The Bishop Arts Theatre Center (BATC), Oak Cliff’s multicultural and multidiscipline center for the arts, and DNAWORKS present The Real James Bond…Was Dominican, written and performed by Christopher Rivas, and developed with and directed by Daniel Banks. The regional premiere of this original theatre piece runs May 16 through May 19.
What happens when a James Bond-obsessed Dominican boy in Queens (who won’t go anywhere without his nerf gun) finds out that the real James Bond was Dominican? This is a true story about Porfirio Rubirosa, Ian Fleming’s inspiration for Bond, and a young Dominican actor-to-be – whose discovery of “Rubi” shakes his very foundation. Set to a live percussion score and immersive projections, The Real James Bond…Was Dominican is a young man’s guide to love, sex, color, code-switching, white-washing, success, fake-it-till-you-make-it, and the roller coaster of finding one’s true self.
In 2010, Christopher Rivas’s friend sent him a Vanity Fair article that would change his life forever. It was about Dominican diplomat, sportsman, and playboy Porfirio Rubirosa, twice the richest man in the world, best friends with everyone, and the man on whom James Bond was based….
“This blew my mind because, as a kid who grew up watching so much TV, so much Bond, and superheroes and everything in between, I never saw someone who looked like me, or like my father or like the people I love—and if I did, they were selling drugs, or mowing lawns,” Rivas explained. “Where was my father and other people I love? So here I am obsessed with this white hero who it turns out isn’t even white. Imagine how different my life would have been if instead of needing to prove that I have a voice and a story worth telling, I would have had my own hero, a brown hero who looked like me.”
Following every performance, DNA WORKS Founder and the show’s director Daniel Banks will host a Community Storytelling Circle with the audience to engage the community in further conversation on the richness of our individual stories.
