Julián Mesri is a New York-based Argentinean-American playwright and composer who makes multilingual plays and musicals in the US and around the world. He is the co-adaptor and composer/lyricist for the Mobile Unit bilingual production of the Drama Desk nominated and LATA award winning Comedy of Errors at the Public, as well as Much Ado About Nothing, premiering this summer. His play, The Irrepressible Magic of the Tropics premiered as part of Intar’s 2025 season. He is currently the Judith Champion Musical Theater Launchpad Resident at Signature Theater and a Core Writer at the Playwrights Center. Other work includes composing the live score of Henry 6 at The Old Globe, directing/arranging Songs About Trains with Radical Evolution, music directing and co-orchestrating Brian Quijada’s Somewhere Over the Border (Syracuse Stage, Geva Theater). He has been a member of the Public Theater Emerging Writer’s Group, a Dramatist Guild Fellow, an Emerging Artist of Color Fellow and Usual Suspect at NYTW, and a Van Lier fellow at Repertorio Español. He received his MFA in Playwriting from Columbia University.
Free
Playwrights’ Center, 710 Raymond Ave, Saint Paul, MN 55114
January 16 @ 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm CST
About the play
The Rotnicks run a dusty almacén (general store/café) in the rural province of Chaco, Argentina in 1939. Their daughter Flora’s upcoming wedding to the wealthy Ezra Mainen brings unexpected gifts and troubling revelations to their family and their small Jewish community. Through Yiddish and Spanish folk songs and shifting time, this memory play explores how ordinary people navigate political pressure, and asks: if we never truly belong anywhere, how do we make home with each other?
I wrote this piece as a response to a) my father’s passing, and b) recently learning about a complicated part of his history that I never got to talk to him about. The question of where we find our ‘place’ in Judaism feels very pertinent, and is something I have thought about having inherited–an experience of exile that reverberates between being Jewish and being an immigrant. In addition the play’s exploration of moral compromise under economic/political pressure is in dialogue with contemporary debates about complicity under increasingly dire political situations, and how ordinary people navigate systems they can’t fully control.
Making your reservation
This is an in-person, ticketed reading at Playwrights’ Center on Friday, January 16.
Please use the sign up link below to RSVP. Be sure to reserve your spot in advance!
If you have any questions about making your reservation, please email us at rsvp@pwcenter.org.
Planning your visit
All seating is general admission. We recommend arriving 10-15 minutes prior to the reading to check in and find your seat.
Visit our About page to learn more about parking and accessibility.
Large groups
If you are making a reservation for more than six people, please email rsvp@pwcenter.org to arrange. If you make a reservation for more than six, a member of our Advancement team may be in touch closer to the reading date to confirm final numbers for your group.
Julián Mesri
