The production will be Ms. Sanchez' first full-length play since her "The Tall Thin Blonde in The Short Puerto Rican Body" (1996), which pretty much established her as a Latina voice to be reckoned with. El Diario (Juan M. Mendez) wrote, "This excellent actress transforms herself, in a little less than an hour, into four distinctly different personalities. Throwing a playful eye at the Boricua and Latina of the north, written with irreverence and complexity and acted with earnestness, Sanchez…(delivers) a compact but very powerful piece that leaves us wanting more." The Bronx Journal (Toni Ann Scauzillo) praised her as "smart, funny and socially and politically aware" and lauded her for her efforts to expand the parameters of theater by playing in unconventional spaces in The Bronx.

Ms. Sanchez' material deals with Puerto Rican characters around the Grand Concourse, where she grew up and still lives today. It has a flavor much more akin to Whoopie Goldberg's gentleness than John Leguizamo's raw ribaldry. Most of "The Tall Blonde Woman in the Short Puerto Rican Body" centered on body-image humor, which was a staple of her early material. With "Holy Sh…ssh," a play that was later re-titled "Giving Up Religion for Lent," she took a humorous look at the curves and stop signs generated by the juxtaposition of indigenous spiritual practices and mainstream Judeo-Christian values.

Her father was a Puerto Rican-born loan shark and singer who was available "24-7 (24 days a year, seven minutes a day)." Her light-skinned mother was a spiritualist and nurse who often characterized herself as "white woman slave of a black man." Alba was a "change of life baby." Her parents sent her to exclusive boarding schools, which gave her a very unusual upbringing since she traversed between upscale, suburban Short Hills and the gritty streets of the South Bronx. At 14, she went to Professional Children's School in Manhattan--an experience that provides the plot of one of the stories in "The Bronx Witch Project."

There's a genuineness and big-heartedness in her remembrances. It's an aspect of Puerto Rican playwrighting today which is underappreciated in the mainstream and unacknowledged to the point of ignorance in the traditional "culture" circuit. She says, "I try to find the heart in the crazy situation," and many of the situations in the play, taken directly from her own life, are indeed crazy. Like her family's manipulation of the Bronx numbers racket with Santeria in order to pay off her overdue tuition at The Professional Children's School. "The Bronx Witch Project" is also set in the vast jungles of the Bronx Zoo and in the clutter of her parents' apartment, where there were life and death struggles with an "insane, megalomaniac, talking Shitzu."

Ms. Sanchez is culturally savvy to the mainstream as well as her Nuyorican roots, and she has built-in appeal to both audiences. She brings over a dozen widely varied characters to life with edgy, vervy physicalizations. She breaks the fourth wall, speaks directly to the audience, and takes time-outs for cultural explanations, insuring "a gringo-friendly experience."

Ms. Sanchez' solo shows have been performed at P.S. 122, Dixon Place and Nuyorican Poets Cafe. She is a Franklin Furnace Performance Grant recipient and a two-time Kefir Endowment Recipient. She has also appeared at the Pearl Theater, NY Comedy Club, The Copacabana, The Bronx Museum, Marion's and numerous venues on the college circuit. Sanchez was a scholarship student at The American Musical and Dramatic Academy and also trained with Herbert Berghof, The New Media Repertory Theatre, Terry Shreiber Studio, Chicago City Limits, and Gotham Writers' Workshops. She was a member of The Copa Players, Latin City Ensemble and Bonner and Company Troupe. She has taught Storytelling, Monologue, and Comedy Writing for The Bronx Arts Council of the Arts and The Point Cultural Center. She's been featured in news pieces on NBC and PBS. She recently worked on two sitcom pilots and acted in a new Indy film, "The Guy Who Didn't Get It," to be released in September.

Director Gary Dini is also a feature producer for The Fox News Channel. He is a published playwright and a California Art Council Grant recipient for his original play "Halfway Home" 1992. He is also an actor, a children's book author, music video producer, radio producer, director, poet, and drama teacher. This is his NYC directing debut. His work to-date has been mostly in CA, where he trained with San Francisco Mime Troupe, among Others. Dini is also production designer of "The Bronx Witch Project."