Posted: 10/9/22 at 11:36pm
Currently running at the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. October 6-23.
Pregones/Puerto Rican Traveling Theater’s 2022-23 Mainstage Season kicks off with a new staging of Harlem Hellfighters on a Latin Beat, a rousing Latinx musical play developed under the leadership of award-winning director and dramaturg Rosalba Rolón and composer Desmar Guevara. It is the story of extraordinary valor and musicianship that made the 369th Infantry of the New York Army National Guard the most celebrated regiment of the World War One era. As the U.S. prepares to enter armed struggle, genius bandleader and conductor James Reese Europe assembles an all-Black regimental band of unprecedent high caliber. Now firmly established as a point of pride in African American history, it is less known that Lieut. Europe recruited 17 of his illustrious musician-soldiers in Puerto Rico, among them the great Rafael Hernández and Rafael Duchesne.
