Josephine Phoenix's Between Coconuts and Concrete Is a Wild Tale Made in Miami

Almost anywhere Josephine Phoenix stands, there is a stage. During her long career as a journeywoman performer, she's been a lead singer in local venues and television, a touring background singer performing for tens of thousands, one-third of a cruise ship trio, a cast member on a short-lived WEtv reality show, and, in recent years, a theater actor in productions around the country, primarily in New York and Florida.

But as any working actor and performer knows, a long list of credits comes with an even longer tally of rejections. Last year, out of 50 or 60 auditions, she tells New Times, she booked two gigs. It was the push she needed to finally start working on her wild new one-woman show, Between Coconuts and Concrete. "I decided to say yes to myself instead of waiting for someone else to say yes to me," she says of the project, which traces her rollercoaster upbringing in '80s Miami and '90s New York as the daughter of immigrant Cuban artists — her mother Marlena, a Vegas showgirl, and her father Roberto, a flamenco guitarist. Her parents' careers took even wilder turns than Phoenix's, with drug use, drug pushing, and rehab stops along the way.

Phoenix debuted a reading of the show at the Chain Theatre in New York City, and now she's bringing it home to Miami for a reading at White Rose Coffee.

Between Coconuts and Concrete isn't your typical cocaine-fueled Miami Vice-style '80s Miami story — though those elements are certainly there. At its core, it's a heartfelt and humorous account of the complexities in each person's life and personal narrative. For Phoenix, that duality began with her parents' differing experiences of the Cuban Revolution. Her mother, a dancer, came from poverty and says her family benefitted from regime change. "She was given boarding school. She was given a certificate to teach dance," says Phoenix. "Her family was given a little bit of status because of communism." Her father's family, a wealthy family of Spanish and Lebanese origin, lost everything. "They were only allowed to leave with a suitcase for a family of five and 50 dollars."

Still, both parents eventually made their way to the U.S., landing in the Northeast — her mother in Newark, New Jersey, and her father in Brooklyn. Roberto played flamenco guitar with the Rosario Galán Ballet, and Marlena was the lead dancer of the Las Vegas Latin Fire Follies. As Phoenix puts it in Between Coconuts and Concrete, "My mom was in a topless dance troupe, and my dad had iconic '70s sideburns. My dad saw her tits, and the rest is history."

Four pages into Phoenix's 38-page script, her parents move to Miami. By the next page, they're an active part of the city's coke-fueled underbelly. Phoenix comes into the fold on page six. Half a page later, when she's a year old, her parents, now battling addiction, are evicted from their home.

"All of their friends are, like, dead or in jail," says Phoenix. But her parents miraculously managed to survive addiction in '80s Miami, and she shares the stage with them often these days. Between Coconuts and Concrete is the first project she's worked on without asking for their feedback.

"They're not invited. This is the only time I've ever done something artistic that they can't come to." The stories — of her father's work for the mafia, her mom's topless dancing, and their drug pushing and using — are just too raw, she says. "If this goes on to bigger stages, then perhaps they can secretly sit in the back."

"I don't want them to be exposed to people maybe not seeing the whole story and boxing them [in] to a certain kind of person," says Phoenix. "Because one of the many points of this story is to humanize addiction and to create sympathy and empathy toward people who make mistakes in their life."

While her parents haven't seen the script, she's shared some details with them and doesn't get off scot-free. "I have given them little pieces of the comedic parts of the story — when I lost my virginity; when I went to elementary school and the D.A.R.E. program came to teach us to 'Say No to Drugs,' and I knew every single drug picture in the pamphlet." Which part makes her feel the most exposed? "When I lost my virginity to a gold-toothed, unibrowed Cuban. That's [my] favorite part."

Josephine Phoenix: Between Coconuts and Concrete. 8 p.m. Thursday, February 8, at White Rose Coffee, 4703 SW Eighth St., Miami; whiterose.coffee. Admission is free.