Contacts: Dave Pier,
(818) 677-5768
david.pier@csun.edu
or Carmen Ramos Chandler,
carmen.chandler@csun.edu,
(818) 677-2130

New York's Mabou Mines to Premiere
New Theatrical Piece at CSUN

The performance features artists from Mexico and the United States and explores the lives of women locked away in the Recogimiento de Belen, a sanctuary in Mexico City created by the Catholic Church in the 17th century as a refuge for single women with no means of support.

The show will take place at 8 p.m. on March 30 and March 31 in the university's Performing Arts Center. The center is on the east side of the campus at 18111 Nordhoff St., Northridge. Parking is available in the university's Lot C. Patrons should enter the campus at the corner of Zelzah Avenue and Plummer Street, a half mile north of Nordhoff Street.

Admissions is $15 and $25 for adults; $12 for seniors; and $10 for students. Tickets are available through the CSUN Ticket Office at (818) 677-2488 weekdays from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. This show is not recommended for children.

For 100 years, the Recogimiento de Belen was maintained like a women's prison with a harsh, regimented lifestyle from which no one could physically escape. Many went insane and many committed suicide. In 1860, the Mexican government took control of Belen and created a government-run prison which became one of Mexico City's most notoriously violent until it was finally torn down in 1935.

While Las Horas de Belen - A Book of Hours strives to capture the voices of some of the women in Belén, the situations illustrated are not specific to Mexico or that time in history. Through poetry, music, movement and multi-media visual effects, the piece merges past and present, and in doing so, considers what has and hasn't changed for many women around the world facing oppression.

Las Horas de Belen features a performance by Jesusa Rodriguez, one of Mexico's leading theater and performance artists. Music for the piece is composed and performed in Spanish by Argentina-born composer/pianist/singer Liliana Felipe, a resident of Mexico City since 1977. The lighting and set design is by award-winning Julie Archer, who has designed sets, lighting and puppets for Mabou Mines for more than 20 years.

Las Horas de Belen was developed through a series of intense, short-term residencies that allowed the artists involved to develop the work collaboratively over time.

Ruth Maleczech (director and founding member of Mabou Mines) first met Catherine Sasanov (poet and lyricist) in 1995 as part of a US-Mexico Creative Artist Cultural Exchange grant program, at which time the concept for the piece was hatched.

Luz Aurora Pimentel and Alberto Blanco were recruited to provide sensitive translations of the poetry, which is sung in Spanish and projected in English onto half of the set, thereby creating a life-size "Book of Hours" in which a prayer fills one page and a living painting fills the opposite page.

In 1997 and 1998, the project received the Rockefeller Foundation's Multi-Arts Production award, which included one month residency each year at the Rockefeller Study and Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy. The artists continued their collaboration at the Sundance Theatre Lab in Utah

The piece premiered in an invitational performance at Mexico City's 15th Festival del Centro Historico in spring 1999, with an off-Broadway run in New York shortly thereafter. A second mounting of the show in New York immediately precedes the Northridge performance. The Northridge performance is supported by a major grant from the US-Mexico Fund for Culture. Mabou Mine intends to tour the piece nationally in the future.

Founded in 1970 and based in New York City, Mabou Mines is a collaborative theater company whose members have included such distinguished artists as Jo-Anne Akalaitis, William Raymond, Greg Mehrten, Ellen McElduff, L.B. Dallas, Philip Glass and David Warrilow. The present company includes Lee Breuer, Ruth Maleczech, Frederick Neumann and Terry O'Reilly.

Recognized internationally as a model of avant-garde theatre, Mabou Mines has received more than 30 prestigious awards for its productions over the years while members of the company have been honored with MacArthur, Guggenheim, Rockefeller Playwriting and Fulbright fellowships. Mabou Mines' work was last seen in Los Angeles at the Geffen Play in 1997 in the acclaimed show Peter and Wendy.

For a free brochure describing all arts events taking place at Cal State Northridge, call (818) 677-3943.