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OSF to present Latinx Play Project Actors Carlos N. Lopez, left, Armando Dur·n, Elisa Bocanegra, Vilma Silva, Tony Plana and Carlos Alb·n prepare to take a bow after a staged reading of Luis Alfaro's "Delano" at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival's 2015 Latinx Play Project. [OSF / Jenny Graham] Wednesday Apr 26, 2017 at 3:36 PM Apr 26, 2017 at 3:36 PM With its mission to develop and produce new plays and provide a forum for artists, and to advance the Latinx theater movement at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and across the nation, OSF presents its fourth biennial Latinx Play Project. Latinx, pronounced "la-teen-ex," frequently pops up in social media in lieu of such identifiers as Latino or Latina. It's a gender-neutral alternative that allows room for intersecting identities of Latin American descendants. The 2017 event kicks off an expanded Latinx Play Project supported by Time Warner Foundation, with a Latinx Play Project lab to follow in the fall and a series of development workshops and public readings extending into 2018. "Under the inspired leadership of Bill Rauch, OSF is catalyzing change so that our stages reflect the world we live in," says Diahann Billings-Burford, executive director of cultural investments for Time Warner, in a press release. "We could not be prouder to partner with the company on the Latinx Play Project, an initiative that will galvanize the Latinx community of the Rogue Valley and, hopefully, across the country." To showcase the voices of those individuals leading the Latinx theater movement — while cultivating the next generation of theater artists, scholars and practitioners — the 2017 Latinx Play Project will host a variety show curated by OSF playwright-in-residence Luis Alfaro; readings of Octavio Solis' "Mother Road" and Carmen Aguirre's "The Refugee Hotel;" a panel discussion moderated by OSF director of literary development and dramaturgy Amrita Ramanan; and coffee with Tiffany Ana Lopez, OSF dramaturg for "Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles." A schedule of events is available at osfashland.org/lxpp. Tickets and locations are available by calling the OSF box office at 800-219-8161. Tickets are free for all events except for performances of the three plays included in Latinx: "Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles," "Hannah and the Dread Gazebo" and "UniSon." Events kick off at 8 p.m. Friday, April 28, with "Medianoche Variedad," a variety show hosted by OSF playwright-in-residence Alfaro and featuring Las Chismosas de Ashland, and run through Sunday, April 30. A reading of Solis' "Mother Road," directed by Juliette Carrillo, will be presented at 10 a.m. Saturday, April 29. Inspired by John Steinbeck’s "The Grapes of Wrath," "Mother Road" is set in the present day and introduces us to William Joad. Hardworking and hard living, Joad hung on to the family farm but now has no kin to pass it down to. No one, that is, until a private detective uncovers an unexpected relation: Martin Jodes, a young Mexican-American man descended from Steinbeck’s protagonist Tom Joad. The two men meet at the site of a former government work camp that was once home to Steinbeck’s Joads and is now home to migrant workers such as Jodes' mother, who lived and died laboring in the fields. Together these unlikely cousins travel from California back to Oklahoma, reversing the Joads’ mythic journey in an epic story about land, family and survival. Alfaro's "Mojada: A Medea in Los Angeles" runs at 1:30 p.m. Saturday, April 29, in the Angus Bowmer Theatre, and playwright Jiehae Park's "Hannah and the Dread Gazebo" runs at 8:15 p.m. in the Thomas Theatre. At 3 p.m. Saturday, Ramanan's panel, "Soy Yo! When Geography, Identity and Artistry Collide," will feature guests Aguirre, Trevor Buffone, Hector Tobar and José Luis Valenzuela. A reading of Aguirre's "The Refugee Hotel," directed by Sylvia Blush, will be presented at 10 a.m. Sunday, April 30. Set in 1974 in a run-down hotel — only months after the start of the Augusto Pinochet military regime in Chile — eight refugees struggle to understand whether fleeing their homeland means they've abandoned friends and responsibilities. More than a dark comedy, this play gives voice to political refugee communities from all corners of the globe. Laid bare is the terror of persecution, arrest and torture; the exhausted elation of escape; the trauma of learning to live with the losses, betrayals and agonies of the past; and the irrational guilt of the survivor. A reception will be held at noon Sunday, April 30, in Carpenter Hall and the upper Thomas Theatre courtyard. UNIVERSES "UniSon," inspired by the words of August Wilson, will be presented at 1:30 p.m. in the Angus Bowmer Theatre. And "Cafecito" with López will be at 3:30 p.m.