Tampa Fringe 2025
La Ultima Muñeca: A Theatrical Quinceañera
Victoria Rose Rìos
Genre: Experimental, Feminist Theatre, Immersive, Interactive, Site-Specific
Venue: The Commodore
Festival: Tampa Fringe
Low Down
Victoria Rose Rios’s immersive theatre experience is an immensely powerful, profound, and beautiful work of immersive theatre. Taking the audience gently by the hand, she recreates a quinceañera and reflects on the end of one’s girlhood.
Review
The moment I realized La Ultima Muñeca was true theatrical magic came when the show went wrong. Victoria Rose Rios stood in her pink dress, attempting to get off her pink gown. Unable to do so, for whatever reason, her “padre” came over and tried to help. Only, this man was not her “padre”, but was assigned to the role at the start. Theatrical magic is not manufactured, but created in the right conditions. When things go wrong, as this moment did, it created the condition for the audience member to assume the father role and assist Rios in her costume change. The “padre” was genuinely crying, proud of his “daughter” for becoming a woman. The audience sat watching, patient, grateful for the moment, and welling up in tears. Frankly, if you told me this was supposed to happen I would have believed it. Few shows can boast such a theatrical beauty.
La Ultima Muñeca begins rather unassumingly. The Commodore is a multi-use venue like a hotel convention hall we rent out for a quinceañera for cheap. As the audience enters, Rios assigns everyone a role. For me, it was to be her Tio or “uncle.” My job was to be drunk, roast everyone, and be proud of my niece. It was fun to see everyone assume their own roles. One person particularly found much fun being the priest of the ceremony with an additional provided prop. Madre and Padre were whisked away at one point for a special 1:1 moment backstage. Other than a few key roles, the experience is the same for everyone. The roles provide more of a role-playing tool to supplement the experience than a necessary aspect to its success. As everyone is dancing and enjoying the simple early vibes, we’re all searching for glimpses of Rios running around.
The show begins once Rios is presented by her parents. A voice-over tells us about Rios. From here, the first signs of the layered complexity of Rios’s show reveal themselves. Without spoiling too much, as there are quite a few surprises in store, La Ultima Muñeca is a thought piece exploring the end of girlhood. The participation centers around leaving behind the past and assuming adulthood. It focuses on the contradictory ideas of feminism, family, colonialism, race, and age in a brilliant blend of thematic ideas. And for an hour-long, immersive, complex, and difficult work, it nails it. Rios’s work succeeds as it creates the condition for improvisation and introspection. It is immensely personal and speaks to the child in us all that we all once had to give up in favor of adulthood.
La Ultima Muñeca is groundbreaking and creative immersive theatre. It makes the gawdiness and complexity of Punchdrunk works feel unnecessary. La Ultima Muñeca finds beauty in the simple moments of making a flower, remembering our loved ones, sharing a dance, and having a drink of coquito. Like any immersive work, it depends entirely on how much you’re willing to immerse and participate. You’d be a fool not to give it your all. With so many surprises, so much heart, it stands as one of the best pieces of immersive theatre you will ever see.
