The following is a republished press release from The Cherry Arts and NOT written by The Ithaca Voice … click here to submit community announcements directly to The Voice, or email tips@ithacavoice.com.
ITHACA, N.Y. — This Spring, The Cherry Arts is thrilled to present the English-language première of two one-act plays by Argentine playwright and filmmaker Santiago Loza. LOZA PLAYS will run Tuesday April 25 – Saturday April 29 at 7:30PM, with an additional matinee at 2:30 on Saturday, in the Martha Hamblin Hall at the Community School of Music and Arts in Ithaca (330 E. State St.). Tickets are available at www.thecherry.org
Santiago Loza is a masterful teller of mysterious, lyrical and moving stories, and The Cherry Arts is honored that this production will bring his theatrical voice to the English-speaking world for the first time. In WINTER ANIMALS, an aging rural rancher makes a trip to the tiny Buenos Aires apartment of his bookish son and finds a truly unexpected roommate; in NOTHING TO DO WITH LOVE, a small-town dressmaker recalls her greatest triumph from a startling perspective.
Loza is one of the leading contemporary playwrights of Latin America, as well as a celebrated filmmaker. His films have screened at festivals including Berlin, Rotterdam (where Extraño won the Tiger Award for best film) and Cannes (where Los Labios received the Un Certain Regard prize). He is no less prominent in theater; his plays have been awarded the Teatro XXI, Trinidad Guevara and Konex Letras prizes, and are widely produced throughout Latin America and increasingly in Europe. (At the time of this writing, four of Loza’s plays are running concurrently in Buenos Aires, and one at the Teatro de la Abadía in Madrid.) The Cherry Arts is thrilled that this production of LOZA PLAYS will mark the first time Santiago Loza’s theatrical writing will appear in the English language.
LOZA PLAYS are co-translated by Cherry artistic director Samuel Buggeln, working respectively with Buenos Aires playwright Ariel Gurevitch and Alejandro Tantanian, Artistic Director of that city’s Teatro Cervantes. The production will mark The Cherry Arts’ final “itinerant” show before moving into the Cherry Artspace, now completing construction on Cherry Street in Ithaca. For this production the Cherry will create a striking duo of theatrical installations in the beautiful Martha Hamblin Hall at CSMA.
The Cherry Arts is committed to making theatre that is accessible to all, and operates with a “self-determined pricing” ticketing policy. Tickets to LOZA PLAYS start at $8, with a suggested price of $20 for the gainfully employed, and $40 suggested to support the artists. Tickets can be purchased at http://lozaplays.bpt.me/.
**Please note: This production contains nudity.
WINTER ANIMALS is directed by Samuel Buggeln, and stars Helen T. Clark, Dean Robinson, and Johnny Shea. NOTHING TO DO WITH LOVE is directed by Norm Johnson and is performed by Susannah Berryman. (Berryman and Robinson appear courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association). The creative team for LOZA PLAYS includes Daniel Zimmerman (environment), E.D. Intemann (lights), Brock Viering (costumes) and Sergey Levitskiy (sound).
The Cherry Arts, Ithaca’s newest professional performing arts organization, is a not-for-profit theater company that provides Ithaca and surrounding area audiences with theater that is radically local, radically international, and formally innovative. The company creates works over long periods of time, developed by an ensemble of professional theater artists based in Ithaca. The Cherry Artspace, a multidisciplinary theater and arts venue, is in the final stages of construction at 102 Cherry Street, on Ithaca’s Cayuga Inlet waterfront, and will be opening to the public in late spring 2017. For more information, visit TheCherry.org
Featured image: ‘Nothing to do with Love’ is directed by Norm Johnson and is performed by Susannah Berryman, in the featured image. (Provided photo)