Look up plaza in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

The plaza mayor of Valladolid, Spain, a typical Spanish plaza.

Plaza de Bolívar in Bogotá, Colombia is the largest plaza in Bogotá, and home to one of the largest cathedrals in South America, the Cathedral of Bogotá

The Zócalo has been the central gathering space of Mexico City since Aztec times

Piazza De Ferrari in Genoa, Italy, is the central plaza of Genoa, in the heart of the city

Plaza ( /ˈplɑːzə/; Castilian Spanish: [ˈplaθa] or Latin American Spanish: [ˈplasa]) is a Spanish word related to "field" which describes an open urban public space, such as a city square.^[1] All through Spanish America, the plaza mayor of each center of administration held three closely related institutions: the cathedral, the cabildo or administrative center, which might be incorporated in a wing of a governor's palace, and the audiencia or law court. The plaza might be large enough to serve as a military parade ground. At times of crisis or fiesta, it was the space where a large crowd might gather. Like the Italian piazza, the plaza remains a center of community life that is only equaled by the market-place.

Most colonial cities in Spanish America and the Philippines were planned around a square plaza de armas, where troops could be mustered, as the name implies, surrounded by the governor's palace and the main church. A plaza de toros is a bullring.

In modern usage, a plaza can be any gathering place on a street or between buildings, a street intersection with a statue, etc. Today's metropolitan landscapes often incorporate the "plaza" as a design element, or as an outcome of zoning regulations, building budgetary constraints, and the like. Sociologist William H. Whyte conducted an extensive study of plazas in New York City: his study humanized the way modern urban plazas are conceptualized, and helped usher in significant design changes in the making of plazas.

Cognates of the word plaza include Italian piazza, Portuguese praça, French place, Catalan plaça and Romanian piața.

Examples[link]

Shopping center[link]

The first purpose-built shopping center in the United States, opened in Kansas City, Missouri in 1922, knowingly took the name of "Country Club Plaza" and adopted Spanish architectural details.^[2] More recently plaza has been used to describe a shopping complex, similar to a shopping mall, borrowing its connotations of a center of cultural life. The name is currently even applied to a single building with some semi-public street-level areas, often with a hotel or office tower above, while mall more often refers to multiple buildings or a street.

Examples: Pantip Plaza (Bangkok), Bintang Plaza (Miri), Kuching Plaza (Kuching), Plaza Las Américas (San Juan), Plaza de las Estrellas (Mexico City), Central Plaza (Hong Kong), Schiphol Plaza (Amsterdam), Plazas del Centro Comercial Santafé (Bogotá), and The Plaza (Evergreen Park, Illinois).

References[link]

See also[link]

• Gostiny Dvor
• Piazza
• Shopping mall

This article's lead section may not adequately summarize its contents. Please consider expanding the lead to provide an accessible overview of the article's key points. (February 2011)

Aubrey Plaza
Plaza at the 2012 Time 100
Birth name	Aubrey Christina Plaza
Born	(1984-06-26) June 26, 1984 (age 28) Wilmington, Delaware, United States
Medium	Stand-up, television, film, improv
Years active	2004–present
Genres	Deadpan
Notable works and roles	April Ludgate in Parks and Recreation Daisy Danby in Funny People Julie Powers in Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World
Website	http://aubreyplaza.tumblr.com/

Aubrey Christina Plaza^[1] (born June 26, 1984)^[2] is an American actress and comedian who has gained popularity through her deadpan-style comedy, and currently co-stars in Parks and Recreation as April Ludgate.

