Sandra Delgado’s Artistry Transcends

You can see and experience Sandra Delgado’s artistry at the historic Mission San Juan Capistrano this summer when she takes the stage for Outside SCR’s production of La Havana Madrid. She also wrote the play with live Latin music about the iconic 1960s nightclub.

And when you’re in Chicago, you can see Delgado’s image on the façade of the Chicago Cultural Center. The actor/playwright is one of 20 women featured in Kerry James Marshall’s RUSH MORE mural.

Delgado is an artistic model in more ways than one.

First, there’s La Havana Madrid, which enjoyed sold-out runs at two of Chicago’s top theatres: Steppenwolf and Goodman. The New York Times and CNN both featured it, it was recognized as one of the best plays of 2017 by New City Chicago and Time Out Chicago, received the Time-Out Audience Award for Best New Work and the Alliance of Latinx Theatre Artists (ALTA) Award for Best Production. The Chicago Tribune called La Havana Madrid “heartfelt and fascinating.”

It’s also what Delgado calls “an immersive documentary theatre experience.” She immerses you in the electric atmosphere of the North Side nightclub, which played host to many of the legendary Latin big-band, salsa and mambo acts of the 1950s and 1960s.

It’s theatre meets fact-based research. Using source material such as video footage or photographs, newspaper or TV news, historical writings, trial transcripts or personal interviews incorporated into the production. Many of the characters of La Havana Madrid are based on actual people who lived through that period and frequented the nightclub.

Delgado the playwright is also a resident playwright at Chicago Dramatists and a 2021 Untied States Artists Fellow. Her latest work, The Sandra Delgado Experience, is a fusion of music and storytelling.

Delgado, the actor, brings 20 years of experience to stages ranging from her Chicago theatre homes of Teatro Vista and Collaboraction, to the Goodman, Steppenwolf, Victory Gardens and Lookingglass Theatre, to off-Broadway, where she starred as Jocasta in the Public Theatre’s production of Oedipus el Rey by Luis Alfaro. She received the Theater Communications Group’s Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship in the Extraordinary Potential Category.

Delgado’s artistry goes beyond the stage. She serves on the board of the Chicago Public Library and served on the advisory board of the City of Chicago’s Cultural Advisory Council from 2019 to 2021. Delgado is an Illinois Arts Council Fellow in Literature and is a three-time Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events grantee.

You don’t have to travel to Chicago to experience Delgado’s artistry. You can see it in all its immersive, electric vibrancy at the picturesque Mission San Juan Capistrano in La Havana Madrid, running July 15-Aug. 4.