Sandra Delgado Lets the Beat Drive Her Words

The writing began when Sandra Delgado found herself in the same room with some of the most influential Latine playwrights of their time—Luis Alfaro, Mina Cruz, Karen Zacarías. This triggered something in Delgado’s mind. All of those ideas she had bouncing around her brain needed an outlet. They needed structure.

“Being in the room with them and being an actor in service to their vision and being part of their creations was something I really, really fell in love with,” she said. “Something happened to me when I became a mother and taking stock of what I was doing and why I was doing it. I felt like I have all these ideas and all these roles I haven’t gotten to play. So I had to create them.”

Delgado’s third creation became La Havana Madrid, an immersive play with music. It was a given that music was going to play an integral part of La Havana Madridbefore Delgado embarked on her long and sometimes-tortuous journey writing the play.

Music was always an integral part of Delgado’s existence. Her first piece, Para Carmen, is a dance/theatre work she wrote with several of her theatre friends from Chicago. Inspired by a Latin theatre festival at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago, the performance was all of 10 minutes long, but Delgado called it “the most artistically fulfilling thing I have ever done.”

“I’m a theatre artist, but I really do feel that music is a great connector,” she said. “Music was my entry way into the performing arts. I started singing and dancing to Colombian folkloric music at the age of 5. I did that all through high school and I did that with my family. My father danced, my mother danced, my brother and aunt danced. We were all part of the choir.

“I started as an actor, but when I started writing, I quickly discovered that I really don’t know how to tell a story without putting music in it. It’s just a very natural part of how I express myself. That’s been one of the most wonderful things about writing and discovering that about myself. I need music.”