Ay! Ay! Ay! & the Westside Stories: A Puerto Rican Play is loosely based on the life of Broadway actor-director-educator-activist Julio Agustin Matos, Jr.  It’s a one-man show about Julio—but he’s not in it.

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The solo show stars three male and one female-identifying actors (yes, we get the irony), each embodying divergent facets of the conceiver’s career in the white-understood American Theatre industry and educational system. Clashes, gnashes, humor, and regrets persist as the men navigate the woman-guided dilemma of “Should we or shouldn’t we [do this Puerto Rican play]?" They confront their futures, past choices and current reputations – even their Latinidad -- and no one is winning.

This play-with-music dissects and autopsies the mechanism of story-telling, of the play’s characters, of the sounds and physical expression of a specific community, and of the American theatre system as it relates to Latiné actors and audiences. Julio’s story is simply the vehicle, or tool, used to demonstrate these themes and stories. We use the semi-autobiographical experiences as a path with which to illuminate even more paths. Our four characters retrace their steps to get to Patient 0, the first Puerto Rican to have lost their way.