Early life[link]

Plaza was born in Wilmington, Delaware, the daughter of Bernadette, an attorney, and David Plaza, a financial advisor.^[3][4][5] She has two younger sisters, Renee and Natalie,^[3] the latter of whom she uses as inspiration for her teenage character April Ludgate on Parks and Recreation.^[6]

Plaza was named after the song "Aubrey" by Bread.^[3][7] Her father is Puerto Rican and her mother is of Irish and English descent.^[3][8] Plaza has stated: "I was like the only diverse kid in my high school, and I'm half-Puerto Rican. But yeah, I have a huge family and tons of cousins in Puerto Rico."^[6] She participated in productions with the Wilmington Drama League.^[3]

Plaza graduated from Ursuline Academy^[3][9] in 2002, and New York University's Tisch School of the Arts in 2006.^[3] While at NYU in 2004, Plaza suffered a stroke that caused temporary paralysis and expressive aphasia, but she has fully recovered.^[3][10]

Career[link]

Plaza has said that she has had many internships and that she "was an intern for Samba Post-Its." One of her jobs was to "literally wallpaper a bathroom with Post-Its." She also worked as an NBC page.

She has been performing improv and sketch comedy at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater since 2004. She also recently began performing stand-up and has appeared at the Laugh Factory and The Improv. In 2008, she was seen in the Improv Everywhere prank "Mobile Desktop", in which she and two other people brought desktop PCs, including a CRT screen, tower computer, keyboard and mouse into a Starbucks and used them just as people use laptops there.

Plaza starred in the online series The Jeannie Tate Show, and stars as Robin Gibney in ESPN's Mayne Street. She also appeared in the first episode of "Terrible Decisions with Ben Schwartz" on Funny or Die.^[11]

Plaza at the San Diego Comic-Con International in July 2010

She played Seth Rogen's love interest, Daisy, in 2009's Funny People directed by Judd Apatow. She also had roles in the comedy films Scott Pilgrim vs. the World and Derrick Comedy's Mystery Team, which debuted at 2009 Sundance. She appeared in a CollegeHumor short alongside Jason Bateman and Will Arnett.

She plays April Ludgate, the deadpan employee in Parks and Recreation, and has a recurring role as "the Princess" in the comedic sci-fi web series Troopers on CollegeHumor.

On March 12, 2010, Plaza performed at A Night of 140 Tweets: A Celebrity Tweetathon for Haiti, produced by Rob Huebel, Paul Scheer, Ben Stiller, and Mike Rosenstein, at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in Los Angeles.

In 2010 she made a guest appearance in Portlandia.

Plaza appeared as a guest judge during a roast segment on The Next Food Network Star in 2011.

She appeared in Episode 199 of the WTF with Marc Maron podcast.

In early 2012, she was featured in Father John Misty(J. Tillman)'s music video for the song "Hollywood Forever Cemetery Sings", off the album "Fear Fun".

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Aubrey Plaza

• Aubrey Plaza at the Internet Movie Database
• Aubrey Plaza Videos - Plaza's video website
• Aubrey Plaza NBC Profile - Profile from Parks and Recreation
• Troopers web series

Christopher Pratt may refer to:

• Christopher Dale Pratt, a British business executive
• Christopher Pratt, Canadian painter
• Chris Pratt, American actor

See also[link]

• Chris Prat, lacrosse player

This disambiguation page lists articles about people with the same name. If an internal link led you here, you may wish to change the link to point directly to the intended article.

Silvio Rodríguez
Background information
Birth name	Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez
Born	(1946-11-29) November 29, 1946 (age 65)
Origin	San Antonio de los Baños, Havana Province, Cuba
Genres	Nueva trova
Occupations	Singer-songwriter
Instruments	Guitar, vocals
Years active	1967–present
Website	www.silviorodriguez.org

Silvio Rodríguez Domínguez (born November 29, 1946 in San Antonio de los Baños) is a Cuban musician, and a leader of the nueva trova movement.

He is considered Cuba's best known folk singer and known for his highly eloquent and symbolic lyrics. Many of his songs have become classics in Latin American music, such as Ojalá, Playa Girón, Unicornio and La maza. He has released nearly 20 albums.

Rodríguez, musically and politically, is a symbol of the Latin American left wing. His lyrics are notably introspective. His songs combine romanticism, love (even eroticism), revolutionary politics, and idealism.

