Reina Prado
This year, I celebrate fifteen years as a working artist in Los Angeles. To commemorate this milestone, I will premiere my solo show Whipped! this summer. Whipped! is a comedic performance that traces Virginia Buenaventura, a Good Mexican Girl’s journey of self-discovery. Virginia is caught in a time warp of 1950s ideals of domesticity and womanhood. When a new tenant arrives at her boarding house she has to confront her own perceptions of love and sexuality.
I have performed to audiences throughout California, Arizona, New York City, Washington, DC, and internationally in Scotland, Mexico and Cuba. I am a founding member along with Pat Payne & Dora McQuaid of The NeoSpinsters, a poetry performance collective. From 1998-2000, I collaborated with the L.A. Coyotas, an interdisciplinary and intergenerational Chicana artist collective.
Other performance works like “Take a Piece of My Heart” and “Ghost of Us” includes interactive durational elements. For example, “Take a Piece of My Heart” features another character I created named Santa Perversa, the patron saint of all things erotic, sensual and love. Individuals approach Santa Perversa and write their love petitions pinning it on her dress. “The Ghost of Us” focuses on the feminicide in Cd. Juárez, Mexico that started in the 1990s and persists today. I have performed both these works at Highways Performance Space, Intersection for the Arts, 13th Annual Habana Poetry Festival, CASA 0101 and Casa Cultural Benemérito de las Américas in Coyoacán, Mexico.
