Gabriel Portuondo Featured in THE RIME, Virginia Arts Festival

Gabriel Portuondo's performance of THE RIME is sure to create a stunning visual and psychological experience for the audience in this year's Virginia Arts Festival, Thursday, April 30 at 7:30 PM, Robin Hixon Theater in Norfolk, VA.

"The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," the epic ballad written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge during the Romantic era and published in 1798, comes to life in this mysterious and spellbinding journey. Coleridge's stylistic use of narrative, personification and repetition creates epic rolls of emotional impact, bursts of foreboding, a palpable feeling of danger and deja vu, great looming shadows and visions of the supernatural.

http://www.vafest.org/2015/2015-performances/genre-theatre/the-rime-2015

In this terrifying and miraculous tale, the now infamous Albatross is shot and killed by the Mariner with his crossbow, and in a tormented rage, his shipmates hang the great carcass of the sea bird around the Mariner's neck, as a heavy burden of his guilt. This prompts the wrath and hostility of the spirits, who visit our Mariner's ship from the land of "mist and snow" on their ghostly vessel, a skeletal hull of a ship. As the crew members die, one by one, only the Mariner lives on - cursed by the eyes of the corpses surrounding him, as slimy things curl and stew and glisten, covering the rotting floorboards of the ship.

THE RIME is being brought to the Virginia Arts Festival by Goode Productions who has been producing New Works for over a decade. Led by Martha Goode, the company believes that the fostering of young artists is integral to the future of the arts in our country. Other production credits include Wanda's Monster (with New York City Children's Theater), the Miracle Worker (Circle in the Square, associate producer), The Stranger to Kindness (Winner Best Production Planet Connections Theatre Festivity), The Violet Hour (Active Theater), Sweet, Sweet Spirit, Parts of Pars & Stitches, Costa Rehab, Barrier Island, A Home Across the Ocean and Good Lonely People (Manhattan Theatre Works), To Barcelona!, The Riverside Symphony, Eli and Cheryl Jump (as Ignited States) and Training Wisteria (New York Fringe Festival).

THE RIME tickets can be ordered online: http://www.ticketmaster.com/search?tm_link=tm_header_search&=&user_input=the+rime&q=the+rimePurchase in person at the VA Festival Box Office, 440 Bank Street, Norfolk, VA 23510, or by calling (757) 282-2822.

Since 1997, the Virginia Arts Festival has transformed the cultural scene in southeastern Virginia, presenting great performers from around the world to local audiences and making this historic, recreation-rich region a cultural destination for visitors from across the United States and around the world. The Festival has presented numerous U.S. and regional premieres, and regularly commissions new works of music, dance, and theater from some of today's most influential composers, choreographers and playwrights. The Festival's arts education programs reach tens of thousands of area schoolchildren each year through student matinees, in-school performances, artists' residencies, master classes and demonstrations.