BETSY
November 20-23, 2008

Betsy is the story of a Bronx born and bred Puerto Rican jazz singer who stirs up the little known history of her Scotch-Irish ancestry, bringing to life ghosts that have a life of their own:   an orphaned teenager tricked into leaving Ireland to become an indentured servant in 18th century North America, her seducer, and their descendants; a grown woman finding her bearings in the rhythms of a Puerto Rican neighborhood in the 20th century, a time traveling woman whose soul rests in her Caribbean and Scotch-Irish origins.  This musical is alive with the fire of Jazz, Bluegrass, and Latin compositions delivered by three powerful vocalists and a five-member Latin-Appalachian band.  Three years in the making, Betsy’s music was composed by Roadside’s Ron Short, Nashville jazz pianist Beegie Adair, and Pregones’ Desmar Guevara.

About the Collaboration
Pregones and Roadside each pride themselves on their respect for cultural traditions, their ability to reach a popular audience, and their aspiration to tell new American stories.  The two ensembles have been working together for ten years.  Their last co-creation, Promise of a Love Song, toured nationally in 2000-2002 and was published in 2005 by Theatre Communications Group, New York. 

About Roadside Theater
Roadside Theater has spent 33 years developing original plays drawn from its Appalachian Mountain history and culture and touring them nationally and internationally, performing 55 new plays in 43 states.  In New York City, the company has been in residence at the Manhattan Theatre Club, Theater for the New City, and Dance Theatre Workshop, and has performed at Lincoln Center.

HISTORY OF THE PRODUCTION
The story of Betsy originates in 2002 during a creative collaboration between veteran writer/Old Time musician Ron Short and legendary Nashville jazz pianist Beegie Adair. Their partnership results in twenty-three original songs, four concert performances by Roadside Theater, and a week-long residency at Pregones Theater in the South Bronx. For their Bronx stint, the band lineup is expanded to include local Latino jazz players and a new creative path is opened.

Music is the key to Betsy’s matrilineal narrative. Drawing upon jazz and bluegrass, the play’s songs suggest many intricate and unforeseen entanglements in the title character’s search for her past. It is in the encounter of these two vast American musical traditions that Betsy first recognizes rhythmic, cultural, and historical affinities between America’s North and South, between its rural and urban heartlands, between its African and European roots.

Now spanning the time from the nation’s founding to the present, and with talented Afro-Puerto Rican composer Desmar Guevara on board to elaborate the Caribbean dimension, the story of Betsy comes full circle: The play begins with an orphaned teenager tricked into leaving Ireland to become an indentured servant in 18th century America, and ends with a grown woman finding her bearings in the postmodern Caribbean enclave of the South Bronx.

Pregones and Roadside each bring to the project a distinct theatrical aesthetic based on the expressions of Puerto Rican and Appalachian culture respectively. The context for this exchange —itself an original contribution to the American theater— has been gradually established over the course of ten years, and its credits include the creation and national tour of Promise of a Love Song. Betsy builds on that prior artistic and critical success, and on the knowledge of how to undertake an intercultural, multi-state touring enterprise.

 

In English with Spanish titles!

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