For two performances later this month, the audience at Pregones Theater on Walton Avenue walks into a working television studio. Cameras roll, actors play out a telenovela, and a single violinist plays the soundtrack live. The show is Do Not Turn Off My Telenovela, a new bilingual work by Anonymous Ensemble, and it runs Friday, November 20, and Saturday, November 21.

What the show is

The piece is both a send-up of and a tribute to the classic telenovela: the high drama, the cliffhangers, the serialized storytelling that has filled living rooms across Latin America and New York for decades. Anonymous Ensemble blends the live performance with its signature multimedia and interactive style, so the cameras on stage are part of the show rather than a recording of it. The question running underneath it is whether the real drama is happening on camera or off.

The company frames the work around the role of artists and popular culture in a democracy, and whether there is joy to be found in pushing back. It runs about 90 minutes with no intermission.

Who is making it

Anonymous Ensemble was founded in Brooklyn in 2001 by Lucrecia Briceño, Liz Davito, Eamonn Farrell and Jessica Weinstein, and has made new performances, interactive media and theatrical events every year since, in theaters, festivals, rock venues, warehouses, gardens and sidewalks. The creative team for this production also includes Jesús Martínez, Noelia Flores, Sergio R. Reyes and Adrian Cameron. The actors and stage managers are members of Actors' Equity Association.

The show is Year 2 of the company's three-year residency at Pregones/PRTT in the Bronx. It follows last season's Recuerdo / I Remember and Llontop, the second of which was part of the 2026 Under the Radar Festival.

About the theater

Pregones/PRTT runs two stages: Pregones Theater in the Bronx and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in Manhattan. The Bronx house, a block from the Grand Concourse, is where the company presents its residencies and much of its new work. Later this season the same stage hosts Doomscroll, December 1 to 12, which continues the forum theater practice Pregones first introduced in the 1980s.

Tickets and how to go

  • Friday, November 20, 7 p.m.
  • Saturday, November 21, 3 p.m.

Tickets are $35, with student, senior and group discounts available, and members get early access and lower prices. Pregones Theater is at 575 Walton Avenue, between 149th and 150th Streets, in the Bronx. Take the 2, 4 or 5 train to 149 St-Grand Concourse; the theater is one block from the station. For questions, call 718-585-1202.

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