Victoria Rose Ríos’ ‘La Última Muñeca: A Theatrical Quinceañera’ opens at Tampa Fringe on June 14, 2025. Credit: Photo c/o Victoria Rose Ríos / Design by David Loyola

Victoria Rose Ríos knew she wasn’t going to have a quinceañera. They’re expensive, for one, and a lot of work, too. “I also didn’t really feel like I was Latin enough to have one,” Ríos, who is half-British, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

That changes this month, however, when the native Tampeña brings her solo debut to Ybor City as part of Fringe’s 10-day takeover of the historic district. Her party—“La Última Muñeca: A Theatrical Quinceañera”—is a homecoming for the 31-year-old who’s been working in local theater since she was five years old.

Layered, collaborative, and immersive, the production draws on Ríos’ background in music puppetry and experimental performance that turns the Puerto Rican quinceañera (a girl’s 15th birthday) into a narrative experience.
The show, which will be performed five times during Tampa Fringe, includes Barbie puppets acting out diary entries, a process that helped Ríos start to shape dialogue in a complicated coming-of-age partyshow that explores identity, girlhood, grief and beauty.

“She’s got a little bit more of a personality that I wouldn’t have shown as a teenager, because she’s playing me as a teenager,” Ríos said. Yes, the doll curses, but she’s a lot more honest, which makes sense. “I think that happens with puppets a lot because you’ve got a proxy to sort of say what you’re thinking.”

While he’s barely mentioned in the show, bringing it to the stage involved Ríos thinking about her dad, Juan Carlos, who passed away before she left for grad school.

“La Última Muñeca,” she explained, is not a show mourning dad—but grief is a significant theme. Ríos hopes the exploration doesn’t come off as invasive or triggering, and noted that there is a certain kind of mourning over past versions of herself.

“The six-year-old version of yourself, the 15-year-old version of yourself, the 20-year-old version of yourself,” she said, adding that the work—made possible with help from her mentor Sophie Ellen Powell—is mostly a joyful tribute to life, despite its obstacles.

Those challenges include politics which inadvertently make their way into “La Última Muñeca.” Politics is woven into Tampa Fringe for now, too.

Last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis turned Fringe festivals into the scapegoat for his $32 million cultural grants veto. Fringe organizers from Tampa and Orlando tried to bargain with the governor—offering to forgo state grants that were approved for them in order to facilitate the restoration of the remaining legislature-approved arts & culture funding, with conditions—to no avail.

The current political climate is not lost on Ríos who sees the joy in her show as a form of defiance as Latinos and women are targeted by the GOP.

“It really is sort of this acknowledgement that Latino people are here. Our culture is here. It’s not going anywhere,” she explained. “And it’s hard to be a woman at the moment.

If that’s all too heavy, don’t worry. The immersive show also includes non-alcoholic coquito. While you may have to sneak in your own rum, “La Última Muñeca,” is definitely toast-worthy.

“The show is a party,” she said, “It’s a celebratory acknowledgement of figuring it out.”

Tickets for Tampa Fringe’s five performances of “La Última Muñeca: A Theatrical Quinceañera” happening June 14-June 22 at The Commodore are still available and start at $15.