ARTURO SORIA
ARTURO SORIA
NI MI MADRE
2022 OBIE AWARDS
[WINNER] Best Performance
2022 OUTER CIRCLE CRITICS AWARDS
Outstanding Solo Performance Nominee
2022 DRAMA LEAGUE AWARDS
Distinguished Performance Nominee
2022 DRAMA DESK AWARDS
Outstanding Solo Performance Nominee
An over-the-top Brazilian woman with too much botox scrambles to raise her queer son in a backwards American culture where children get “time outs” instead of chancletas. A tour-de-force, NI MI MADRE delves deep into the makings of an immigrant family as they deal with the secrets that tear them apart and the unbidden memories of a buried past. This riotous Obie Award winning show is inspirited with the music of Gloria Estefan, Cher, Maria Bethânia, and the heart of Umbanda ritual.
Directed by Rattlestick’s Directing Fellow, Danilo Gambini and partnering with community organizations Sol Project and Group.BR this is a world-premiere production of this solo show for this accomplished actor and first-time writer, and the director’s first professional production in the U.S.
[2021] World Premiere - Rattlestick Theater, NYC
[2015] Winner of the Luso-American Scholarship, DisQuiet International Literary Program
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NEW YORK TIMES
CRITIC’S PICK
"Arturo Luís Soria’s autobiographical solo show “Ni Mi Madre” directed by Danilo Gambini at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater in Manhattan, is remarkably unconventional… What marks this play as extraordinary in these knee-jerk antagonistic times is its ease with emotional contradiction and discomfort, its willingness to let filial affection persist despite a cleareyed acknowledgment of parental damage done.
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Ni Mi Madre” is an aching heart wrapped in laughter and a long white dress — an offering of understanding and forgiveness, presented on the altar of bruised inheritance."
-Laura Collins-Hughes
NEW YORKER
"It’s a lampoon, a tribute, and reckoning all in one.”
-Rollo Romig
THEATER MANIA
"An explosively energetic performer, Soria manages to capture the unique mania of the American immigrant experience, a journey that leaves little room for regret or backpedaling.
The most delightful thing about Ni Mi Madre is hearing the unvarnished voice of one working-class immigrant infiltrate the American theater, dominated as it is by bourgeois manners and attitudes.”
-Zachary Stewart
THEATERLY
"His perfect timing is matched by a performance that seductively straddles the line between characterization and affectation––you never lose sight of the fact that it is Soria onstage, but that’s the point."
- Juan A. Ramirez
VULTURE
"This first pandemic-era in-person show at the Rattlestick gleams with polish...Thirteen years of rewriting and rehearsing have left him with a script that shines like lacquer, and an impersonation that's kinetically exquisite."
-Helen Shaw