THURSDAY, OCTOBER 30TH
8:00PM
GULICK THEATER
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Tres Vidas is a new chamber music theatre
work for singing actress and chamber music trio. The piece is based on the
lives of three legendary Latin American women: renowned Mexican painter Frida
Kahlo, Argentinean poet Alfonsina Storni, and Salvadoran peasant-activist
Rufina Amaya. The musical score will include arrangements of popular and folk
music from Latin America, music by tango master Astor Piazzola and new music
by Carlos Sanchez-Gutierrez and Osvaldo Golijov, Jorge Liderman, and Michael
DeMurga. The singing actress, performing in both Spanish and English, will
portray the three heroines. The show includes images of Frida Kahlo’s
dramatic visual work, excerpts from Alfonsina Storni's passionate poetry, and
passages from Rufina Amaya’s heartfelt testimony regarding the brutal
massacre of her village of El Mozote. FRIDA
KAHLO 1907-1954 Frida Kahlo, the Mexican
painter, had a life marked by physical suffering. Beginning with the polio
which she contracted at the age of five, her condition was worsened by an
event which dominated much of her existence: a bus accident in which she was
pierced by a pole through the pelvis. The remainder of her life was
complicated by surgical operations, mechanical stretching and corsets. Many
of her works were painted lying in bed. Her great love was the painter Diego
Rivera who she married twice and to whom she dedicated a passionate diary.
She also had many lovers, both men and women, including Leon Trotsky. Frida
Kahlo had a deep sense of rebellion against social mores and restraints. She
was moved by passion and sensuality and deeply proud of her Mexican heritage.
RUFINA AMAYA b. 1943 In 1981 the U.S.
government-trained Salvadoran army swept through the region of Morazon in a
campaign to root out guerillas and their sympathizers. In a shocking turn of
events, nearly one thousand peasants were slaughtered, mostly anti-Communist
evangelical Christians, in the village of El Mozote. Rufina Amaya, a
38-year-old housewife whose husband and four children were killed, is the
only known survivor. Now living a few miles south of El Mozote, she says,
“God saved me because he needed someone to tell the story of what happened.”
Rufina Amaya continues to be an outspoken and compelling witness to what may
have been the largest massacre in modern Latin American history. ALFONSINA
STORNI 1892-1938 Alfonsina Storni was
Argentina's first feminist poet. Born in 1892, she was years ahead of her
time in advocating for women's rights. Her multifaceted career as an actress,
shopgirl, teacher and market analyst, and her lifelong deveotion to her
illegitimate son, are the background against which our story takes place.
Over her lifetime she produced collections of poetry, novels, journalism, and
plays. Alfonsina Storni stood alone in her time in seeing through the
hypocrisy of social convention. She lived at a time when women in Argentina
were in total subjugation to husbands, fathers, and social convention, yet
she broke away. It is a tribute to the passion with which Storni expressed
herself, that so many men and women in Argentina today revere her work. Educational programs
and curriculum materials are available. For further information on this and
other CORE Ensemble Productions, please write or call:
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ABOUT THE WRITER, Marjorie
Agosin
Since the mid-1980’s Marjorie Agosin has
emerged as one of the leading voices of Latin American feminism in the United
States. Agosin is the author of almost twenty books that include poetry,
fiction and literary criticism. She has won several
distinguished prizes including the Letras de
Oro Prize for Poetry, the Latino Literature Prize, and the Morgan Institute
Prize
for Achievement in Human Rights. Scholastics Magazine chose
Agosin as 1998 Latino Mentor of the Year.
Marjorie Agosin was raised in Chile. When
Agosin was in her teens, rumors of an impending coup led her immediate family
to move to the United States. Her family
settled in Georgia where Agosin took an undergraduate degree in Philosophy
from the University of Georgia. She went on
to take a Ph.D. in literature from Indiana University where her doctoral
dissertation concentrated on the work of
Chilean writer Maria Luisa Bombal.
Agosin is the author of: Bruias y also mas/Witches and Other Things, Ashes of Revolt: Essays on
Human Rights,
Dear Anne Frank, A Map of Hope: Women’s
Writings on Human Rights and Angel of Memory . She is currently a
Professor
of Spanish at Wellesley College and was
recently named a fellow to the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American
Studies at Harvard University.
ABOUT THE ACTRESS, Georgina Corbo
Georgina Corbo is a graduate of the High
School of Performing Arts, minored in Latin American studies and received
her BFA in Acting from SUNY Purchase.
While she was there she received the Harry Belafonte Scholarship for the
Arts. Ms. Corbo has been featured in Law and
Order, New York
Undercover and Movie of the Week, It's Always Something .
