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A Tribute to the Queen of Salsa

Years after the world lost Celia Cruz and her husband Pedro Knight, two actors bring their spirits of salsa to the stage.

Every night when the show ends and Xiomara Laugart takes her bow, she gets a standing ovation. And every night, she can hardly believe it. The star of one of the hottest off-Broadway plays running, Celia: The Life and Music of Celia Cruz, has been tasked with portraying the beloved Cuban salsa legend to packed houses since the show premiered in the fall of 2007.
Celia Cruz, who died in 2003, was more than a salsa singer, she was an icon to Cubans living in the U.S. and a keeper of a musical tradition. As her popularity soared she quickly became one of the music genre’s most recognized and celebrated faces, with an over the top personality and unique and flamboyant style that matched her powerful vocals. With all that in mind, Laugart, who herself is a popular and very well-established singer, is well aware she has some big, if sparkly, shoes to fill.
“When people go to the theater they almost think they are going to see Celia, and that’s impossible,” the Cuban-born actress says. “I try to make them realize that. We do this with a lot of love for her. It’s a tribute.”
The show, performed at the New World Stages, is in fact written as a tribute and looks at the star’s life through the eyes of her husband and manager Pedro Knight, played by Puerto Rican actor Modesto Lacen. Knight tells her story through a series of flashbacks he recounts to his nurse, played by Pedro Capo, during the last part of his life, after Celia has passed away.
The story of the pair’s lives unfolds as the play progresses and musical numbers featuring some of Cruz’s best-loved songs are woven into the narrative. In addition to having a larger than life persona, Cruz also had a signature performing style. More than donning the big smile, colorful wigs and sequin-embellished outfits, Laugart, a veteran solo performer and singer in the band Yerba Buena, had her job cut out for her when it came to emulating Cruz’s stage presence.
“I used hand movements and body postures [like she did] to help people remember her,” says Laugart, who had never acted on stage before. “Just simple details because I can’t be her. I can imitate her as best I can... but I can never be like her.”
But she was similar enough that the play executives took notice when deciding whom to cast as Cruz. Both phenomenally talented Cuban-born singers, both emigrated to the U.S. and found success in the music industry. Laugart herself was lucky enough to meet the singer twice in her life.
“I met her in Italy and a second time in New York City in the summer festival in Central Park,” Laugart says. “We took some pictures and we talked. I was so nervous. When you hear about a person for 20 years and then you have her in front of you, you can’t describe the feeling. She was so modest, so simple and so real. We talked about where we come from in Cuba, she asked about my kid, and as she left she said, ‘Well, God bless you and bless your kid.’ ”
Throughout her professional singing career, Laugart has been compared to the late singer. During rehearsals crew, writers, and musicians regaled her with bits and pieces of their interactions with Cruz and the impressions that they got from her I order to help inform Laugart’s interpretation. Nelson Gonzalez, one of the band members, even supplied her with 25 year-old photos of Cruz playing with her band. Fans and friends (including some audience members who had known Cruz) supplied Laugart with books and anecdotes of Cruz’s and Knight’s marriage.
A decades-long career and marriage between the two meant plenty of stories to recount and Modesto Lacen also benefited from the endless accounts when he was preparing to play Pedro Knight.
“With my notes from people and from the people I worked with and interviewed, I got some know-how for how he talked and behaved,” Lacen says. “I read three biographies and I watched a lot of footage of Celia performing with Pedro right beside her.”
Lacen, an accomplished film and theater actor in Puerto Rico who established his own theater company called Nueva Escena, believes the play offers as much in the way of life lessons as it does as a musical tribute. In that respect, the duo is a couple to look up to.
“Before starting the play I was just a salsa fan, but now that I have performed as the character for so many months I see that their story is really interesting. It shows what it takes to be happy,” Lacen says. “[Pedro] changed when he met Celia. He really fell in love and put aside his career to be her manager. It’s a big lesson for everyone, especially for Latino men, that it is possible to be in a long-term relationship and love just one woman. They were together for 41 years; it was a lifetime.”
Just as the audience comes away knowing a little more about the pair, so do the actors come away with a better understanding of their characters, and just how significant Celia Cruz and Pedro Knight were, and are, to the cultural fabric and to people’s personal lives.
“The last scene I think sums up his whole life,” Lacen says. “When he really opens up his life and his soul, he is so vulnerable. When he reaches his goal of being with Celia, the response of the audience is amazing. It’s really rewarding to see people empathize with the characters and the work. Every night I do my best to honor his memory and what Celia Cruz gave us.”
For Laugart, the experience has been deeply personal, made more so by the praise she’s gotten from the audience. “I learned a lot doing this character. She was a steel woman,” she says. “Every night [during the bows] I say thank you to her. I think it’s the right thing to do. I look up and say ‘Thank you, Celia.’ ”