CalArts And The Getty Villa Present PIEDRA DE SOL (Sunstone) 5/14-16

The Center for New Performance at CalArts (CNP) and the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) School of Theater in association with the Getty Villa present a Duende CalArts production, Piedra de Sol (Sunstone). Adapted and directed by Méxican playwright/director María Morett, Piedra de Sol (Sunstone) is produced as part of Duende CalArts, an ongoing initiative to explore Pan-American work and issues. It will be performed at the Getty Villa, in association with The Aztec Pantheon and the Art of Empire exhibition, on Friday, May 14 at 8 p.m., Saturday, May 15 at 3 p.m. & 8 p.m. and Sunday, May 16 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $7 and available by phone at 310.440.7300 or click here to make a reservation. The Getty Villa is located at 17985 Pacific Coast Highway, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272.

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 both as an 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 André 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 Duende CalArts, an initiative 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, written by David Rosenboom and 10 young composers.

María Morett, director and adapter of Piedra de Sol (Sunstone), 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 México, National Autonomous University of México (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 México, 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 México.

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, The Sharon Disney Lund 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.

The J. Paul Getty Museum at the Getty Villa in Malibu opened on January 28, 2006, after the completion of a major renovation project. As a museum and educational center dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria, the Getty Villa serves a varied audience through exhibitions, conservation, scholarship, research, and public programs. The Villa houses approximately 44,000 works of art from the Museum's extensive collection of Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities, of which over 1,200 are on view. With two locations, the Getty Villa in Malibu and the Getty Center in Los Angeles, the J. Paul Getty Museum serves a wide variety of audiences through its expanded range of exhibitions and programming in the visual arts.