About Us

Project Por Amor is an artist-run organization which harnesses the power of arts and culture to bring Cubans and Americans together. Through travel dialogue and artistic exchange we are committed to building a better future between our two close but distant societies.

Our groundbreaking ARTISTIC WORKS use new media in performance to overcome barriers of collaboration between artists from blockaded countries. Our performances have been presented internationally at the Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space, Havana Film Festival, Center Theatre Group, Santa Monica Broad Stage, Miami Light Project / FUNDarte, MALDEF, Inner-City Arts, and TheatreForum Magazine. Our original work has received critical acclaim from journalists across the US, Cuba, and Europe.

Through our extensive experience and unique network throughout the island we also offer a special TRAVEL PROGRAM for US arts organizations and individuals to understand Cuban culture and build meaningful relationships with the people. We design custom delegations for US professionals to visit Cuba and pioneer new partnerships with its leading players. We are fully licensed by the US Treasury Office of Foreign Assets Control to legally bring Americans to Cuba on People-to-People exchanges.

Some of the US groups we’ve produced performance tours and delegations to Cuba include the Chicago Children’s Choir, Oberlin College, Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth College, California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Lewis & Clark College, Theatre Communications Group, the American Composers Forum, Cascadia Composers, Zenon Dance Company, and Tectonic Theater Project. Each has generated a better understanding of each other, new Cuban-American co-productions, great press, and most of all, long-lasting friendships.

Upcoming Trips

Press

• American Theatre Magazine 05/01/2015 "...a recognized expert on the Cuban arts scene."
• American Theatre Magazine 05/01/2015 "The single collaborative theatre work between the two countries in the decades between 1960 and 2014"
• Huffington Post 01/18/2015 "...the emerging generation of artists will continue the course for the rest of us to follow."
• Miami Herald 02/06/2014 "...projections of children’s choirs in Los Angeles and Havana singing together about nationality and friendship."
• Minneapolis Star Tribune 02/01/2014 "Policy shifts make traveling to Cuba easier, and the architectural gems of Trinidad prove you should."
• American Composers Forum Blog 01/05/2014 "...an extraordinary opportunity to experience Cuba in greater depth than with the usual tour itinerary."
• American Theatre Magazine 11/01/2013 "It is our hope that more U.S. theatre producers will help us share this great ART and the cultural wealth we witnessed during our trip"
• American Theatre Magazine 07/01/2013 "...something I experienced repeatedly during my 8 days in Cuba: exceptional, generous, seemingly effortless."
• artsdiplomacy.org 04/26/2013 "Lewis's creative use of technology allows for new collaborations that haven't happened for nearly 50 years."
• American Theatre Magazine 05/01/2013 "In a world where the impressions of the U.S. are largely controlled by the mass media, the power of citizen-to-citizen exchange grows ever more powerful."
• Houston Chronicle 04/19/2013 "...the largest delegation of U.S. theater artists ever to visit Cuba."
• Radio Habana 07/22/2011 "...a work of communication and understanding by the people of the future."
• La Granma (Cuba's Newspaper) 07/19/2011 "[Far Away] is a beautiful and integrated fantasy."
• L.A. Stage Times 06/14/2011 "If politicians and businesses have stopped communicating with each other, it would be a huge professional mistake for artists and cultures to do the same."
• National Performing Arts Convention 01/18/2011 "...artists stepped in where the politicians refused to go and conducted several noted acts of artistic diplomacy."
• TheatreForum 07/01/2010 "...a bridge between two countries which are separated by only eighty-six miles."
• TheatreForum 07/01/2010 "...another example of the kind of quixotic stick-to-it-ness integral to making collaborations possible."
• American Theatre Magazine 05/01/2010 "The walls between us and Cuba are so thick that when you finally penetrate them, something magical happens. "
• El Nuevo Herald 03/17/2010 "Stupendous music soundtrack."
• El Nuevo Herald 03/11/2010 "...earns all the possibilities that film and theatre offer to narrate a romance separated by the impossibility of travel."
• Miami Herald 03/12/2010 "U.S.-Cuba production succeeds beautifully."
• Knight Foundation 03/11/2010 "Technology is rewriting the map of geography and politics."
• El Mundo 03/10/2010 "The first and only production to be written, produced, and performed by artists from both countries."
• cubaencuentro.com 03/09/2010 "In this play Cubans and Americans are separated not only by politics, and geography, but also by art forms: theatre and video."
• Miami Herald 03/09/2010 "The piece literally embodies the separation between the two countries."
• Miami Art Guide 03/01/2010 "incorporates multichannel video installations projected against live performers as a spatial metaphor for bridging the two opposite worlds."
• Miami New Times 02/25/2010 "Makes the paradox of distance visible."
• American Theatre Magazine 02/01/2010 "...a groundbreaking hybrid work of film and theatre incorporating a beautiful, holographic interaction between Cuban actors on film and American actors on stage."
• LA Weekly 01/20/2010 "...using new technology to overcome the draconian limits imposed by the continuing political disagreements between our two countries."
• Minneapolis Star Tribune 12/20/2009 "Mesmerizing"
• CubaNow 12/15/2009 “The play is the first to be written, produced and interpreted jointly by creators from the two nations."
• La Granma 12/11/2009 “The Closest Farthest Away is a stimulating piece of understanding through art, an open bridge, and a revolution on the impending need to leave behind our prejudices.”
  