Biography[link]

Rodríguez was born on November 29, 1946 in San Antonio de los Baños, a fertile valley in Havana Province known for its tobacco crop. He was raised in a family of poor farmers. His father, Víctor Dagoberto Rodríguez Ortega, was a farmer and amateur poet who supported socialist causes. His mother, Argelia Domínguez León, was a house wife. On many occasions Rodríguez has spoken how his love of music was developed by his mother, who would pass time singing boleros and songs from Santiago. Although Rodríguez had an uncle who played the bass, his mother had a far greater influence. Later, she also collaborated with him on a few musical works.

When the Revolution led by Fidel Castro triumphed in January 1959, Rodríguez was only 13 years old, and, like most Cubans of his generation, became involved in the new Revolutionary enthusiasm. He participated in the Literacy Campaign held in 1961, and then started working as a comics designer in a magazine. During this period a friend of his, Lázaro Fundora, taught him how to play the guitar.

Guitar playing took a major role in his life while he was doing his military service in the army, during 1964, but it wasn't until 1967, with his first television experience, that he started to become well known and influential among Cuban revolutionary youth. With pro-revolution yet very independent lyrics (together with his very informal dress code), Rodríguez soon attracted the animosity of some members of the new Culture Ministry, which was devoted to the eradication of the United States' influence in Cuban culture. In this context, a very important role was played by the cultural institution Casa de las Américas and its then director Haydée Santamaría, the former a respected revolutionary who participated in the Moncada barracks assault of 1953 and sister of Abel Santamaría, who was tortured and killed after the failure of the assault. Haydée Santamaría became a protective mother-figure of the young composers and of several of his colleagues at the time. Casa de las Américas became the home not only for the new Cuban trovadores but also for many other Latin Americans on the left. It was in this institution that Rodríguez met Pablo Milanés, and Noel Nicola, who along with Rodriguez would become the most famous nueva trova singers and composers.

In 1969, for almost five months, he worked as part of the crew on the fishing boat Playa Girón, and during this fertile episode he wrote 62 songs, among which are the famous "Ojalá" and "Playa Girón." The lyrics and music of these songs became a book named Canciones del Mar. In 1976, he decided to join Cuban troops in Angola, playing for the soldiers.

After more than 40 years of artistic work, Rodríguez has now written a vast number of songs and poems (said to be between 500 and more than one thousand), many of which have never been set to music and probably never will be. Although his musical knowledge has been continuously increasing (counting among his teachers the famous Cuban composer Leo Brouwer), he is more widely praised for the poetry in his songs than for the accompanying music. His lyrics are a staple of leftist culture throughout the whole Spanish-speaking world, and he has been banned from the media during several of the dictatorial regimes that ruled Latin America in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

His debut album was Dias y Flores, launched in 1975. Al Final de Este Viaje and Cuando Digo Futuro feature songs he composed before Dias y Flores. He reached international popularity in the early 1980s with Rabo de Nube and, in particular, Unicornio. In the early part of his career his work displayed a fair amount of revolutionary optimism. Mujeres, released in 1979, is in contrast a romantic and highly intimist album. In the middle of his career, Silvio Rodriguez experimented with sounds and rhythms departing from his trademark acoustic guitar, accompanied by the group Afrocuba (e.g. in Causas y Azares). At maturity, Silvio Rodriguez thoroughly purified his sound through a return to acoustic guitar, great care and sophistication in the voice, and exclusive control of the production process from beginning to end. His lyrics became more introspective, at times even self-absorbed or self-justifying, expressing melancholic longings about the shortcomings of real-life socialism in Cuba while vindicating idealism and revolutionary hope amongst the youth. The trilogy, called Silvio, Rodriguez, and Dominguez (his first name, his father's last name, his mother's last name) displays sound artistic talent. The doubts, absent in the early part of his career, also correspond to the fall of communism worldwide and the so-called Special Period in Cuba. An unnoticed recurrent theme in the lyrics of the early part of his career is that of death, particularly although not only as associated with guerrilla warfare. In contrast to the explicitness of his early songs and political positions, there was a displacement of emphasis in his later years toward fantasy and dreams. Both, however, are about an alternative that is not present but is called for, or what Laclau would call a longing for a "missing fullness". This is true politically, romantically, and existentially. In a similar way, the unusual confessional tone of many of his songs allows for an unorthodox combination of transgression, eroticism, longing, and at times (probably accurate) self-deprecation in many of his lyrics.

