A resident of New York City, Alina Troyano is better known by her stage name, Carmelita Tropicana. Carmelita was one of the most thoroughly realized personas born in the '80s club scene. She reveled in her accent, her heels and boas, her cross-cultural metaphors and sly sexual innuendo, the woman underneath (Alina), so grounded in the character of Carmelita that improvising comes naturally.

Her post-club theater work often addresses this livin'-large Cuban identity with absurdist humor. In Chicas 2000, for example, Carmelita is sentenced to prison when found to be a carrier of the "chusma" gene, which causes loudness and tackiness. Ironically enough, her performance with the least chusma is Milk of Amnesia, which chronicles a return to the Cuba she doesn't really remember (she left at age seven).

Alina won an Obie in 1999 for Sustained Excellence of Performance.