Aurora Theatre stretches the language

The Alliance Theatre’s lavish, highly touted “Zorro” isn’t the only game in town this month for audiences with a taste for Spanish gusto. Albeit much more modestly scaled, Teatro del Sol’s “Burundanga” is a quick-witted comedy set in contemporary Spain and performed entirely in its native language to boot, with English supertitles.

Operating under the auspices of Lawrenceville’s Aurora Theatre (now in its 17th season), Teatro del Sol was formed some 10 years ago by Aurora artistic director Anthony Rodriguez, whose parents were Cuban immigrants. The show, running Thursday through April 28 in Aurora’s intimate studio space, is the fifth in an intermittent series of productions geared to the area’s growing Spanish-speaking population.

“I’d lost my mother back in 1996 and as my father continued to get older, I’d been thinking for a long time that I wanted to connect more personally with my heritage,” Rodriguez recalls. “As Aurora became stronger and more established, the idea of Teatro del Sol seemed like a great way to do that.”

What’s more, he says, “It’s a way of encouraging other people to feel more comfortable about coming out to see a show. There’s a very large Latino community here in Gwinnett, but it’s a really under-served audience in terms of the theatrical options available to them.”

Teatro del Sol’s first couple of shows, 2004’s “Life is a Dream” and 2005’s “4 Guys Named Jose and una Mujer Named Maria,” were performed (bilingually) when Aurora was still located in Duluth. After a few years on the back burner, while Rodriguez and company built, moved and settled into their spacious new venue in Lawrenceville, the Teatro troupe’s most recent offerings include 2011’s “Barrio Hollywood” and 2012’s “El Insolito Casa de Miss Pina Colada.”

“It took a while to figure out how this kind of specialized programming fit in with the rest of Aurora’s plans, but once we realized how conducive our studio space would be, we decided to bring it back with greater regularity and strictly in Spanish,” Rodriguez says.

Written by Jordi Galceran, the madcap “Burundanga” involves a romantic young pregnant woman and her boyfriend, who may be a political terrorist. Blanca Aguero and Alexandros Salazar play the couple, with Denise Arribas, Luis Hernandez and Alejandro Gutierrez in supporting roles. Teatro del Sol stalwart Ricardo Aponte, who choreographed “Barrio” and acted in “Pina Colada,” directs the new show.

“In addition to providing entertainment for Spanish speakers, these shows also help expose English speakers to our culture through art, so it’s a great way of merging both of those audiences. There’s literally nothing else like it out there,” says Aponte, whose family relocated here 16 years ago from Venezuela.

For her part, most often cast in more mainstream productions (Stage Door’s “Bye Bye Birdie,” Actor’s Express’ “The Mother with the Hat”), Arribas admits she enjoys being able to work in her first language. She left her native Puerto Rico in 1998 to attend Shorter College and has been based in Atlanta since 2002.

“It took me a long time to become fluent in English, but it wasn’t until I started rehearsing this show that I realized how naturally the Spanish comes to me, how deep within me it is,” she said. “That’s who I truly am and being able to get back in touch with that through acting, it’s really lovely.”