The entire work of Silvio Rodriguez offers an intimate and introspective window into the life cycle of the artist. If the lyrics of the early part of his career are about revolutionary enthusiasm, love encounters and disappointments, as well as sensual desire, and if the middle-aged Silvio is more self-questioning, often looking backward; his most recent albums, such as Cita Con Angeles, talk in part about his life as a grandfather and has a certain focus on children, while Erase Que Se Era is the release (with all the means that come with being an established artist) of songs written early in his youth but never previously recorded. Mariposas also featured two classics composed in his youth.

Silvio Rodriguez stands out in the Spanish-speaking world for the intimacy and subtlety of his lyrics, as well as for his acoustic melodies and "chord picking." He is particularly popular amongst intellectual circles of the left in Latin America and Spain. He has also often served as Cuban cultural emissary in events of solidarity, whether in Chile (Silvio Rodriguez in Chile, 1991) or Argentina (En Vivo en Argentina, recorded in 1984), both massive concerts given shortly after the fall of the right-wing dictatorships. Cuban flags are always conspicuous in the crowd during his concerts.

In 2007, he received a doctorate honoris causa from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Peru.^[1] (Lima, Peru).

Rodriguez has been a major influence on many folk artists, including the Swedish artist José González.^[2]

U.S. Appearance[link]

Silvio Rodríguez has been denied a U.S. visa several times, and it was particularly controversial in 2009 when he was invited to celebrate the 90th birthday of Pete Seeger. However in 2010, he obtained a U.S. visa and performed at venues in Puerto Rico (May 30), New York (June 4 and 10), San Francisco (Oakland, June 12), Los Angeles (June 17), Washington, D.C. (June 19), and Orlando (June 23). These were his first appearances in the U.S. in 30 years.^[3][4]

Discography[link]

• 1975 - Días y Flores
• 1978 - Al Final de Este Viaje...
• 1979 - Mujeres
• 1979 - Rabo de Nube
• 1982 - Unicornio
• 1984 - Tríptico: Volumes I, II & III
• 1986 - Causas y Azares
• 1988 - Oh, Melancolía
• 1991 - Silvio en Chile (Live Concert with Irakere)
• 1992 - Silvio
• 1992 - Mano a mano (Silvio Rodríguez y Luis Eduardo Aute)
• 1994 - Rodríguez
• 1996 - Domínguez
• 1998 - Descartes
• 1999 - Mariposas
• 2001 - En Vivo en Argentina (Live Concert with Pablo Milanés)
• 2002 - Expedición
• 2003 - Cita con Ángeles
• 2006 - Érase Que Se Era
• 2010 - Segunda Cita

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Silvio Rodríguez

• Official Silvio Rodriguez's website Songs, pictures, writings (in Spanish)
• Official Silvio Rodriguez's blog - More than 5800 followers (in Spanish)
• Analysis of Silvio Rodriguez Songs Meaning of lyrics (in Spanish)
• Che, Guía y Ejemplo: - Songs of Silvio Rodriguez dedicated to Che Guevara
• Hasta Siempre Commandante - performed live by Silvio Rodriguez
• TRANS Analysis of the harmonies of Silvio's songs, socio-cultural background
• Brief reviews of Silvio's albums
• Silvio's page in Patria Grande
• Cuban Singer Complains that U.S. Didn’t Give Him Visa by the Latin American Herald Tribune
• Cuba's Silvio Rodriguez Dedicates Song to 'Che' AP, July 23, 2009
• Cuban Folk Singer Plays Rare US Show June 5, 2010
• Silvio Rodriguez Concert in USA Photo Feature by Bill Hackwell, Havana Times, June 17, 2010

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