
Buena Vista Social Club™
book BY MARco ramirez
music BY the grammy award winning buena vista social club
music PRODUCED BY DAVID YAZBEK
CHOREOGRAPHY BY patricia delgado & justin peck
DIRECTED BY saheem ali
November 17 – december 31, 2023
Linda Gross Theater
Directed by Tony Award nominee Saheem Ali (Fat Ham), this story of the legendary artists who recorded the album features the soul-stirring music of Cuba’s golden age, with a book by Marco Ramirez (Drama Desk Award winner, The Royale), choreography by Patricia Delgado and Tony Award winner Justin Peck (Carousel, Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story), and a music team led by Tony Award winner David Yazbek (The Band’s Visit).
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Inspired by the Grammy-winning 1997 album, we are thrilled to present the world premiere musical Buena Vista Social Club™.

Marco Ramirez
Book
MARCO RAMIREZ (Book). Marco’s play, The Royale, was produced at Lincoln Center in 2016 under the direction of Rachel Chavkin. It was honored with Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle Awards, and the play has received over thirty subsequent productions. He’s a Miami native, NYU graduate, and a former Juilliard Playwriting fellow. In television, he’s a WGA and Emmy Award-nominated writer, with credits that include “Sons of Anarchy,” “Orange is the New Black,” “Daredevil,” and the upcoming “La Máquina,” starring Gael García Bernal and Diego Luna.

Saheem Ali
Director
SAHEEM ALI (Director) is a proud immigrant from Kenya. He received a Tony Award nomination for directing the Pulitzer Prize-winning Fat Ham on Broadway, the 2023 Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Directing, as well as Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominations for Fat Ham’s Off-Broadway run at the Public Theater, where he serves as the Associate Artistic Director/Resident Director. His production of Merry Wives (Shakespeare in the Park) was recorded for PBS Great Performances and was the subject of the documentary Reopening Night (HBO Max). Recent productions include Goddess (Berkeley Rep), Nollywood Dreams (MCC), Romeo y Julieta, Shipwreck and Richard II (radio plays). Other productions: Fires in The Mirror (Signature Theater), The Rolling Stone (Lincoln Center Theater), Passage (Soho Rep), Fireflies (Atlantic Theater Company), In Our Wounds (MTC), Tartuffe (Playmakers Rep), Where Storms Are Born (WTF), and Kill Move Paradise (National Black Theater). He is a Usual Suspect at New York Theater Workshop, a Sir John Gielgud SDCF Fellow, and a Shubert Fellow.

Patricia Delgado
Co-Choreographer
PATRICIA DELGADO (Co-Choreographer), Cuban-American, born in Miami, Florida was a principal dancer with the Miami City Ballet, where she performed works by George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Twyla Tharp, Paul Taylor, among others as well as the classical works, Coppelia, Giselle, and Don Quixote, and the role of Juliet in John Cranko’s Romeo and Juliet. She has created feature works with choreographers Alexei Ratmansky, Justin Peck, Pam Tanowitz, Jamar Roberts, John Heginbotham, among others. She performed in the musical Brigadoon, directed and choreographed by Christopher Wheeldon at Encores! She starred in the music video “The Dark Side of the Gym” for The National and has appeared as a guest performer on “The Tonight Show”. As a repetiteur for Justin Peck, she staged In Creases on Boston Ballet, Ballet Arizona, and for members of ABT and Heatscape in Dresden, at the Semperoper Ballett. She is the Associate Choreographer on Steven Spielberg’s West Side Story. She was an Associate Producer on the 2020 Broadway revival of West Side Story. She is a member of the dance faculty at The Juilliard School and Artistic Advisor of Adriana Pierce’s Queer The Ballet.

Justin Peck
Co-Choreographer
JUSTIN PECK (Co-Choreographer) is a Tony Award winning choreographer, director, filmmaker, and dancer based in New York City. He is currently the acting Resident Choreographer of New York City Ballet. Justin choreographed the 2018 Broadway revival of Carousel. In 2014, Justin was the subject of the documentary BALLET 422, which presents Justin’s craft and creative process as a choreographer, as he creates New York City Ballet’s 422nd commissioned dance. Peck choreographed the feature films Red Sparrow (2016) starring Jennifer Lawrence and directed by Francis Lawrence; West Side Story (2021) in collaboration with director Steven Spielberg; and Maestro (2022) in collaboration with Bradley Cooper. In 2018, Justin directed the New York Times GREAT PERFORMERS Series. Justin’s honors include: the National Arts Award (2018), the Golden Plate Honor from the Academy of Achievement (2019), the Bessie Award for his ballet Rodeo: Four Dance Episodes (2015), the Gross Family Prize for his ballet Everywhere We Go (2014), the World Choreography Award for West Side Story (2022), and the Tony Award for his work on Broadway’s Carousel (2018).

David Yazbek
Music Producer
DAVID YAZBEK (Music Producer). A varied career as a recording artist, Emmy Award-winning TV and screenwriter, music producer, and pianist has somehow led Yazbek to become one of Broadway’s preeminent composer/lyricists. The Band’s Visit earned him a Tony Award, Obie, New York Drama Critics Circle, Lucille Lortel, Outer Critics Circle and two Drama Desk awards. The Full Monty, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown and Tootsie have received a combined 35 Tony Award nominations, including four for Best Score. As a recording artist, Yazbek is responsible for five albums: The Laughing Man, Tock, Damascus, Tape Recorder and Evil Monkey Man. He has written and/or produced for such acts as XTC, Ruben Blades, The Persuasions, Joe Jackson, Tito Puente and many others. He also produced the original cast albums of his Broadway shows. He has three Grammy Award® nominations. In recent years, he has scored the final season of HBO’s “Boardwalk Empire,” composed music for Larry David’s Fish in the Dark and written songs and music for Much Ado About Nothing at Central Park’s Delacorte Theater, all while opening productions of Scoundrels and Women on the Verge in London’s West End. In past lives, he has written dozens of scripts and many songs for television and film, won an Emmy Award® for his stint on “Late Night with David Letterman” and wrote the unrelenting theme song for “Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?”

Dean Sharenow
Music Supervisor and Coordinator

Arnulfo Maldonado
Set Design

Dede Ayite
Costume Design

Bradley King
Lighting Design

Jonathan Deans
Sound Design
November Schedule
Atlantic is committed to connecting deeply and authentically with audiences from a broad range of economic backgrounds, ages, ethnicities and perspectives. Our Access25 ticket initiative (formerly “Back25”) makes $25 tickets available to every preview performance of Buena Vista Social Club. Access25 tickets go on sale Friday, November 3 at noon ET.
^ Community Influencer Night
~ Theme Night
*ASL ASL Sign Interpreted Performance
*OC Open Captioned Performance
Community events are a part of Atlantic’s Community Audience Partnership (CAP) program designed to connect deeply and authentically with audiences from a broad range of economic backgrounds, ages, ethnicities, and perspectives.