The festival, long a big part of a small Spanish-language theater scene in Miami, has become an anticipated annual event in an evolving community. South Florida is now home to many more companies offering ambitious work in Spanish, including Teatro en Miami Studio, Area Stage, the Hispanic Theatre Guild at Teatro 8, Dream Theatre, Kimbara Cumbara and Teatro Abanico.

''People are coming to see Spanish-language theater in the United States,'' says Yarrow. ``[Some still] think there's no culture in Miami, [but] now it's becoming easier to find.''

This year's lone play in English, Oliver Mayer's Dias y flores, is coming to the festival because of a Miami connection. Olga Garay, former director of cultural affairs for Miami Dade College's Wolfson campus, is now executive director of Los Angeles' Department of Cultural Affairs. She saw the show at Company of Angels and told Marlene Forte, Mayer's wife and one of the play's stars, that the group had to take the show to Miami. Sánchez listened to Garay's recommendation and invited the company.

Mayer, author of the acclaimed play Blade to the Heat, wrote Dias y flores for Forte after the two met at a retreat run by New York's LAByrinth Theater Company. Staged by MacArthur ''genius'' grant winner Luis Alfaro in Los Angeles in January, the play has been described as a piece of ''urban magical realism.'' Set on New York's rough lower east side, it tells the story of Cuban-American siblings in their 40s, sister Sherezad and brother Farruco, and two more recent young immigrants -- Silvio, a Cuban guitarist who sings the music of island singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez, and Pantys, a gender-malleable Mexican.

''We're a multicultural company, but we're very Latino-heavy,'' says Forte, who also plays Rosie Hernandez on TV's Tyler Perry's House of Payne. ``As my husband says, there are so many Cuban stories.''

And Mexican, Colombian and Spanish stories, all of which will be told in Miami this month because of the International Hispanic Theatre Festival. Sanchez knew that pulling together the 24th festival would be rough. But that he would do it was never a question.

''Because of the way we have done it every year, we're used to it. We're doing better than people who aren't,'' he says. ``Theater has taught me how to survive and continue.''

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