With the Spanish-language soap operas watched across the world, telenovela productions and writing and acting classes have begun showing up in Miami.
By TAMARA LUSH, Times Staff Writer
Published November 25, 2005
[Times photos: David Zentz]
Gloria Aura, 20, has her hair and makeup done recently at Telemundo Studios in Miami. Aura, host of the Telemundo show Frecuencia, was auditioning for a new telenovela.
Silverio Lozada, 19, and Ivania Rodriguez, 22, act out a scene at the Miami branch of the Centro Internacional Formacion Actoral Luz Columba, one of Venezuela's top acting schools.
Crew members stand offstage on the set of telenovela El Cuerpo del Deseo (Body of Desire) in Telemundo's studios.
Aquiles Ortega instructs acting student Ivania Rodriguez, 22, during class at the Miami branch of the Centro Internacional Formacion Actoral Luz Columba. The Luz Columba classes and other programs in Miami are helping give the city a presence in the telenovela world.
Vanessa Villela and Erick Elias talk between takes while taping the telenovela El Cuerpo del Deseo in Telemundo's Miami studios.
MIAMI - Pedro Jose Donoso lived a long life, filled with money and property and a beautiful young fiancee named Isabel. Then he died, unexpectedly.
Not ready to settle into the afterlife, Pedro is reincarnated - conveniently as a hunky, shirtless, raven-haired servant in his former household - and strives to reclaim his Isabel.
Here's what Pedro discovered: His business associates didn't respect him, his daughter from a previous marriage was miserable and his fiancee, well, let's just say she was a lying, cheating gold-digger.
Pedro's quest has unfolded on the Spanish language network Telemundo over the past four months, in 130 episodes, five nights a week. It carries the arresting title of El Cuerpo del Deseo (Body of Desire).
It's the latest offering in a sea of so-called telenovelas, the name for the salacious Spanish-language soap operas seen by upwards of 2-billion people worldwide. But Cuerpo is among the vanguard of novelas: Historically, novelas are filmed in Colombia, Mexico and Brazil then sold to the networks, but Cuerpo is filmed entirely in Miami.
Miami's interest in telenovelas doesn't stop with Cuerpo. A half-dozen other novelas have been filmed here recently, and in the past year, telenovela acting and writing classes have sprung up at different schools in Miami. Everyone, from network giant Telemundo (which is owned by NBC and General Electric) to an acting school in Venezuela, is hoping to cash in on a multibillion-dollar, cross-cultural industry.
"I think TV executives would love to see Miami as a whole other production center to rival Latin America," said Joseph Straubhaar, a communications professor at the University of Texas who has studied the cultural significance of telenovelas. "Miami may become the hub point to create programming for Hispanics."
But telenovelas aren't just for Spanish speakers; they are sold to networks from Indonesia to Bosnia, where viewers are just as passionate - maybe more so - about the novelas' campy humor, social commentary and steamy love scenes.
Someday soon, those melodramatic moments filmed in Miami may even reach the very country that has been shy to embrace the genre: the United States.
* * *
It's no surprise that there is a rapt audience for telenovelas among the Latinos in Miami, a city that is largely populated by Cuban immigrants.
The novela's roots sprouted in Cuba, where the art of storytelling is almost as much of a pastime as salsa dancing. For decades, cigar rollers listened as lectores read literature in installments on the factory floor. Radio ushered in new, serialized dramas.
But in 1959, two things happened to allow the telenovela genre to flourish: the growing popularity of television and Fidel Castro. When Castro came to power, scores of Cuban writers, producers, directors and actors fled the country.
Their creativity - and their serialized TV dramas - spread throughout Latin America.
"Castro didn't realize he was kickstarting the capitalist media," joked Straubhaar.
Since then, novelas have become a staple in Latin America, with entire families gathering around the television five nights a week. (Some novelas boast a 90 percent share of the viewing market, an unheard-of figure in the United States).
And viewing habits don't change because of immigration. In August, a telenovela called La Madrastra (The Stepmother) was the No. 1-rated show in New York City.
In any language.
* * *
""No te pongas la mano en la boca," says Aquiles Ortega. He looks at a lined, yellow pad of paper that is crammed with writing. ""Cuidado con las pausas."
His student, a wide-eyed, 19-year-old Venezuelan named Silverio Lozada, nods slowly. He had put his hand to his mouth while acting the scene. And he didn't take many pauses while speaking. He needs to practice more.
