press packet - The Campaign to Free Oscar López Rivera

Crime Against Humanity
Written by: A play by poet and activist Michael Anthony Reyes Benavides
and former Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Luis Rosa
Directed by: Michael Anthony Reyes Benavides
A National Boricua Human Rights Network and Batey Urbano Production
Imagine 27 years of your life living in a space 6 feet by 9 feet.
Imagine being confined in isolation with no human contact. Imagine
the shakedowns, the strip searches and the complete disregard for
your humanity. Crime Against Humanity is a play based on the real
life experiences of fourteen Puerto Rican political prisoners who spent
more than two decades in prisons for seditious conspiracy- two of whom
are still incarcerated. Crime Against Humanity brings us into the U.S.
prison system in a way no other play has, focusing on the politically
motivated use of isolation, selective punishment, sensory deprivation
and disproportionate sentences.
Written by poet and activist Michael Anthony Reyes Benavides along with former Puerto Rican political prisoner
Luis Rosa, the play confronts the physical and mental torture these prisoners endured for more than 27 years.
We gaze into their cell and experience the loss of parents, the transition of children into adulthood and feel the
physical brutality and torture of a government out to make an example of them. We see them as they refuse to
be victimized and objectified, confronting their hardships and adversities while maintaining their dignity, and
upholding their humanity.
Reyes Benavides spent hours interviewing the former Puerto Rican political prisoners, and through extensive
written correspondence, the two remaining political prisoners Oscar López Rivera and Carlos Alberto Torres.
Through the play, we hear from their own mouths, their own words, exactly what it means to be a political
prisoner in the United States.
Crime Against Humanity is produced by the National Boricua Human Rights Network and the Batey Urbano.
These two organizations hope to use this performance piece to raise consciousness and gain support for the
campaign to free the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners.
“By using theater as a tool of resistance, we hope to reach out to those sectors that are often ignored by traditional
activist outreach. We want our families, our brothers and sisters and our community to come out and see what
these prisoners endured, many of them for almost 20 years, two of them for more than 27” (author and director
Reyes Benavides).
Crime Against Humanity will run from March 3rd, 2008 through March 3rd, 2009 as a part of the Puerto Rican
Cultural Center’s“100 x 35” Campaign. This campaign will be celebrating the centennial of the birth of Puerto
Rican national hero and poet Juan Antonio Corretjer and the 35th year of the founding of the Chicago-based
Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center. As part of this celebration a national tour of the play will
make stops in several U.S. cities: New York, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Hartford, Washington D.C., Boston, San
Francisco, and Los Angeles. The production has plans to tour throughout Puerto Rico in the future as well.
For more information contact crimeagainsthumanitychicago@gmail.com or 773 606 4014.
Crime Against Humanity
Cindy Maldonado as Prisoner #10035
Melissa Cintron as Prisoner #10035
Samuel Vega as Prisoner #10035
Melissa Cintron as Prisoner #10035
Reyes as Prisoner #10035
Reyes as Prisoner #10035
Cindy Maldonado as Prisoner #10035
About Writer and Director
Michael Anthony Reyes Benavides
For the last seven years much of Reyes’ work has been dedicated to Café
Teatro Batey Urbano, a project of the Puerto Rican Cultural Center in Chicago. He has been involved in a variety of youth lead projects, including the
founding of Zócalo Urbano, a Chicano-Mexicano/Latino youth space located in the neighborhoods of Pilsen and Little Village.
As part of Batey Urbano he has shared the stage nationally and internationally with many poets, artists and activists such as historical figures Lolita
Lebrón, and Delores Huerta, poets Tato Laviera, Pedro Pietri, and La Bruja, and musical artists such as, Roy
Brown, Dead Prez, Boca Floja, Luis Diaz of Intifada, and Grammy Award winner Malik Yusef.