• Minnpost.com 12/07/2009 "Closest Farthest Away strikes a deep chord in Havana."
• Teresa Eyring's Blog 12/02/2009 “This kind of artistic collaboration is what will build bridges between the people of Cuba and the US. It exemplifies what can happen when sheer tenacity, vision and guts are combined.”
• Havana Film Festival Newspaper 12/04/2009 "The work speaks of love, freedom, and liberty while cinema and theater break the barriers that impede communication between human beings.”
• Miami Herald 12/04/2009 "The Closest Farthest Away breaks ground artistically, politically and technologically."
• Minnpost.com 11/25/2009 "A historic first!"
• University of Miami 10/10/2009 "The Closest Farthest Away manages to make beauty out of an agonizingly long standing impasse in foreign relations between Cuba and the United States."
• Stage Whispers (Center Theatre Group) 09/01/2009 "The Closest Farthest Away is an act of high artistic, cultural, and political risk-taking filled with fascinating challenges that are usually not part of the art-making process."
• NBC 6 Miami 05/14/2009 "Using modern means to break down decades old barriers."
• Telemundo 04/07/2009 "Innovative and revolutionary."

Why Cuba

We are in a unique moment to influence the course of world history together and the time is now. Leadership attitudes are changing in both countries. We are entering a fragile new opportunity where, for the first time in all of history, Cuba and the US could have a healthy economic, social, cultural, and political partnership. The coming years of normalization will be full of changes, risks, losses, new possibilities, misunderstandings, and triumphs.

Project Por Amor is doing something different then politics. It’s actually envisioning the arts and cultural exchange as the most effective way to rebuild the relationship between the US and Cuba. What we are initiating now is not about the past but about letting the people pioneer new friendships and deeper understandings for the future. It is an opportunity for artists and other professionals to be there first, take the lead, and be the force that is going to make real change happen before corporate and political entities join in. But this can only happen if we take the initiative now to engage.

Finally, there is nothing more rewarding or magical than seeing, hearing, and building friendship with a neighbor who has been forbidden to us for over half a century. This project is about a centuries-old love between our cultures and remembering that the arts and cultural exchange has a transformational impact on the world we live in. We want to re-ignite an old tradition of collaboration that existed between Cuban and American artists dating back before 1900 who used to travel back and forth to perform in Havana, NYC, Miami, Hollywood, and New Orleans. Ernest Hemingway, Dizzy Gillespie, Chano Pozo, Duke Ellington, Walker Evans, L.M. Gottschalk, Max Roach, Nat King Cole, George Gerswhin, Aaron Copland, Ernesto Lecuona, Marco Rizo, and Desi Arnaz, this is for you.

Connect

Questions about joining one of our delegations or building a custom tour for your organization? Want to present one of our artistic works in your city? Need help initiating a new collaboration with artists in Cuba? Or want to explore a new idea of your own?

Sage Lewis
General Manager

Phone:
310-961-1574

Email:
projectporamor@gmail.com