New Play Spotlights Hialeah Life

A new play at Amphibian Stage’s SparkFest is doing something pretty specific — it takes Hialeah, with all its Cuban, Afro-Caribbean, and Miami-coded texture, and makes that the center of the story instead of background color. The play is *Ama. Egg. Oyá.*, written by Lori Felipe-Barkin, and it follows Ama, a Cuban-American woman from Hialeah who is desperate to become a mother after repeated miscarriages. That setup sounds intimate, but the play is reaching for bigger questions about faith, class, identity, and what motherhood means when the body keeps refusing the plan. SparkFest is presenting it June 5–13 as part of a 2026 festival built around Latine artists. (sparkfestfwtx.com) ### What is the play actually about? At the center is Ama — a woman described in festival materials as “hell-bent” on having a child despite miscarriages and bad luck. The emotional engine is infertility, but not in a sterile, issue-play way. The story ties Ama’s struggle to Oyá, the African orisha she feels draw(sparkfestfwtx.com)ruba-inflected. (stageagent.com) ### Why does Hialeah matter so much here? Because Hialeah is not just a setting tag. It tells you the social world immediately — Cuban-American, working-class, loud, funny, resilient, and deeply shaped by migration and religion. Festival descriptions lean into “modern-day Miami,” Cuban rhythms, and bilingual dialogue, which means the play is treating local culture a(stageagent.com) the city and community she comes from. (sparkfestfwtx.com) ### What makes the storytelling style different? The play blends Yoruba fables, Santería traditions, Miami flavor, and Afro-Cuban music. That mix matters because infertility stories can easily flatten into medical or domestic realism. This one seems to resist that. It uses folklore and rhythm to widen the frame —(sparkfestfwtx.com)on even paired it with live musical accompaniment by OKAN, which gives a sense of how performance and sound are part of the piece’s identity. (stageagent.com) ### Is this a full production or a festival reading? At SparkFest, it appears as part of a new-works festival, not a long commercial run. Amphibian says SparkFest’26 will include staged readings, workshops, music, art, and a national acting competition, all under a Latine-artist banner. So the point is discovery as much as polish — putting emerging or developing work in front of audiences and industry people who can help it travel. (amphibianstage.com) ### Why is Fort Worth staging a Hialeah story? That is kind of the point of festivals like this. SparkFest is using a Texas platform to showcase stories rooted elsewhere but resonant across Latine communities. A Hialeah story about infertility, faith, and class is local in texture but broad in reach. It lets a Fort Worth audience meet a very specific world without sanding off what makes it specific. (amphibianstage.com) ### Who is behind it? The script is by Lori Felipe-Barkin, and audition listings for the SparkFest staging name Laurie Woolery as director. Those same listings describe the piece as bilingual and explicitly inspired by Afro-Cuban tradition, which helps explain why the play reads less like generic multicultural packaging and more like a work trying to preserve a particular lineage of sound, belief, and language. (broadwayworld.com) ### Why does this story land now? Because theater has gotten better at saying “specific” instead of “universal” and trusting audiences to come along. *Ama. Egg. Oyá.* is not hiding its references or sanding down Hialeah into a vague immigrant backdrop. It is betting that a story grounded in miscarriages, Santería, Cuban iden(broadwayworld.com)s also a place story. And turns out that is what makes it feel bigger — Hialeah is not the backdrop to Ama’s struggle. Hialeah is the language the struggle is written in.