Her stage credits include leading roles off
Broadway in Ariano and Brecht's Mrs. Carrar's Riffles, Ismene in Antigone at
The Kennedy Center, and Jack Black at the International Theatre
Festival in St. Petersburg, Russia. She can be seen and heard in various
television commercials and voice-overs, the film Muscle Car and on Sesame Street as letter of the week
"E" opposite Elmo.
ABOUT THE MUSIC
Music in the show ranges from popular and
folk songs from the Mexican, Salvadoran and Argentinean cultures, to
transcriptions of works by Astor Piazzolla,
to new music written especially for the Core Ensemble by composers
Osvaldo
Golijov, Orlando Garcia, Pablo Ortiz and Michael DeMurga.
ABOUT THE DIRECTOR, Matthew Wright
Matthew
Wright is an actor, director and theatre educator whose work has taken him
across the United States. As an actor he has appeared at such nationally
acclaimed regional theatres as The La Jolla Playhouse, The McCarter Theatre,
The Clarence Brown Company, The Studio Arena Theatre and Trinity Repertory
Theatre. He has worked with many wonderful theatre artists including
directors Des MacAnuff, Tina Landau, Anne Bogart, and Oskar Eustis and a roster
of award-winning actors. His work as a director has included such diverse
works as Brand, Hedda Gabler , Three Sisters , Ivanov, Misalliance, On The Verge, Harvey , Holy Ghosts and three multi-disciplinary pieces with CORE Ensemble. He has
served on the faculties of The Ohio State University, Wright State University,
and Florida Atlantic University. He is currently Associate Professor of Theatre
at Oberlin College.
TAHIRAH WHITTINGTON, Cellist
Tahirah Whittington is a native of Houston, Texas, and has performed for
audiences in the U.S., Chile, France, Italy, and Japan. Solo engagements
include a performance with the National Symphony Orchestra
at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, at Merkin Hall in New York City, and
with the New England Conservatory Symphony in Boston, MA. Ms. Whittington is
formerly a member of the Acacia String Quartet, winners of the 1999 Artists
International Competition. A recipient of the Irene Diamond and C.V. Starr
Scholarships, she holds a Master of Music Degree from the Juilliard School,
where she studied cello and chamber music with Joel Krosnick and Joel Smirnoff
of the Juilliard Quartet. She received her Bachelor of Music Degree from the
New England Conservatory, under the tutelage of Laurence Lesser.
HUGH HINTON, Pianist
Hugh Hinton has performed widely as a chamber musician and recitalist,
including concerts and residencies throughout the Middle East as a United
States Information Agency Artistic Ambassador. Orchestral engagements include
joining the Aequalis Ensemble in performances of Chinary Ung’s Triple Concerto
with the Phoenix, New Hampshire, and Honolulu symphonies. Mr. Hinton has
performed at summer music festivals, including Tanglewood and Monadnock, and at
such concert halls as the Gardner Museum in Boston and the Phillips Collection
in Washington, D.C. His recordings of chamber and contemporary music have been
broadcast internationally on “Art of the States” and can be found on the Etcetera,
CRI, Albany, and Newport Classics labels. Mr. Hinton earned his Bachelor’s
degree from Harvard University and Master’s and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees
from New England Conservatory, where his piano teachers included Russell
Sherman, Wha-Kyung Byun, Lev Vlasenko, and Mykola Suk. A committed teacher, Mr.
Hinton has taught music history at New England Conservatory and currently
serves as instructor of piano at the Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA. He
has been a member of the Core Ensemble since its founding in 1993.
MICHAEL PAROLA , Percussionist
Michael Parola received his B.F.A. from State University of New York at
Purchase and his M.M. and D.M.A. from the State University of New York at Stony
Brook. His primary teachers were Raymond Des Roches and Richard Horowitz. Mr.
Parola was a founding member and percussionist with the Aequalis Ensemble from
1984-1993. With Aequalis, Mr. Parola toured nationally, presenting hundreds of
concerts and master classes in every region of the United States. During the
1992-93 season, he appeared with Aequalis in performances of the Chinary Ung
Triple Concerto with the Phoenix, Honolulu and New Hampshire Symphonies.
Additional work with Aequalis included national radio broadcasts on NPR’s “A
Note To You,” international radio broadcasts for Voice of America and on CD,
with a highly acclaimed 1991 release on New World Records. Michael Parola has
commissioned many new works for solo percussion, with nationwide performances
of pieces by composers such as Edward Cohen, Jorge Liderman, Armand
Qualliotine, and James Baker III.
As an orchestral timpanist, he has performed in the American premieres of works
by Verdi, Donizetti and Shostakovich. Mr. Parola is active in teaching, with an
appointment as percussion instructor at the Conservatory of Music at Lynn University
in Boca Raton, Florida. In 1993 he founded the Core Ensemble
in which he serves as Percussionist and Executive Director.