PIEDRA DEL SOL Performed At CalArts 11/13-14, 11/17-20

The Center for New Performance at CalArts (CNP) and the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) School of Theater present Piedra de Sol (Sunstone). This new production will be performed at CalArts, in Ensemble Theatre 2--24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia CA, 91355. Adapted and directed by Mexican playwright/director Maria Morett, Piedra de Sol (Sunstone) is produced as part of Teatro CalArts, an ongoing initiative to explore Pan-American work and issues. Performance dates are Friday-Saturday, November 13-14 and Tuesday-Saturday, November 17-20 at 8 PM. Matinee on Saturday, November 14th at 2 PM. Tickets are available at calarts.edu/events

Octavio Paz, awarded the 1990 Nobel Prize in Literature, wrote Piedra de Sol (Sunstone) in 1957. The poem was praised as a magnificent example of surrealist poetry and serves as a self-autobiography and portrait of a generation. Piedra de Sol (Sunstone), observes director Morett, "considers the defense of the love force, the footprint of shattered illusions and the search of communion and explores the mysteries of time, love, desire, nature and history."

This production integrates the poetry of surrealist poet Andre Breton and warrior/philosopher king Nezahualcóyotl. Morett's staging immerses the audience in the ellipsoidal perspective of the original poem and is brought to life by the performing ensemble of CalArts actors and musicians and a design team of current CalArts students and alumni.

Piedra de Sol (Sunstone) introduces Teatro CalArts, which was founded by faculty member and actress Marissa Chibas to explore the diversity of Latin culture and the arts. Piedra de Sol (Sunstone) joins the distinguished roster of projects developed by CalArts Center for New Performance, which includes the recently produced Ah!, an interactive opera-no-opera which appeared at Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in September 2009. Ah! was written by David Rosenboom and Martine Bellen and composed by Rosenboom with a team of 12 young composers and directed by CNP Artistic Director Travis Preston.

Maria Morett, director and adapter of the piece, is also a playwright, set designer and an actress. She is founder of Mixteatro and has written more than twelve plays, which have been produced by the Festival Internacional Cervatino, National Institute of the Beauty Arts of Mexico, National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and the National Fund for the Culture and the Arts (FONCA). Morett has received national and international awards such as the Excellence Award of the New York International Fringe Festival. She was part of the Directors Lab of the Lincoln Center in New York. She has been a resident artist of La MaMa Experimental Theater Club and Voice and Vision in New York, and of East Bay Center for the Performing Arts in California. Her plays have been presented in Mexico, the United States, Canada and Europe, and have been translated into English, German and Romanian. In August 2006, she became part of the National System of Art Creators, one of the most important distinctions in Mexico.

The Center for New Performance at CalArts (CNP) was established in 1999 as a forum for the creation of work that expands the language, discourse, and boundaries of contemporary theater. The Center supports a producing model that is artist and project specific, giving priority to performance that cannot be easily produced in other circumstances. Recent CNP projects have included Vineland Stelae, a full-length structured improvisation for 30 musicians, created and composed by Sandeep Bhagwati; Bell Solaris, composed and performed by David Rosenboom and directed by Travis Preston; What to Wear, a new post-rock opera, directed and designed by Richard Foreman and composed by Michael Gordon, described by the Los Angeles Times as theater that you discover while you look, listen and wonder ; 11 September, 2001, by Michel Vinaver, which premiered in Los Angeles prior to a three-city tour of France, and Macbeth, a radical reinterpretation of Shakespeare's Macbeth, directed by Travis Preston and performed by Stephen Dillane, which has been presented to glowing reviews in Los Angeles, London, Sydney and Adelaide. The Center for New Performance at CalArts is led by Travis Preston, Artistic Director; Carol Bixler, Producing Director; Leslie Tamaribuchi, Managing Director; Ellen McCartney and Leslie Tamaribuchi, Interim Co-Deans, School of Theater; Stephan Koplowitz, Dean, School of Dance; and David Rosenboom, Dean, The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts.

CalArts is recognized internationally as a leading laboratory for the visual, performing, media and literary arts. Housing six schools--Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater--CalArts educates professional artists in an intensive learning environment founded on artmaking excellence, creative experimentation, cross-pollination among diverse artistic disciplines, and a broad context of social and cultural understanding. CalArts also operates the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles.