Gloria Estefan has spent a career turning rhythm into hits. Her latest project turns garbage into music — literally. "Basura," a new stage musical she wrote with her daughter, the musician Emily Estefan, is having its world premiere at the Alliance Theatre in Atlanta.
The story
"Basura" — Spanish for "trash" — draws on the true story of a youth orchestra in Paraguay whose members build their instruments from materials scavenged at a landfill, a tale familiar from the documentary "Landfill Harmonic," the Alliance Theatre says. The show follows young people who make art, and possibility, out of what others discard. It is running at the Alliance this summer, with performances into July, Playbill reported as the production announced its cast.
A first for the Estefans
For Gloria Estefan — the former Miami Sound Machine frontwoman and a multiple-Grammy winner — "Basura" is a different kind of theater project than "On Your Feet!", the 2015 jukebox musical built around her own catalog of hits. This one is an original story with an original score, and the production is billing it as the first musical with an original score co-written by a mother and daughter, FOX 5 Atlanta reported. For Emily Estefan, a Grammy-nominated artist who has built her own musical career, it is a high-profile collaboration with her mother.
The team, and the reach
The production has assembled an experienced Broadway-caliber team, and the Estefans have framed Atlanta — a diverse, culturally influential city — as a fitting place to launch the show before whatever comes next. Beyond the marquee names, the piece arrives as American stages increasingly spotlight Latin American stories and creators, and its subject — young people conjuring beauty from scarcity — gives it a resonance well beyond its Paraguayan setting. Whether "Basura" travels to other cities remains to be seen; for now, its first audiences are in Atlanta, hearing a score two generations of one family built together.
