Newsday from New York, New York • 55

atm ffrrffrrown ii mifffftrrr 5 Her work with the university players which included a starring role in the Spanish classic La Aaotea (The Roof), written by the Alvarex Quintero brothers gained her a scholarship to the Dramatic Workshop and Technical School, -a New York City acting institute. She arrived in Manhattan with her mother in 1962, and they rented a sparsely ftimished room in Chelsea. We did not know anyone hero, she recalls. It was a very scary, humbling beginning. We went from living on this friendly gorgeous tropical island to this unknown territory.

Despite fears of big dty life, Colon focused on her craft and, three years later, was admitted to the renowned Actors Studio. She soon landed on Broadway, starring opposite Dame Judith Anderson in Jane Bowles "In the Summer House, but eventually was relegated to minor stags roles. I really had a thirst for acting, explains Colon, who still continues to perform. IS 7:46 on a frigid spring morning, and MiriamColon is working the phones from her cluttered Upper West Side brownstone. Clad in a tdrry bathrobe, a cup of coffee beside her, she sits at her mahogany dining room table and speed-dials her way through two hours of unabashed deal making, arm-twisting and sweet-talking.

In' this flurry of calls. Colon the founder and artistic director of the Puerto Bican Traveling Theater needles a corporate chief into contributing some much-needed cash to the theater, persuades Latin singing star Danny Rivera to appear in an upcoming television ad campaign and even pesters a friend-of-a-friend into donating his -rretaiimnt for an evening fund raiser. Even though she is in her mid-SOs she declines to give her exact age she often works 16 hours a day, scrutinising every detail of her The Puerto Rican Traveling Theater is celebrating its 25th anniversary and fighting for its life company's operations. Its an endurance level make it her permanent base. Seven years later, after raising $1.6 million from private and public sources, the firehouse was transformed into a 196-seat auditorium and opened in 1981 as the companys first permanent home.

All of this work hasnt come without a personal cost to Colon. By investing so much in her theater, she often has little time for friends, family or colleagues, and when she does make time, she inevitably leaves you waiting more than an hour at Le Madeleine an airy West 43rd Street bistro that serves as her unofficial office which often strains relations and makes her appear insensitive. Im not ashamed of that, she says. I put my heart into this theater. In meetings at the restaurant, which occur as often as twice a day, she uses her considerable dramatic skills to brazenly maneuver past any obstacles.

She can play the shrewd businesswoman, the tough administrator and humble fund raiser whatevers in her self-interest. Its as if she has these antennae to tell her to adapt herself to every situation, says Baldwin. There is one problem, however, that Colon may not be able to solve: her companys (100,000 deficit, a shortfall in her $760,000 annual budget resulting from severe cuts in city, state and federal arts funding and a reduction in corporate and foundation giving. It is a sad paradox that as we are celebrating twenty-five years, we are fighting for our survival, she sayB. Trying to fill that financial void has been an exhausting task, and it has embittered Colon.

It is an alarming reflection of our times that we, as a nation, have so devalued the arts, she said last month, orf the dry that the downtown La Mama theater announced its financial woes. "Our governments local and national have inflicted an enormous wound on us. And many corporations who spend millions of dollars trying to get us to buy their products have chosen not to sustain us. For Colon, there is much more than the theaters survival at stake; there is the future of the many youngsters her organization is nurturing through its playwriting and performing arts training units. Luis Cancel, the citys commissioner of cultural affairs, is one of those who was inspired by Miriam Colon, whom he first met in 1970 at a downtown art gallery.

Colon was running her theater from the back of the gallery, and Cancel, then an art student at Pratt Institute, was overwhelmed by her work. I was young and idealistic. I had dreams of starting a gallery, and she made everything seem possible," he says. Here was a Puerto Rican running a theater in New York, demonstrating extraordinary leadership. That was big influence cm me.

So much so that Cancel eventually opened a Latin American art gallery in Soho. Sitting on a water-stained couch in her battered eighth-floor office on West 43rd Street, Colon ponders that anecdote for a moment You know, that would never happen today, she says of Cancels gallery, because he would not able to get funding. That is why she intends to work to ensure Puerto Rican Traveling Company survives. We have done good work," she says. But we must keep on pushing, keep contributing to this citys culture, so that others will follow us.

Then she rises from the couch and heads to her desk. Its time to work the phones again. II Alan MirabeOa is a free-lance writer. that confounds her third husband, cosmetic surgeon Fred Valle, and often overwhelms colleagues who are years younger than she. Sometimes I think she works twenty-five hours a day, says Philip Langer, development director of Traveling Theater.

She works harder than anyone here." Admits Patricia Baldwin, the troupes managing director: Miriam is no saint. She is someone who looks at a problem and doesnt see impossibility even when it is there. Clear evidence of this is Traveling Theater, which she conceived on a whim two decades ago and has turned into a thriving OfF-Broadway playhouse that presents three full-length productions and a Beries of dramatic readings each season. With boundless energy and passion. Colon has created an oasis for bilingual plays often shunned by the mainstream theatrical community, works by Puerto Rican and Latin American playwrights such as Federico Garcia Lorca and Emilio Carballido.

This year marks the theaters 25th anniversary, a milestone that has inspired Colon to produce a revival of the show that launched the company: The Ox Cart, Rene Marques drama about the disintegration of a Puerto Rican family, which opened last month at their West 47th Street theater and runs through Sunday. Colon was an underemployed, struggling New York stage actress in 1967 when she starred in an Off-Broadway production of The Ox Cart at the Greenwich Mews Theater. It was one of her first major stage roles, but after just a few weeks the show dosed. Out of work and with plenty of time on her hands. Colon decided to save the show from extinction.

I saw how very touched audiences were by this play about the disintegration of a Puerto Rican family, she says. Blacks, Jews, Asians everyone identified with it. Thats when I thought that I must bring this play to a larger audience. I must bring it to the streets. Within a few weeks, "The Ox Cart was being performed free of charge in neighborhoods throughout the dty, in vest-pocket parks and cavernous church halls, on -crowded street corners.

The stage was a flatbed truck. The sets and props were from antique shops and junkyards. The performers were unemployed actors eager to practice their craft. And all of this had been arranged by the mercurial Colon, who raised the money for the venture from friends and colleagues. Colons passion for theater began when she was in high school.

Bom in Ponce and raised in Santurce, Puerto Rico, Colon, the daughter of a dry-goods salesman and a housewife, went on to study acting at the University of Puerto Rico. Alba Oms, left, director of The Ox Cart, talka with Miriam Colon, founder and artistic director of the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater. most recently working on the CBS-TV series Murder She Wrote. I absolutely fell in love with it and the fascinating world of theater. Yet, in New Yorks theatrical community, she noticed there were few Latino productions being mounted on or off Broadway and there was no theater dedicated to presenting the works of Hispanic playwrights.

I thought, why not take the initiative rather than wait for someone to do it for us? That led to the incorporation of the nonprofit Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in 1967. For 14 years, it drifted about town, setting up shop wherever it could, mostly in empty warehouses and shuttered storefronts. But in 1974 Colon spotted an abandoned firehouse at 904 W. 47th St, the former home of Engine Company 54, and battled the city bureaucracy for three years to a be the NEW YORK NEWSDAY, MONDAY. APRIL 20.

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