Pregones/PRTT’s STEP UP Artist Residency – Spring 2026

La Tormenta by Ana Luz Zambrana & Aditya Joshi

To be presented at PRTT May 9 @ 7pm and May 10 @ 3pm 

Zaire and her daughters Estrella and Maria attend Abuela’s 93rd birthday in Castañer, Puerto Rico. Estrella resents her older sister’s distance from the family, and she and Zaire don’t even expect Maria to show. But when Maria arrives at the same time as a hurricane and power outage, tensions come to a head. It’s exacerbated by Abuela who is reliant on an electric oxygen system. Ultimately, a terrifying incident on the roof, we are left with the optimistic sense that the artifice had to shatter to put the pieces back together again. 

Ana Luz Zambrana is a Puerto Rican actor, director, and writer from Orlando, Florida. She wrote, produced, and starred in the short film A WEST SIDE STORY STORY, which premiered in 2025 at the Tribeca Film Festival. She has a leading role in Andy Fickman’s horror feature film DON’T TURN OFF THE LIGHTS, which was released in October of 2024 on Hulu.

Ana was a Van Lier Fellow at Repertorio Español and an SDC Directing Fellow, chosen for the Kennedy Center Directing Initiative, and is a BiPOC Critic Lab Alum. Her reggaetonera off-Broadway adaptation of La Traición en la Amistad has been cited in academic texts and won a LATA Award for best play. La Tormenta, Ana’s first play as a writer, was a finalist for the Jane Chambers Feminist Playwriting Award and has received development from The Sol Project, Latinx Playwrights Circle, Dramatic Question Theater, and Seattle Public Theater.

Aditya Joshi is playwright and filmmaker from Kansas City. He has written for two seasons of Amazon’s WE WERE LIARS, and sold SHIKAAR, a limited series about a doomed tiger hunt, at FX. His short film, A WEST SIDE STORY STORY premiered at the 2025 Tribeca Festival and is EP’d by Luis Guzman. Aditya was selected as a 2025 WGA/FilmNation New York Screenwriting Fellow, where he developed his feature debut THE TREE BED under the mentorship of Tom McCarthy and Anne Carey.

In theater, Aditya produced La Traición en la Amistad (Off-Broadway, Repertorio Español) and has developed with Sol Project, Seattle Public Theatre, and Latinx Playwrights Circle, among others. Recently, he was selected for the 2026 Page 73 Writers Group, the 2026 Rideback Rise Circle, an 2026 SFFILMxSloan Grant, and the 2025 WGA/Filmnation New York Screenwriting Fellowship.

Esta No Es La Carreta (This Is Not The Oxcart) by Mara Vélez Meléndez

To be presented at PRTT May 23 at 7pm and May 24 @ 3pm

Written by René Marqués in 1953, La Carreta follows a Puerto Rican jíbaro family moving from the island’s inner countryside to the city of San Juan in the search for a better life and how that search is futile. While essential to the Puerto Rican dramatic canon, Marques’ text was haunted by strict legal boundaries that didn’t allow any experimentation with the text, hindering the play’s progress in said canon. Almost 70 years later, a troupe of actors tries to develop the modern version of the play in a process that questions if Puerto Rican life has improved at all and the family that joins us in the journey. Esta No Es La Carreta (This Is Not The Oxcart) is a dramedy about trying to make progress out of a lack of progress.

Mara Vélez Meléndez (she/her) is a playwright born and raised in Puerto Rico. She made her Off-Broadway debut in 2022 with Notes on Killing Seven Oversight, Management and Economic Stability Board Members, produced by Soho Rep and The Sol Project. Her work has also been presented by companies like Yale Repertory Theater and Moxie Theater. Mara was a 2023 MacDowell Fellow, a 2020-2021 Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow, and a member of Ars Nova’s PlayGroup. She also adapted the Spotify/Gimlet podcast, Case 63, starring Julianne Moore and Oscar Isaac. Other plays include Thelma and Louise and the Time Machine (2022 Breaking The Binary Theater Festival) and ¡GÁRGOLA! (2020 MCC LiveLabs). Playwriting M.F.A., Hunter College