In The News
¡Dále! at Denver Fringe
“With clown, the audience is the most important part. The audience isn’t wrong, ever,” said Adriana Gonzales, a Seattle-based clown who will be performing as “La Piñata” at Denver Fringe.
Gonzales created her character, La Piñata, for a thesis project at the University of Washington, where she graduated with a master’s degree in acting in March. She’d written a solo show about a family who makes piñatas during an early semester, but couldn’t quite get it to work. The following year she revived the concept and put it through full clown treatment.
“I made a list of 20 stupid ideas and I started workshopping with my classmates,” Gonzales said. “And then I realized, like, I have to be the piñata.”
Her show is about joy, happiness and celebration — and also about sacrifice.
“You know what we do to piñatas, we beat them,” Gonzales said, laughing. “So that was really like the most challenging part, figuring out how we were going to break the piñata.”
Kalen Jesse Photography, Denver Fringe Festival Previews 2026
“Designed to move students through both text and embodiment, the workshop invited the MFA cohort to engage deeply with Antigone as a living, contemporary work; one that asks urgent questions about power, resistance, collective responsibility, and moral courage. Through movement, ensemble-based exploration, and devised processes, students investigated how classical texts can be reimagined through collaborative practice and human-centered inquiry.”
“Playing Tata/Claudia López, Adriana Gonzales was the heart, but Jerik Fernandez’s performance as Braulio Loi was the heartbeat…”
“The chemistry between them was so infectious-”
Aspiring MFA candidates from the School of Drama improvise on the greensward in front of the 164-year-old columns. In an impromptu ad-lib, each actor chose characters from Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Can you guess who’s who?
“Of special note, Adriana Gonzales as Valentina gives a stand-out performance, often providing a unique perspective on the action at hand. Her matter-of-fact delivery is true and meaningful, often questioning those around her.”
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