Intersection for the Arts Hosts Lorca Summer Festival

From July 18 through August 2, 2008, the Intersection for the Arts in San Francisco will host the Lorca Summer Festival, featuring Federico García Lorca's three great tragedies, Blood Wedding, Yerma, and the House of Bernarda Alba.  The trilogy is produced by Pangs Theater and directed by its Artistic Director, Wolfgang Thompson, recognized for his modern multi-disciplinary pieces and his physical style of direction.
 
The New York Times calls Lorca, "a consummate artist whose genius in theater, music, art and poetry rather defies description or comparison" and "the most widely translated Spanish author of all time."
 
As you know, these rural tragedies are rarely performed, and particularly rarely in sequence.  The Lorca Summer Festival is an exceptional opportunity for Bay Area audiences to see all three of these brilliant plays in a series.
 
Lorca's drama is known for its poetic language and its exploration of the themes of love, pride, passion and violent death. In this trilogy, Lorca makes powerful commentary on restrictive social limitations and the intensity of the human passions they can't contain.
 
Blood Wedding tells the story of true love and passion which turns tragic because it can't be realized.  It is a tragedy about a bride whose social position keeps her from marrying the man she loves.  Blood Wedding will be performed on July 18 and 26 at 8pm.
 
Yerma tells the tale of a woman whose needs and desires are stifled by her society. Yerma explores the pain of a woman's life under a conservative social system.  Yerma will be performed on July 19 and August 1 at 8pm.
 
The House of Bernarda Alba is a play in which a tyrant widow locks her five daughters away from the outside world after their father's death, but still can't restrain the daughters' passions.  House of Bernarda Alba dramatizes the themes of brutal repression, sexual jealousy, maternal control and finally death.  House of Bernarda Alba will be performed on July 25 and August 2 at 8pm.
 
Friend and contemporary of Pablo Neruda and Salvador Dalí, Lorca is and one of Spain's most treasured poets and playwrights.  He is remembered as a martyr due to his premature death involving his capture and murder by fascists at age 38 due to what many believe were his leftist leanings, his work's criticism of conservative social structures, and his homosexuality. While his death is shrouded in mystery, some believe that he was tortured and suffered a gruesome death due to his homosexuality, his body then thrown into a mass grave and his work banned in Spain by General Francisco Franco's regime until the 1950's when censored versions of his work were released.
 
Pangs Theater Ensemble is a performance company founded in San Francisco in 2004 producing modern multi-disciplinary work and classics. Its work is marked by a physical style of performance and direction, as well as its incorporation of historical and modern elements into its productions. Even classics are presented applying a physical, multi-disciplinary approach, including a strong focus on choreography, patterns of body movement, and exploration of the physical space among the characters. Pangs Theater Ensemble's physical approach is developed by its Artistic Director Wolfgang Thompson. Pangs Theater Ensemble is a member of Theatre Bay Area and B.A.P.S.T.
 
Wolfgang Thompson, Pangs Theater Ensemble's Artistic Director, has recently directed Georg Buchner's Woyzeck, Moliere's Don Juan, and his own multi-disciplinary performance pieces Resolved and Lamb, his work commended by audiences and the press. In the upcoming season, Mr. Thompson will direct Sonderkommando, the second in his Holocaust trilogy of multi-disciplinary performances, the Virginia Woolf/Anne Sexton Project, Shakespeare's Julius Cesar, and Strindberg's Miss Julie.  His work is marked by realism and a physical style.
 
The Lorca Summer Festival is sponsored in part by funding from San Francisco Grants for the Arts.

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