In this Learning Guide, you’ll:

• Experience a one-woman, interactive show featuring Yeila, her mother, and her grandmother as they travel between the U.S.A. and Cuba, exploring the power of memory and cultural heritage.
• Consider the power of heritage—roots or raíces—in shaping both identity and the arts.
• Engage in call-and-response and physical movement that allow audience members to become active parts of the performance.
• Watch as Yeila explores the fusion of modern hip hop with salsa dancing that stems from her Cuban heritage.
• Help Yeila overcome her stage fright and build confidence so she can blossom as a performer and share her heritage and cultural gifts with the world!

Education Standards Alignment

• Theater – Creating  (TH:Cr2-PK): With prompting and support, contribute through gestures and words to dramatic play or a guided drama experience (e.g., process drama, story drama, creative drama).
• Theater – Performing (TH:Pr4.1.3.b): Investigate how movement and voice are incorporated into drama/theatre work.
• Theater – Responding (TH:Re7.1.2.a): Recognize when artistic choices are made in a guided drama experience (e.g., process drama, story drama, creative drama).
• Theater – Responding (TH:Re9.1.PK.a): With prompting and support, actively engage in dramatic play or a guided drama experience (e.g., process drama, story drama, creative drama).

Common Core Standards

• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.4.3: Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character’s thoughts, words, or actions).
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.2: Determine a theme of a story, drama, or poem from details in the text, including how characters in a story or drama respond to challenges or how the speaker in a poem reflects upon a topic; summarize the text.
• CCSS.ELA-Literacy.RL.5.3: Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact).

(Social and Emotional Learning)

• Self-Awareness: The abilities to understand one’s own emotions, thoughts, and values and how they influence behavior across contexts. This includes capacities to recognize one’s strengths and limitations with a well-grounded sense of confidence and purpose.
  • Integrating personal and social identities
  • Identifying personal, cultural, and linguistic assets
  • Developing interests and a sense of purpose
• Relationship Skills: The abilities to establish and maintain healthy and supportive relationships and to effectively navigate settings with diverse individuals and groups. This includes the capacities to communicate clearly, listen actively, navigate settings with differing social and cultural demands and opportunities, provide leadership, and seek or offer help when needed.
  • Demonstrating cultural competency
• Self-Management: The abilities to manage one’s emotions, thoughts, and behaviors effectively in different situations and to achieve goals and aspirations. This includes the capacities to delay gratification, manage stress, and feel motivation and agency to accomplish personal and collective goals.
  • Managing one’s emotions
  • Showing the courage to take initiative
• Social Awareness: The abilities to understand the perspectives of and empathize with others, including those from diverse backgrounds, cultures, and contexts. This includes the capacities to feel compassion for others, understand broader historical and social norms for behavior in different settings, and recognize family, school, and community resources and supports.
  • Taking others’ perspectives 
  • Recognizing strengths in others
  • Demonstrating empathy and compassion

What to Expect

Performance

• The performance is approximately 60 minutes long.
• The story is told through dance, singing, props, music, and audience interaction.

Performers

• The entire show is performed by one artist, Paige Hernandez.
• The performer uses props and costume pieces to change into different characters.
  • Yeila: A young girl with the big dream of becoming a superstar. To get over her stage fright, she takes a journey to find confidence in her cultural roots.
  • Mother: Yeila’s Mother who guides her through the discovery of her roots.The performer uses props and costume pieces to change into different characters. 
  • Abuela: Yeila’s grandmother whose memories are fading. Yeila helps her remember Cuba with the power of music.

Sound

• Some pre-recorded voices will play throughout the performance.
• Some scenes have pre-recorded music that underscores the events of the show.
• The music and soundscapes throughout the performance include hip hop beats and salsa music.
• There are many audience participation moments that ask the audience to make noise from their seats. This can make the surrounding area loud.

Visuals

• Projections are used to indicate location changes.
• Sometimes, there are moving images in the projections.

Lighting

• Lighting and color changes are used to enhance the mood of the scene.

Audience Interaction

• There is a lot of audience interaction throughout the show. Audience participation is completely optional.
• The performer addresses the audience directly through call-and-response.
• Some audience participation moments will ask the audience to stand.
• Some segments ask for the audience to clap along, dance, or make noises with their mouth.

What to Bring

• Everyone is encouraged to bring any sensory or accessibility tools that will help make the experience most comfortable for them. A few suggestions of items audience members may find useful include noise-canceling headphones, sunglasses or visors, fidgets, and communication devices.

Resources

• Review our .

Havana Hop playwright and actor Paige Hernandez.

Look and Listen for

Before you watch the performance, check out this list of important moments and ideas. Look and listen for:

• Look for clues that the performer, Paige Hernandez, is transforming into a different character. What props, vocal changes, and physical movements are used to help the viewer understand that she’s switching between the roles of daughter, mother, and grandmother?
• Listen for the sound effects that represent each location that Yeila visits. What do you hear in Washington, D.C.? In Cuba? What does Yeila hear in Cuba that reminds her of D.C.?
• Listen for Spanish phrases and their translations. Are any of them terms new to you?
• Listen for direct rhymes and for the rhythmic qualities of hip hop, including moments when the audience’s response, or echo, helps fulfill the rhyme or rhythm that Yeila initiates.
• Listen for references to cultural activities in each setting. Where does the Cherry Blossom Festival take place? Where in Havana did Yeila’s abuela dance when she was young?

