The stand-up special Nasciturus, El Año Que Nunca Fue (1×45’), with Puerto Rican comedian Mikephillippe Oliveros, directed and produced by Claudia Calderón of Dale. Dale. Dale., was acquired by HBO in 2021 with exclusive rights for three years. Oliveros came up with the idea and wrote the script.
“This is not a traditional stand-up since it was done without an audience, in the midst of a pandemic. It was a major challenge to produce and direct. I’ve never worked on a 45-minute comedy project. The holy grail was that it reached HBO, which was a wonderful endorsement,” said Calderón.
Nasciturus, which had the support of the production company La Tara and was distributed by Spanglish Movies, will be broadcast on HBO Max and HBO Latino, where it debuted in September 2021.
It was staged in a beautiful bar, set type, in which Oliveros had invested shortly before the covid-19 crisis and planned to use for presenting stand-up shows. Faced with the possibility of losing the investment and the property “which had become an oasis”, they decided to record the project in four days with a very small crew of friends that agreed to do it “for the love of art”. “This was a production with creative freedom, with care for aesthetics and its own resources. It was like a love letter about Ontiveros’ experience during the pandemic,” she pointed out.
Calderón, who studied film and TV directing in Cuba, had never directed a stand-up, but she was fascinated by the idea, “because on top of being a stand-up consumer, I was very excited to do the project.”
Watch trailer here