CLEVELAND, Ohio– Tania Benites had a little bit of the jitters before taking the stage for her part in the all Spanish play, “The Unusual Case of Ms. Pina Colada.”

“This is my first Spanish speaking show, which for me, is very frightening because I’m not super comfortable with my Spanish, but it’s definitely giving me an opportunity to connect more with my culture.” 

“I was born in Peru Lima Peru, and me and my family moved here when I was about 2 1/2, so that’s why I don’t have a cool accent,” says Tania Benites, actor.

The funny play centers on a Puerto Rican mother and her quest for her daughters to be crowned as a beauty queen - Ms. Pina Colada.  The comedy is entirely in Spanish but has live sub-titles translating the show.

“This is a very funny play even though is everything in Puerto Rico and how Puerto Rican’s talk in Spanish and all the slangs that we use still has a common theme for everybody that is like how people sometimes try to be something that they are not,” says Monica Torres, Actor & Directory of the Latin US Theater Company.

“So we want to give people a taste of this is the real thing the way it was meant to be and why do we need comedy nowadays we’ll look at the news we need to get away from everything, and this is one way to do it Latin style,” says Director John Rivera.

The comedy played two sold-out shows at this small Tri-C studio theater in September and soon will be moving to bigger theaters.  Cast members say it’s great to bring their culture to Cleveland.

“I think it definitely taps into a new audience it’s nice to be able to cater specifically to the Spanish speaking community. I know that I have a lot of family members that primarily speak Spanish, so it’s nice to be able to invite them to a show where they don’t have to try as hard to understand the story because it’s in their language, and I think that’s very awesome,” says Benites.