuyorican poetry movement born in East Harlem’s El Barrio, Meléndez helped found the Nuyorican Poets Café. His play The Junkies Stole the Clock was the first Nuyorican production presented at Joseph Papp’s Public Theater, and his honors include an NYFA fellowship and the Louis Reyes Rivera Lifetime Achievement Award. His credits include Pregones/PRTT’s musical production Hey Yo!
Judith Ortiz Cofer — Born in Hormigueros, Puerto Rico, in 1952 and raised between Puerto Rico and Paterson, New Jersey, Ortiz Cofer became an acclaimed poet, novelist, and essayist who wrote across cultures, including the novel The Line of the Sun, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 1989. She spent much of her career as a professor of creative writing at the University of Georgia until her death in 2016. Her award-winning memoir Silent Dancing is the primary source for Pregones/PRTT’s musical production The Wedding March.
Julia de Burgos — Born in Carolina, Puerto Rico, in 1914, de Burgos became one of the island’s most celebrated poets, writing with intense lyricism about feminism, Afro-Puerto Rican identity, and independence before her death in East Harlem’s El Barrio in 1953. Widely regarded as a precursor to the Nuyorican movement, her complete work was translated by the renowned Jack Agüeros and published in English under the title Song of the Simple Truth.
Luis Negrón — Born in Guayama, Puerto Rico, in 1970, Negrón is the author of the acclaimed short-story collection Mundo Cruel and co-editor of Los otros cuerpos, an anthology of queer writing from Puerto Rico and its diaspora. He lives in Santurce, where he has also worked within the community’s queer arts scene, including a founding role in Producciones Mano Santa.
Magdalena Gómez — Born in the Bronx in 1953 to a Spanish Roma father and a Puerto Rican mother, Gómez is a playwright, poet, and social activist, and serves as Artistic Director of Teatro V!da, Springfield’s first Latino-identity theater. She served as Poet Laureate of Springfield and is a fellow of the Academy of American Poets. Her credits include Pregones/PRTT’s musical production Dancing In My Cockroach Killers.
Manuel Méndez Ballester — Born in Aguadilla in 1909, Méndez Ballester began in theater as an actor before becoming one of the leading Puerto Rican playwrights of the 20th century, best known for the tragedy Tiempo muerto, about sugarcane workers. He later served as a legislator in the Puerto Rico House of Representatives while continuing to write in genres including satire, drama, and zarzuela.
Mariposa Fernández — An Afro-Puerto Rican poet and performance artist born in the Bronx, Fernández explores themes of empowerment, identity, and the Afro-Latino experience, and her work appears in the Norton Anthology of Latino Literature and in Library of America’s Latino Poetry: Places We Call Home. In 2021, she was named an inaugural Letras Boricua Fellow by the Flamboyan and Mellon foundations.
Rubén Ramos Colón — Born in Bayamón in 1983, Ramos Colón is a poet, editor, and linguist, and the author of several poetry collections, including Angst, Wéilsong, Ultramar, and La expansión de los cuerpos. He is currently pursuing doctoral studies in Caribbean linguistics at UPR and is a columnist for Claridad.
About the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Puerto Rico (MAC)
It is an artist-founded museum that promotes an open vision of contemporary art from multiple perspectives that converge in Puerto Rico: diaspora, Latino, Caribbean-regional, and Latin American cultures immersed in a global context. It is a collecting institution and a space for creation, research, and preservation that fosters dialogue between artists and the public.
About Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (Pregones/PRTT)
It is a multigenerational collective and multidisciplinary arts presenter with venues in the South Bronx and Manhattan’s theater district. It was formed in 2014 through the merger of two companies — Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, founded in 1967 by stage and film star Miriam Colón, and Pregones Theater, co-founded in 1979 by Rosalba Rolón in the tradition of Caribbean and Latin American collectives — and is dedicated to uplifting a Puerto Rican/Latino cultural legacy of universal value. Among its major distinctions is membership in New York City’s Cultural Institutions Group (CIG).
CONTACTO DE PRENSA
Eduardo Botero eduardo@ivoice.agency
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