La Guagua 47
Book, Lyrics and Music by Alba Martínez
Directed by
Laurie Woolery
Saturday, June 20, 2026 at 7:00 PM
When her father’s factory closes in Jayuya, Puerto Rico, fifteen-year-old Lucía is uprooted to Philadelphia — away from her abuelita, her friends, everything she knows. Isolated and invisible, she boards the #47 bus. It carries her into the heart of the barrio, where a community of strangers becomes the family that catches her as she lands.
Be a part of a new musical as it comes to life — before the full production premieres on our stage in the 2027/28 Season. This sneak peek of a work-in-progress is free and open to the public. RSVP is required to reserve your seat.
The Sound
The score blends salsa, bolero, bachata, bomba, and reggaetón with contemporary musical theater. Written in English and Spanish, the way the diaspora lives. No one is left out.
Alba Martínez is a Puerto Rican composer, lyricist, and cultural leader based in Philadelphia. After thirty-five years in law, finance, and public service, she returned to her creative roots — dedicating her work to Latino musical theater and stories that reflect the resilience and joy of Latino communities.
“In 1985, a bus took me home to a place I’d never been.
I was twenty-two, alone in Philadelphia, flipping through the phone book looking for the Puerto Rican community. I found Taller Puertorriqueño and called. A man laughed and said, ‘Nena, móntate en la Guagua 47 y ven a la 5 y Lehigh.’ I caught that bus and stepped off into salsa, Spanish, and home. Decades later, I wrote a song about that ride. That song became this musical.”
-Alba Martínez
Through an artist residency at Taller Puertorriqueño, Alba Martínez develops La Guagua 47 with the community it’s about. A 50-minute concert adaptation — professional soloists, an eight-piece band, and a chorus of neighborhood singers of all ages drawn from the neighborhoods that inspired the story — brings the work to stages where musical theater doesn’t go, shaping it on its way to the Philadelphia Theatre Company world premiere in 2027.
“La Guagua 47 is an embrace — a musical that wants to bring people together in a world that wants to drive us apart.” — Alba Martínez
VIDEO
“Pew Center celebrates 44 new grants for Philadelphia artists and organizations.”
CREATIVE
Alba Martínez is a Puerto Rican composer, lyricist, and cultural leader based in Philadelphia. After thirty-five years in law, finance, and public service, she returned to her creative roots — dedicating her work to Latino musical theater and stories that reflect the resilience and joy of Latino communities.
La Guagua 47 began with a song inspired by a real bus ride in 1985. That song became a film created with 300 artists and community members. That film is now becoming a bilingual Latino musical, in development with Philadelphia Theatre Company.
Alba is the founder of Ritmo Lab, a creative home for her original multimedia works, developed in collaboration with artists across the U.S., Latin America, and Puerto Rico. She is currently Artist in Residence at Taller Puertorriqueño.
Laurie Woolery is a theater director, playwright, and citizen artist. As a first-generation Latinx immigrant, Woolery works with regional theaters and communities to create theater and build sustainable art practices. She has developed and directed new works with populations ranging from incarcerated women to residents of a small Kansas town devastated by a tornado. She has worked at The Public Theater, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Yale Repertory, Trinity Repertory, and Los Angeles Philharmonic among others. She has directed world premieres of plays by Tanya Saracho, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Aditi Kapil, and more.
She is the former director of Public Works, an initiative at The Public Theater in NYC. Working with partner organizations in all five boroughs, Public Works invites communities to join in the creation of ambitious works of participatory theater. In 2017 she created a new musical adaptation of As You Like It at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park featuring two hundred New Yorkers which topped the New York Times’ Best Theater in 2017 list.
She is the former associate artistic director of Cornerstone Theater Company and Conservatory Director at South Coast Repertory. Woolery is a founding member of The Sol Project in New York.
La Guagua 47 has been supported by
The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage.
