Flickering Paradise: A Play about Crypto, Malignant Spirits & Faltering Power in the Caribbean

In Flickering Paradise: A Caribbean Fábula, a dark comedy with plena music, residents of the fictional Cayabo—whose history includes centuries of colonization—struggle to make ends meet while dealing with disruptive blackouts, extreme austerity measures, malignant spirits, and an influx of crypto investors seeking tax-free profits and cheap, beachfront condos. Stef, a community organizer and non-Western healer, attempts to fight back by cultivating the spirit of a radical ancestor. She participates in more secular activism, too, including securing a grant for solar panels for the apartment building. Complicating matters is a podcaster, Smedley, who travels to Cayabo to run a cryptocurrency scam, and Stef's husband, Felipe, a laid-off lineman and plena musician who secretly appropriates Stef's non-Western magic of resistance, along with apartment building's grant money, for his own financial gain. When all seems lost and everything's on the line, the re-appearance of the ancestor's spirit, abetted by Claudia's courageous, unexpected transformation, seems to save the day. But then something else happens. Written and directed by critically acclaimed playwright Rick Mitchell, with music by renowned Puerto Rican composer and percussionist Angel Luís Figueroa. Choreographed by Shenandoah Harris and produced by Susan Jagosz. Presented as a workshop production by Urban Ensemble Theater Collective, in association with Highways Performance Space.
"an outstanding ensemble takes the dark comedy to dizzying heights"
--LA Weekly
(from a review of Urban Ensemble's production of Rick Mitchell's Ventriloquist Sex)