The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater is a theater company based at the 47th Street Theater in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It was founded as El Nuevo Círculo Dramatico (The New Drama Circuit) by

Míriam Colón Míriam Colón Valle (August 20, 1936 – March 3, 2017) was a Puerto Rican actress. She was the founder and director of New York City's Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. Beginning her career in the early 1950s, she performed on Broadway and on ...

and Roberto Rodríguez. It was one of the first Puerto Rican theater companies to be founded and is credited with kickstarting the Hispanic and Puerto Rican theater scene in New York. The first production by the company was ''

La Carreta ''La Carreta'' ( en, The Oxcart) is a 1953 play by Puerto Rican playwright René Marqués.Gil de La Madrid, Antonio.René Marqués, dramaturgo. ''Biografías de escritores puertorriqueños'', ''La Gran Enciclopedia Ilustrada del Proyecto Salón ...

'' (''The Oxcart'') in 1953, written by René Marqués and directed by founder Roberto Rodríguez. Although the success of ''El Nuevo Círculo Dramatico'' was short, the spirit of the company lived on when Colón went on to found the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater Company.

''El Nuevo Círculo Dramatico''

In the 1940s and 50s Hispanic theater waned, only surviving in mutual aid societies, church halls, and lodges for smaller audiences. In 1940 a Puerto Rican dramatist

René Marqués René Marqués (October 4, 1919 – March 22, 1979) was a Puerto Rican short story writer and playwright. Early years Marqués was born, raised and educated in the city of Arecibo. He developed an interest in writing at a young age and was ...

began to develop an awareness of the Puerto Rican experience in the United States while studying playwriting in New York. After returning to San Juan, he wrote the play ''La Carreta''. The story of ''La Carreta'' dramatized a family dislocated from their farm and resettling into a slum in San Juan, and then to New York City. It resonated with many immigrant families who felt that their history, language and culture of the working class were represented in a serious dramatic form. The play was first produced in 1953, directed by Roberto Rodríguez and starring the young actress Miriam Colón. The success of the play allowed Rodríguez and Colón to form the first permanent Hispanic theatrical group to have its own space, Teatro Arena, located in Manhattan on Sixth Avenue between 43rd and 44th street. The group was very successful at the start, allowing many important Latino/a figures to start their careers and giving Rodríguez the title as the father of modern Puerto Rican drama in the United States. However, the building was closed by the fire department in the 1960s, and the company could not survive past its fifth year of existence. Despite its short life though, it still had a huge impact on the Puerto Rican theater scene. Many new groups began to form, inspired by the success of ''El Nuevo Círculo Dramatico'' and another group,'' La Farándula Panamericana''. Some of these groups include: ''El Nuevo Teatro Pobre de las América''s, ''Teatro Orilla'','' Teatro Guazabara'', ''Teatro Jurutungo'', and most notably ''Teatro Cuatro'', which still exists to this day.

Puerto Rican Traveling Theater Company

Though ''El Nuevo Círculo Dramatico'' could not continue, Colón went on to form the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater company in 1967 after starring in an off-Broadway production of '' The Oxcart'' (an English translated version of ''La Carreta'') in 1966. The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater company (or PRTT) performed in both English and Spanish, traveling around the boroughs of New York City with the focus of bringing theater to those who desperately needed it. Supported by a joint sponsorship from Mayor Lindsay's Summer Task Force Program and the Parks Department, Colón began by touring a production of ''The Oxcart'' through various neighborhoods, often to audiences who had never seen theater before. The tours were immensely popular, drawing crowds of people. The summer tours continued for years after their start, providing free, bilingual theater to different neighborhoods in New York City. After five years, the company gained a permanent location in the

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district in Manhattan until Colón was able to secure a former fire house in the heart of the Theater District, where the company still operates today.

Pregones Theater

In November 2013, Bronx based Pregones Theater, founded and directed by

Rosalba Rolón Rosalba Rolón (born 25 August 1951) is a Puerto Rican actress and director, who is known for being the founder and current artistic director of the Pregones Theater Company, a Bronx-based touring company that focuses on Latinx stories. Early l ...

, and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater Company announced plans to merge.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://pregonesprtt.org/
Puerto Rican Traveling Theatre records, 1960s-1994 (bulk 1980s)
held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division,

New York Public Library for the Performing Arts The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, at 40 Lincoln Center Plaza, is located in Manhattan, New York City, at the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts on the Upper West Side, between the Metro ...

Theatres in the Bronx Culture of Manhattan Theatre companies in New York City Puerto Rican culture in New York City Theatre in New York City