Sep 21 – Oct 16
Book-It Repertory Theatre enters its 33rd season bringing Julia Alvarez’s 1994 historical fiction novel In the Time of the Butterflies to the stage courtesy of OBIE Award-winning adapter Caridad Svich and director Ana María Campoy (Seattle Shakespeare’s bilingual Romeo y Julieta).
Butterflies tells of the real-life Mirabal sisters, famed revolutionary activists during General Rafael Leónidas Trujillo’s bloody dictatorship. Though three of the four sisters were assassinated, their legacy of defiance lived on.
“This beautiful, lyrical story lets us bear witness to the lives of the Mirabal sisters, who fought and sacrificed to end authoritarianism in the Dominican Republic,” says Book-It artistic director Gus Menary.
The story of the Mirabals, who referred to themselves as “Las Mariposas” (“the butterflies”), has twice been adapted to film, including a 2001 Showtime original movie with Salma Hayek and Edward James Olmos, and for good reason: It’s a years-spanning narrative of family, national strife, and feminist resistance. It’s also perfect for this theatre company. Book-It by its very nature specializes in interiority, directly adapting a book’s text and not, say, just its themes and a few recognizable passages, and their best shows firmly put their characters front and center. There are few local companies better suited to balance empathy and spectacle.
