Juliette Whittaker brought international culture, music, and imagination to the Carver Center’s Fine Arts and Drama Department with a series of original works.
Her first original production, “Blues in Cuba,” featured the talents of her youth theater troupe juxtaposed against a Latin-influenced music score and setting. It suggests her broad understanding of the play of black culture across the Americas.
The production was set in the Cuba of 1950 — not the Cuba of military dictator Fulgencio Baptista (1952-1959) or the revolutionary Cuba of Fidel Castro (1959-2008). In 1950, Cuba’s elected president Carlos Prío Sócarras — of the Partido Revolucionario Cubano Auténtico (Authentic Cuban Revolutionary Party) — supported the country’s labor movement and the shared management of the economy by government, labor and business.