As a poet and an artist he has been featured on HBO Latino’s Habla Series, and the PBS documentary Dream
Makers. He has released three chapter books of poetry and 3 c.d.s. His work has also been featured nationally
in many magazines, anthologies and newspapers.
He has worked with many established institutions including; Chicago Public Radio, the United States Hispanic
Leadership Institute, the National Museum of Mexican Art, the Museum Of Contemporary Art and the Poetry
Center of Chicago.
As an actor, his credits include roles in Miguel Piñero’s famed play, The Sun Always Shines for the Cool, Urban
Poet, Why Are U Running? Chicago Boricua, Public Theater’s 365 Project written by Pulitzer Prize winning
playwright Suzan-Lori Parks and the feature film Humboldt Park starring John Leguizamo, Melonie Diaz,
Freddy Rodríguez, Debra Messing, Alfred Molina, Jay Hernandez, and Luis Guzmán.
He has worked directly with famed NuYorican poet Tato Laveria on three productions titled The Spark, Chupacabera and the 1977 Division Street Riots. As part of his work with Tato he has served, both as an actor and
a director.
Currently Reyes is touring the country with his new play Crime Against Humanity, co- written by former
Puerto Rican Political Prisoner Luis Rosa. Reyes has played the role of actor, writer and director for the play.
Crime Against Humanity has received incredible community support and it is scheduled to tour until March
of 2009.
About The Producers
National Boricua Human Rights Network
2739-41 West Division Street • Chicago, IL 60622
www.boricuahumanrights.org • info@boricuahumanrights.org
The National Boricua Human Rights Network is an organization composed of Puerto Ricans in the
US and their supporters that educates and mobilizes the Puerto Rican community, the broader Latin
American community and other people of conscience regarding issues of justice, peace and human
rights.
Our priorities include: (1) The decontamination, development, and return of the island of Vieques to its
people; (2) The release of the remaining Puerto Rican political prisoners; (3) An end to the continuing
political repression and criminalization of progressive sectors of the Puerto Rican community.
Café Teatro/Batey Urbano
2620 West Division Street • Chicago, IL 60622
www.bateyurbano.org • 77.342.1714
This Puerto Rican/Latino youth membership club and internet coffee-house exists with a threefold
purpose: a) to showcase the talents of the area’s youth (hip hop, poetry with a purpose, music) and
engage them in a continuous dialogue about youth, art, culture and the community; b) to link Puerto
Rican/Latino students in the area universities with the community, particularly through publications
and performances; and c) to provide a place in which older youth share their creative skills in a
process of social ecology with younger people, (i.e. murals, creative writing, web page design,
community gardening).
Crime Against Humanity Cast
CAST
Melissa Cintron
Cindy Maldonado
Jose Perez
Michael Antony Reyes Benavides
Janeida Rivera
Samuel Vega
Technical Crew:
Director - Michael Anthony Reyes Benevides
Associate Director - Ciara Medina
Sound Engineer - Enrique Velasquez
Sound Design - Jose Rivera
Light Design - Reyes
Light Engineer - Jose Rivera
Costume Design - Myra Rodriguez
Stage Manager - Adriana Rodriguez, Maria Ramos
Set Design - Lebster Pabon, Samuel Vega
Art Work by Miguel Luciano
Written by:
Michael Anthony Reyes Benevides and Former Political Prisoner Luis Rosa
Produced by:
National Boricua Human Rights Network
Café Teatro Batey Urbano
Partly funded by:
Crossroads Fund
Fire this time Fund
Near Northwest Neighborhood Network
Puerto Rican Cultural Center
National Boricua Human Rights Network
Batey Urbano
Write to the Puerto Rican
Political Prisoners
Carlos Alberto Torres
Address:
#88976-024
P.O. Box 1000
Oxford, WI 53952
Oscar López Rivera
Address:
#87651-024
Federal Prison Complex
PO Box 33
Terre Haute, IN
www.boricuahumanrights.org • info@boricuahumanrights.org
Art by Miguel Luciano