A shapely young woman sashays into the room. She is wearing a tiny black skirt and a flesh-colored tube top. She swings her golden hair. Ortega and Lozada don't notice the woman, who is a student just like Lozada. Bombshells don't attract much attention: All the women are bombshells in telenovelas.
Ortega finishes a 10-minute critique on Lozada's monologue, then calls for another student to begin. The bombshell student takes the stage, then goes through her different roles: a sexy flight attendant, a woman with cancer and a seductress who happens to be doing door-to-door surveys.
Ortega is something of a guru in telenovela circles. Not only did he act in several telenovelas in his native Venezuela, but he taught at one of the country's foremost acting schools, the Centro Internacional Formacion Actoral Luz Columba (the Luz Columba International Center for Creating Actors).
Miami's new stature in the telenovela world has prompted the school to open a branch here earlier this year. Ortega was sent to run it. Classes are held three nights a week in a downtown high-rise, and they don't come cheap: a yearlong program costs about $5,000.
It's not the only school in Miami to cater to novelas; Miami Dade College has script-writing workshops in Spanish for those who want to break into the genre. More than 4,000 people applied for 30 slots.
It is the dream for almost every student at Luz Columba to act in a telenovela. Unlike U.S. soap operas, in which the stars are largely invisible, a telenovela star can achieve international fame.
Another way U.S. soaps differ from telenovelas: novelas have a beginning, middle and end. Soaps go on for decades (think Guiding Light, which has been on the air since 1952) - or at least until advertisers and viewers tire of the show.
"American soap operas are, like, really long," said Ivania Rodriguez, a 22-year-old from El Salvador who also attends the telenovela classes. "Latin soaps are so much more dramatic. Americans are not that used to drama."
Folks in the United States are also not used to many of the themes in novelas. In this country, we have become accustomed to ignoring class differences - our TV is largely populated by well-to-do urbanites - while telenovelas often feature social commentary, such as the plight of poor rural workers.
Rodriguez points out that the "Cinderella story" - a poor woman rising above the odds to find money and love - is popular in novelas. When asked if she would like to star in such a role, she flutters her eyelashes without a trace of irony.
"Well, yeah," she says.
* * *
Telenovelas aren't just a Latin American phenomenon.
They have gone global, with entire shows sold at top dollar to networks in Poland and Russia. Consider the wide and frenzied appeal of the genre:
During one five-year stretch, a Brazilian telenovela called Escrava Isaura, about a white woman made a slave by mistake, was the top-rated show - in Poland.
The novela Los Ricos Tambien Lloran (The Rich Also Cry) was more popular than the U.S. soap Santa Barbara - in Russia.
The Colombian hit Betty la Fea, was rewritten and repackaged into Verliebt in Berlin - and was wildly popular in Germany.
Xavier Aristimuno is a Miami-based distributor of telenovelas and other Latin American TV programming. His company, Bamboo TV, specializes in distributing the shows to Asia.
Aristimuno recalls that he was lunching at a tiny beachside cafe in Bali, Indonesia, in 2001, when he mentioned to the waitress that his company was involved with the production of Cassandra, a popular novela filmed in Colombia and broadcast in Bali.
"Within 20 minutes, I had the whole village around me," said Aristimuno. "They knew more about the story than I did."
To be sure, the United States still has a grip on most television exports. But according to professor Straubhaar, the themes of the telenovela resonate across language barriers.
"It's the similarity of the social experience: emerging democracies, rapid industrialization and the stresses that go with it," he said.
Or, as Aristimuno puts it: "It's always a love story, and love stories work the same all around the world."
Dallas was probably the closest that the United States has ever come to a novela, said Straubhaar. When that show was exported to Latin America, it flopped.
"The reaction was, "we do that already, and we do it better,' " he said.
But melodrama fans in the United States should stay tuned: an English-language telenovela is in the works.
Earlier this month, FremantleMedia, the London-based production company of the popular American Idol and The Apprentice TV shows told Variety that it plans to slowly introduce the novela concept in America.
FremantleMedia chief executive officer Tony Cohen told the entertainment newspaper that the first U.S. novela will be on the air by summer 2007.
Said Cohen: "We hope this love story format will sweep around the world."
Tamara Lush can be reached at 727 893-8612 or at lush@sptimes.com
