We Players' Canciones del Mar to Return to Maritime National Historical Park's Balclutha, 7/19

Back by popular demand after last year's sold-out performance, We Players (Artistic Director, Ava Roy; Managing Director, Lauren D. Chavez), in partnership with San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, will present a special one-night music concert aboard the tall ship Balclutha on Saturday, July 19, 2014.

The program: Canciones del Mar: Songs of the Sea, features three of the Bay Area's most exciting vocalists as they perform an intimate concert, singing songs about the sea, boats, love, and life, drawn from the folkloric and popular music traditions of Latin America and the Caribbean.

This program is curated by We Players Music Director, Charlie Gurke. For tickets and more information, call 415.547.0189 or visit www.weplayers.org.

Featuring:

Diana Gameros - Vocals and Guitar

Jose Roberto Hernandez - Vocals and Guitar

Edgardo Cambon - Vocals and Percussion

Charlie Gurke - Saxophone

Sam Bevan - Bass

WE PLAYERS and SAN FRANCISCO MARITIME NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK

We Players has a five year cooperative agreement with San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park. This is the first partnership of its kind in the nation. As a result of this partnership, We Players is collaborating with a wide range of artists, creating work from diverse vantage points in a variety of media as an exercise in exploring the many layers of story within the national historic park.

The extended venue of San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, including the Maritime Museum building, Municipal Pier, Hyde Street Pier, the historic vessels, Victorian Park, and Aquatic Park and lagoon serves as a laboratory for We Players experiments in site-integrated programming. This current cooperative agreement is set for 2012-2017. Projects include the generation of new theatre works inspired by classical literature and Greek mythology, music concerts, dance, staged readings, visual art exhibits, conversations, parties, and workshops. In addition, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park will serve as a "floating classroom" for We Players' growing Aesthetic Education Program, which is intended to serve youth from diverse backgrounds in neighborhoods throughout the Bay Area. This long-term residency allows We Players to deepen and further stretch its artistic practice.

In this vein, Canciones del Mar - curated by We Players' Music Director, Charlie Gurke - continues We Players' commitment to a music series that prioritizes local musical talent and will entice local audiences to visit this hidden gem at the far end of Fisherman's Wharf. Later this fall, We Players is slated to collaborate with the saxophone quartet ROVA, for a site-specific jazz improvisation piece, aboard historic ferryboat Eureka, across Hyde Street Pier. ROVA has been a fixture of the Bay Area music scene for over three decades, and We Players is honored to work with the group.

ABOUT SAN FRANCISCO MARITIME NATIONAL HISTORICAL PARK: San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, located on the edge of San Francisco Bay near Fisherman's Wharf, is open year-round. Visitors can view exhibits at the Park's Visitor Center (415-447-5000) at the corner of Jefferson Street and Hyde, and may walk onto the pier to visit the park's collection of floating historic ships and for breathtaking views of the San Francisco Bay and Golden Gate Bridge. Tours, videos and demonstrations are offered daily, including a below-decks tour of the ferryboat Eureka and a demonstration of setting Balclutha's staysail. Visitors to the Park, schoolchildren learning maritime history, and shipwrights restoring and repairing the historic vessels of the Park's fleet bustle amidst the restaurants and attractions of Fisherman's Wharf, and the commerce of working and pleasure craft on the Bay.

ABOUT BALCLUTHA: The Balclutha is a three-masted, steel-hulled, square-rigged ship built to carry a variety of cargo all over the world. Launched in 1886 near Glasgow, Scotland, the ship carried goods around Cape Horn (tip of South America) 17 times. It took a crew of about 26 men to handle the ship at sea with her complex rigging and 25 sails. Balclutha also had a brief career as a movie star in Mutiny on the Bounty, alongside Clark Gable and Charles Laughton; she narrowly escaped World War II scrap metal drives before being purchased by the San Francisco Maritime Museum in 1954.

EXPERIENCING THE BAY AREA WITH WE PLAYERS: As with recent performances on Alcatraz and Angel Island State Park, We Players continues its collaboration with the National Park Service and California State Parks to connect people with local Bay Area public spaces through site-integrated theatre. "An essential goal of our work is to inspire in our audience personal relationships with the places in which we play," says Ava Roy, the company's Artistic Director. Its upcoming production of Macbeth at Fort Point is located inside Fort Point, in the direct onslaught of the billowing fog and relentless wind. The Golden Gate Bridge soars overhead and the city skyline flickers giving audiences a full sensory immersion into Macbeth's Scotland as it collides with Civil War era and modern day San Francisco.

ABOUT WE PLAYERS: San Francisco Magazine recently honored We Players with the "Best of the Bay" pick for their unique site-specific performance work and declared, "We Players didn't just break the fourth wall, it toppled the whole playhouse". According to Managing Director Lauren D. Chavez, "We Players' mission is to create site-integrated theatre productions that transform public spaces into realms of participatory theatre, in an effort to engage with history and the environment, build community, and inspire personal relationships with place." For more information, visit www.weplayers.org.

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