Quotes & Highlights

• “(René) Rivera's performance is astounding! He is electric, passionate and luminous in portraying every character and in telling every aspect of his story. Every movement, every gesture is riveting and meaningful…Under (Valentino) Ferreira’s fast-paced direction, Rivera is a fireball of energy recreating a bevy of characters from his youth, including his father, mother, teachers, sidekicks and drug-addicted older sibling José." --BroadwayWorld.com
• “(René) Rivera has fashioned an impassioned one-man show out of his Mexican-American experiences.  Written by his wife Stacey Martino and directed by Valentino Ferreira…played out vividly and powerfully by Rivera."  --TotalTheater.com
• “René (Rivera), Stacey (Martino) and Valentino (Ferriera) hit the long ball. A real example of the American dream." –Los Angeles Times Online
• “This play is one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time.  It should go to New York. It should go everywhere. The young generation needs to see this!”  –Sally Kellerman, Academy Award and Golden Globe-Nominated Actress
• Three lifetime members of the New York Actors Studio -- playwright Stacey Martino, her actor husband René Rivera and director Valentino Ferreira – have entwined their talents to reveal a memorable…captivating panorama of the Mexican American experience as chronicled in the fictional history of one San Antonio-based family. Philadelphia-born Martino utilizes the extended memories of her husband’s family members and friends, culled from conversations and interviews, to bring to life a colorful menagerie of folk -- historical and current, real and legendary – all portrayed by Rivera.  Rivera sumptuously inhabits all the varied souls that torture and nurture a poverty-stricken Mexican American boy's psyche during his journey to personal discovery. admirably paced by director Ferreira, Rivera moves seamlessly between the everyday adventures and misadventures of a growing boy, who slowly begins to understand that he has a goal and direction in life, and the imagined beings of his mind that help him escape the relentless unhappiness and dysfunction that inflicts his family. Rivera is endearingly vulnerable as the boy explains, in times of crisis, [that] he has learned to survive by becoming anyone other than himself, from a Mexican Revolutionary poet, to a Mayan Shaman, to a werewolf and beyond.  He also exudes a comical sense of wonder and disbelief as he tentatively takes each step forward along a path that will eventually lead him out of his San Antonio barrio to a fully paid scholarship to Juilliard School in New York and eventually to the Broadway stage, television and film. The actor is particularly memorable when he assumes the persona of the two great tragic figures in the boy’s life: his embittered, life-defeated father and his drug-addicted older brother. The relentless negativity emanating from these two authority figures makes even more admirable the boy’s journey to personal fruition.  –Latin Heat Magazine