The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater (PRTT) is reviving 'The Beep', a musical play that explores identity, immigration, and intergenerational connections. The production, adapted by Rosalba Rolón, combines live music, humor, and 'spanglish' to address the feeling of belonging to two places, the coexistence of languages and generations, and building a home away from Puerto Rico without renouncing one’s roots.
The play, which was first presented in 2006, has been refreshed with new texts from contemporary authors from the island, thanks to a collaboration with the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico (MAC). 'The Beep' includes fragments of poems by Julia de Burgos, Jesús Colón, and Manuel Méndez Ballester, and features stories of diaspora, identity, and prejudice. The play runs until November 22.
Rolón highlights that the play proposes a reflection on the messages that one generation transmits to the next, often without being aware of it, and on the technological and social changes that transform daily life. The production recovers sounds of old phones and calls to evoke different eras and forms of communication. The play also explores the adaptation to urban life of a family that arrives from Puerto Rico and raises the question of whether it is necessary to learn English on the island.