PEDRO INFANTE, CIEN AÑOS PIENSO EN TI, a one-act play in Spanish with music, offers a new twist on the life of Mexican immigrants living al otro lado. Doña Pancha, a Mexican grandmother in the U.S., has spent twenty long years helping raise her granddaughter. Burdened by the nostalgia that afflicts many immigrants, she is ready to return home to México and live out her final days “among my people.” However, her family, rooted here, will not allow her to leave. Feeling like a prisoner, Doña Pancha seeks other solutions. Only through the seemingly divine intervention of her childhood idol, Pedro Infante, the universally adored Mexican actor and singer who died in 1957, can this strong-willed abuelita finally make peace with her regrets and begin her homeward journey. Seven of Infante’s most classic songs accompany the show, which will draw on the Mexican tradition of the South Bronx neighborhood where it will be performed.

This play is a special adaption prepared by the author, Toby Campion, in collaboration with Germán Jaramillo and his New York theatre company, iD Studio Theater. The connection between iD Studio Theater and the the Bilingual Foundation of the Arts (BFA) in Los Angeles originated in 2011, when Jaramillo was invited to direct the first play of Campion’s Trilogy, Cumbia de mi corazón. The second installment in the trilogy, Pedro Infante y la Suegra Triunfante, premiered at the BFA as a two-act play in 2012, and was subsequently produced twice by Teatro de las Américas, in Oxnard, CA. A film based on the material is presently in the works with Esparza-Caldera Productions. The author is grateful for the support of the Infante family, in particular Lupita Infante Torrentera and Lupita Mariol Infante Esparza.