“Award for the Best Contemporary Hispanic Performing Arts Production in New York”
The Talía Awards are the highest honor awarding excellence in the Performing Arts in Spanish presented by the Academy of Performing Arts of Spain (AAEE).
The Queen Sofía Spanish Institute leads this inaugural Selection Committee comprised a group of experts in their field who have provided their unique and astute perspectives in determining the three nominees and winner of this year.
This curated group is composed by two professors, two journalists, one representative of the theater sector and one honorary representative of the Alianza de Teatros Latinos without a vote:
Fernando Cárdenas
Born, raised, and educated in Mexico, Fernando moved to New York almost 20 years ago. By combining his professional career in media and his vocation of being a university professor, he has worked in every medium including print, digital, radio and TV. While in Mexico, he was the publisher for the nation’s Electrical Power Research Institute.
During his tenure in the USA, he launched V-me (Spanish Public Television) collaborated with Nielsen studies to rate Hispanic television and later became a Digital Producer for NY1 Noticias.
It was in this, New York local channel where he created the segment Escenario, dedicated to cover the Latin presence on Broadway. Due to its success, Escenario soon extended to cover all the Hispanic theater and culture in the Big Apple. His journalistic career has been recognized with awards given by LatingPlug, Latin FAMA and HOLA.
After devoting over a decade covering stage stories, Fernando is now the editor-in-chief of Spanish website La Guía Cultural. He also worked as an Executive Producer for Univision 41 New York and currently is the Digital Manager for Brooklyn-based Spanish network: HITN. In addition, he teaches Journalism at CUNY’s City College of New York.
José Manuel García Oliva
A pioneer in Hispanic Media Relations, 1961 Cuban Emigreé , García Oliva has pioneered work in New York Hispanic Media and Public Relations since 1970 at El Tiempo Daily Newspaper, Canales Magazine, ABC Madrid Latin New York American Edition, and most recently Impacto Latino.
He started in the Traffic Department of WNJU-TV Channel 47 Telemundo in 1972, and was soon promoted to press liaison and then, until 1994, to director of Public Relations and Community Affairs. That same year he became Director of Community Events of Univision WXTV-Channel 41 until 1999, when returned to position at WNJU.
The honors, awards and recognitions received by García Oliva are as follows:Premio OTI 1977, Organización de la Televisión Iberoamericana, for his participation in its sixth edition in Madrid. Silver Medal Arts & Sciences of France 1983. Governor Mario Cuomo’s Honor Citation 1984. Newark Municipal Council Award 1986. Thalia Spanish Theatre Board of Directors Award 1991. Honorable Award from the Office of Queens Borough President Claire Shulman, 1994. Congressional Record presented Assemblyman José Serrano of New York in 102 session of the United States Congress, 1994. Cruz de Oficial de Isabel la Católica awarded by HM Felipe VI.
Ana María Estrada
Actress, producer, entrepreneur, and director, Estrada has the distinction of working in both, the Hispanic American market and the U.S. General market, better known as Hollywood. Peruvian by birth, she currently resides between the cities of New York, Lima and Miami, which allows her to work easier in various artistic projects.
She has produced several independent films under her own company, Dakini Productions and with Triangle Entertainment, among them: Teresa la amante del libertador (Teresa, the lover of the Liberator) (2014), for which was nominated as Best Actress at the Islantilla Film Festival in Spain. She appeared as a guest actress in the television series Santa Rosa de Lima and San Martín de Porres, translated into several languages and presented in several countries.
For her outstanding work, Estrada has received Best Performance Awards by the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors (HOLA) and the Association of Entertainment Critics (ACE) in New York. She was honored with the TUMI Excellence Award (2014) in Miami in an homage to Peruvian women; and received a Recognition Award at the White House in Washington DC in 2008 for her work in favor of the culture and the arts.
She also created RASGOS, her own theater company, producing and starring in many plays with Latin American actors, winning many awards. Her love for the performing arts started at an early age and decided to study acting with wonderful masters in New York, Los Angeles, and London. She also studied film at the prestigious New York Film Academy. She is a member of the AFTRA and SAG actor unions. Mrs. Estrada has just been elected President of the Hispanic Organization of Latin Actors in New York.
Iride Lamartina-Lens
Distinguished Professor of Spanish language, literature, culture and translation in the Department of Modern Languages at Pace University in Manhattan. She is a translator specialized in theater, and a scholar of contemporary theater written in Spain. Among the many plays she has translated the list includes: In the Other Room [En la otra habitación] by Paloma Pedrero, Darwin’s Tortoise [La tortuga de Darwin] by Juan Mayorga, Tsunami [Tsunami] by Guillermo Heras, Scarred by the Wind [Las heridas del viento] by Juan Carlos Rubio, Prague [Praga] by Javier de Dios, A Shelter of Light [Una guarida con luz] by Paloma Pedrero, White on White [Blanco sobre blanco] by Luis Fernando de Julián, Life Lessons [Lecciones de vida] by Eduardo Galán, and a collection of short plays entitled, A Bilingual Collection of Theatrical Shorts and One-Act Plays.
She has published numerous articles in the field, and co-written with Candyce Leonard two critical Spanish theater anthologies: Nuevos Manantiales: Dramaturgas Españolas en los Noventa, vols. 1 & 2 (2001); and Testimonios del Teatro Español: 1950-2000 (2002). Together with Susan Berardini, she is the co-editor of the only English translation series of contemporary Spanish theater, Estreno Contemporary Spanish Plays, awarded the Premio a la Mejor Labor Editorial 2015 by AAT (Association de Autores y Autoras Teatrales). To date, the series includes 45 volumes of diversified theater written by Spain’s most celebrated living playwrights.
Gregary J. Racz
Professor of Humanities at LIU Brooklyn, review editor for Translation Review, and a former president of the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA). Racz edited Three Comedies by Jaime Salom (UP of Colorado, 2004), in which his translation of the mock-Renaissance farce El señor de las patrañas (Eng. Rigmaroles) appears. Additionally, Racz’s translation of Salom’s Dos griegas (Eng. Callas and Medea) was commissioned and staged by the Thalia Spanish Theatre in Queens, NY.
His translations of the Spanish Golden Age dramatists Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño (Eng. Life Is a Dream) and Lope Félix de Vega Carpio’s Fuenteovejuna were commissioned for the Norton Anthology of Drama (2009). The two works were also published as stand-alone volumes, the former in the Penguin Classics series (2006) and the latter by Yale UP (2010). His renderings of Miguel de Cervantes’s La Numancia (Eng. The Siege of Numantia), Lope de Vega’s El perro del hortelano (Eng. The Dog in the Manger), and Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s Los empeños de una casa (Eng. Trials of a Noble House) appear with Life Is a Dream and Fuenteovejuna in The Golden Age of Spanish Drama: A Norton Critical Edition (2018). Racz also translated Alberto Conejero’s La piedra oscura (Eng. Dark Stone) for ESTRENO Contemporary Spanish Plays 39 (2016). Most recently Racz translated the short plays “Justo en la noche” (Eng. “Under Dark of Night”) by Raúl Hernández Garrido and “La mala imagen” (Eng. “Bad Image”) by Juan Mayorga for Microtheatre: A Door County Debut of Short Plays from Wisconsin and Spain (ESTRENO Studies, 2022).