Think About

After you’ve experienced the performance, consider these questions:

• In the multigenerational story of Havana Hop, what is the role that memories play? Consider the way that Abuela’s recuerdos (memories) fade due to Alzheimer’s disease. Think, too, about the urgency that Yeila and her mother feel to visit and learn from Abuela so they can preserve her experiences and strengthen their own senses of self. In your own family, how do you pass along generational and cultural knowledge and recollections?
• Until Yeila visits Cuba, she has a limited understanding of her Cuban heritage, including the Spanish language. To what extent has your own family’s linguistic, cultural, and social history stayed alive? Are there parts of your heritage you’d still like to explore?
• Abuela reminds Yeila that she can manage her nerves: “plant your feet…take a deep breath…and your roots will magically appear.” Or, said more simply: “Roots. Ground. Grow. Blossom…. Raíces. Suelo. Crecer. Florecer.” Does this advice resonate with you? How else do you manage your nerves when you’re in a stressful situation, whether in a performance, game, presentation, or in an overwhelming social situation? When have you (or could you) put to use Abuela’s advice? What other strategies could you use?

 

• Want to learn more about hip hop’s history? Check out this Kennedy Center article that covers the backstory of hip hop, including the physical and musical elements that make up the genre: Hip Hop: A Culture of Vision and Voice. 
• For teachers of slightly older students looking for ways to tie hip hop to the language of Shakespeare and his sonnets, try The Poetics of Hip Hop.
• Hip Hop to da Head lets viewers revisit a 2006 performance by Full Circle Productions that provides a “behind-the-scenes look at the culture and aesthetics of Hip Hop,” as well as its “elements and dance style.”

• Read more about Havana Hop writer and performer Paige Hernandez .
• For additional resources for Havana Hop, including hands-on activities for students in grades PK–3, visit Playhouse Square’s Teacher Resource Guide.
• Explore salsa dancing by watching the Kennedy Center’s Five(ish) Minute Dance Lessons: Latin Dance. Get ready to move with beginner steps in Level 1, then move on to Level 2 to add more footwork. 

One-Kid Show 

Paige Hernandez created this one-woman show with three interlinked characters who represent three generations of a Cuban American family. If you were to create your own one-person show, who would it feature? Brainstorm your characters and ask yourself these questions along the way:

• Who are your characters? Can you design a story where the characters help each other grow by being there for each other?
• How can you make it clear to the audience that you’ve changed from playing one character to playing a different character? What props, costume elements, vocal traits, or physical mannerisms can you use to signal that you’re embodying a different character? (As you prepare, test yourself by switching between characters and asking a potential audience member to guess which character you’re playing. For more ideas, you can watch the Storyteller’s Toolbox with Sherry Norfolk or Find Your Character Voice with Alan Bomar Jones videos.)
• As you develop your characters, consider the concept of mirrors and windows. How will your audience see their own lives or challenges reflected in your show, and how might they get a glimpse of something that is new to them?

Tracing Your Roots—Looking Backward and Forward 

• Back Up: Just as Yeila investigates her family history, you can, too. Create a family tree that identifies your immediate and extended family members. If you’d like, you can build special branches for your friends and chosen family, too! Consider adding not just their names and relationship to you, but also any other special factors of interest: nationality, ethnicity, linguistic heritage, profession, or perhaps artistic, athletic, or academic skills. What are the limits to what you know? Can you reach out to anyone to fill in the gaps? If you’re able to speak to people from your family tree, ask them who or what influenced them—you might find yourself inspired as well!
• Pay It Forward: What does your family do to preserve memories and pass along stories and traditions to the next generation? Some people keep journals, create family recipe books, or record family members telling stories of important moments in their lives. Consider what you already do or could do to pass these stories, traditions, and skills along to the next generation.
   

 

The Artistic Merger

In Havana Hop, Yeila infuses salsa elements into her hip hop performance. She merges two styles of dance that matter to her and her family and ends up with an artistic form that has unique significance to her. Come up with your own creative merging of art forms. Think about dance, music, visual arts, and other performance forms. Make a list of types of artistic expression that matter to you. Then, combine them creatively! For example, maybe you love drawing comics and doing gymnastics. Can you design a floor routine full of cartwheels and then hold funny thought and speech bubbles above your head after different acrobatic feats? Challenge yourself (or a partner) to come up with any two forms of artistic expression and then find creative ways to merge them.

Kennedy Center Education

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Generous support for educational programs at the Kennedy Center is provided by the U.S. Department of Education.

Gifts and grants to educational programs at the Kennedy Center are provided by The Paul M. Angell Family Foundation; Bank of America; Capital One; The Morris and Gwendolyn Cafritz Foundation; Carnegie Corporation of New York; The Ednah Root Foundation; Harman Family Foundation; William R. Kenan, Jr. Charitable Trust; the Kimsey Endowment; The Kiplinger Foundation; Laird Norton Family Foundation; Lois and Richard England Family Foundation; Dr. Gary Mather and Ms. Christina Co Mather; The Markow Totevy Foundation; Dr. Gerald and Paula McNichols Foundation; The Morningstar Foundation; Myra and Leura Younker Endowment Fund; The Irene Pollin Audience Development and Community Engagement Initiatives;

Prince Charitable Trusts; Dr. Deborah Rose and Dr. Jan A. J. Stolwijk; Rosemary Kennedy Education Fund; The Embassy of the United Arab Emirates; The Victory Foundation; The Volgenau Foundation; Volkswagen Group of America; Jackie Washington; GRoW @ Annenberg and Gregory Annenberg Weingarten and Family; Wells Fargo; and generous contributors to the Abe Fortas Memorial Fund and by a major gift to the fund from the late Carolyn E. Agger, widow of Abe Fortas. Additional support is provided by the National Committee for the Performing Arts..

The content of these programs may have been developed under a grant from the U.S. Department of Education but does not necessarily represent the policy of the U.S. Department of Education. You should not assume endorsement by the federal government.