An all-Haitian cast of singers, actors and dancers takes the stage at Miami's Adrienne Arsht Center on Saturday for a musical celebrating Haiti's culture and artistry, arriving at a moment when more than 300,000 Haitians across the United States have lost their temporary immigration protections. The production, called Ayiti Bèl Nanm, is billed by its organizers as a chance for Haiti to tell its own story through its artists rather than through headlines about crisis.
The show goes up at 7 p.m. Saturday inside the Ziff Ballet Opera House, a 2,400-seat hall that ranks as the second-largest performing arts stage in the country behind the Metropolitan Opera, according to the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. Tickets range from $117 to $246, and organizers have said the production is open to all ages. As first reported by the Miami Herald, the performance features singers, actors and dancers showcasing Haitian creativity, history and cultural heritage.
Among the cast is Jimmy Jean-Louis, the Haitian American actor known to television audiences as “The Haitian” on NBC's Heroes and who played Toussaint Louverture in a 2012 production. Jean-Louis was appointed Ambassador-at-large for Haiti in 2014 and named Official Ambassador for the Barbancourt Foundation in 2021, according to the Barbancourt Foundation. Also featured is Errol Josué, a Haiti-based performer and initiated Vodou priest who has served as director of Haiti's National Bureau of Ethnology, according to Erasing 76 Crimes.
A Miami Activist Takes On a Divine Role
Miami activist and singer Farah Juste plays a divinity in the production who explains events unfolding in Haiti, per the Herald's reporting. Juste told the paper she is unsure how recent events will affect attendance for the show, though she said she hopes audiences will turn out in large numbers. She also said she is happy with the actors' efforts to make the production succeed, calling the cast and the production itself impressive.
The production was founded by Carole Demesmin, who studied at Berklee College of Music in the 1970s before becoming an initiated Vodou priestess known as Manbo Kalala, according to her production company, Bel Ayiti Corp. Staging and choreography were collaboratively led by Paula Clermont Péan, Florence Jean-Louis Dupuy and Linda Isabelle François Obas, according to Greater Miami & Miami Beach. Jean-Louis Dupuy, an actor, director and longtime force in Haiti's theater scene who directed Port-au-Prince's Pyepoudre Cultural Center for 30 years, was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005 as part of the global 1000 Women for Peace initiative, according to the show's official site.
Staged Against a Backdrop of Legal Upheaval
The Herald reports that Jean-Louis Dupuy said Haitians are experiencing very difficult times that undermine their pride, dignity and honor — a sentiment organizers say the show was designed to answer. They have described Ayiti Bèl Nanm as offering South Florida's Haitian community a message of hope and as presenting Haitians with an image grounded in creativity, beauty and artistic excellence, aiming to meet and surpass international standards through the originality of its creation.
That framing lands amid a sweeping legal shift. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June in Mullin v. Doe to allow the federal government to end Temporary Protected Status for roughly 350,000 Haitian nationals, stripping many of work permits and legal protections, according to the ACLU of Northern California. Broward and Miami-Dade counties hold the two largest Haitian-ancestry populations in the country, with more than 133,000 residents in Broward and over 106,000 in Miami-Dade, per data from the Population Reference Bureau.
Local Workforce Already Feeling the Strain
Hoodline reported in July that Miami-Dade officials and business leaders were bracing for workforce disruption across the region's healthcare, hotel and home-care sectors as TPS protections lapsed, warning of a looming hospital and hotel job shock. Similar anxieties have surfaced elsewhere in Florida in recent days, with Tampa Haitians rallying at city hall and Orange County schools reporting staffing losses tied to the TPS expiration.
Miami's Little Haiti neighborhood, formally designated by the city in 2016, remains anchored by the Little Haiti Cultural Complex, which draws more than 100,000 visitors annually for Caribbean cultural programming, according to the City of Miami. Organizers of Ayiti Bèl Nanm have said the production is meant to offer a different view of Haiti, one built on its artists rather than the crisis narratives so often attached to the country.
