Waking Up

WAKING UP

Teatro Paraguas is pleased to present the premiere production of Waking Up, a new play by Augusto Federico Amador directed by Rick Vargas.

A young man with paralyzing death anxiety becomes infatuated with a mysterious woman he meets at the wake of his uncle. Only to learn that not only did she never know his uncle, she has an addiction to crashing the wakes of strangers. Together, she leads them on an adventure as “wake hoppers”, crashing a series of wakes and funerals as he falls deeply in love with a woman who is more in love with the dead than the living. This fast-paced, high octane comedy culminates in an unexpected ending underlining the quixotic vicissitudes of love.

Rick Vargas directed the Teatro Paraguas hit productions of Death and the Maiden, by Ariel Dorfman (2014), Port Authority Throw Down, by Mike Batistick (2016), and Motherf*cker with the Hat, by Stephen Adly Guirgis (2017).

In 2018, Teatro Paraguas  presented the world premiere of Augusto Amador's play Atacama, in which a man and a woman  meet in the northern Chilean desert while searching for bone fragments of loved ones disappeared by the Pinochet regime,  and find a deep and unsettling connection that shakes their souls. teatro Paraguas reprised the play in 2024.

Augusto was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area and is the son of a music
composer, Peruvian father and culinary chef/restaurateur, Austrian mother. His previous
incarnations include: numbers runner for a bookie, childhood trauma survivor, coffee house
proprietor, used car salesman, marble setter, and of course, long suffering waiter. Mr. Amador's
background in writing comes as a nationally produced, award winning playwright before his
transition into screenwriting with an emphasis on character driven, diverse dramas with dark
humor.

His other plays include Fresno, The Book Of Leonidas, Kissing Che, Maria Unmarried, and The Quiet Zone.

Waking Up runs from July 11-26, 2025, with performances Thursday, Friday, and Saturday at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday at 2:00 p.m. Tickets are $25 General admission, and $15 Limited income, and may be purchased online at teatroparaguasnm.org.  reservations (pay at door) may be made by calling 505-424-1601.

This project is made possible in part by New Mexico Arts (Dept. of Cultural Affairs), Santa Fe Arts and Culture, and Santa Fe Community Foundation.