Photo Flash: First Look at CRT's OLIVES AND BLOOD

Connecticut Repertory Theatre (CRT) will open their 2014-15 season with Olives and Blood at the Nafe Katter Theatre October 2nd - 12th. Written by Michael Bradford, this new play stars Martín Solá as Juan Luis Trescante Medina, the aging fascist who claims responsibility for the murder of poet-playwright Federico Garcia Lorca, played by Nicholas Urda. Scroll down for a first look a them onstage!

Martín Solá has appeared on Broadway in The King and I, Baz Luhrmann's La Boheme and Coram Boy. His regional credits include The Kennedy Center, The Goodspeed Opera House, The Signature Theatre and The Sundance Theatre. Solá has also appeared onstage in performance singing with the New York Pops. He played the lead role in the off-Broadway world premiere of All Eyes and Ears, directed by Eduardo Machado with INTAR.

The cast will feature Equity actors Nicholas Urda as Lorca, Anita Petry as Margarite/The Actress, Anthony J. Goes as Alonso/Ignacio, and Dale AJ Rose as Eduardo. The cast also includes Saul Alvarez, Whitney Andrews, Gabriel Aprea, Kent Coleman, and Derrick Holmes.

Olives and Blood tells the story of Juan Luis Trescante, an aging fascist that is called before a judiciary tribunal to testify about his involvement in the murder of Spanish poet-playwright Federico Garcia Lorca. Moving in time and space between the 1930s and 1970s, Bradford explores the last days of the talented poet, and the political and social motivations that attempted to silence his voice. A relatively new play Olives and Blood was first produced in New York City at HERE in 2012. It received its British premiere in the fall of 2013 in London at Brixton East. Michael Bradford's work has been produced Off-Broadway at the American Place Theatre, and also in New York at the Lark Developmental theatre, the Flea, The Access and the NADA Theatre.

It is said in Spain that the dead are more alive than the day they were born. So it is for the presumed murderer of Federico Garcia Lorca, Juan Luis Trescante Medina. 60 years after Lorca's unsolved death, the aging fascist, Trescante, fights to hold onto the myth of an execution that has defined his life but failed to silence the great poet. In Spain, sixty years is little more than a breath, and a reckoning is all but inevitable. Olives and Blood investigates the repression of the artist in times of political upheaval and the power of a poetic voice that resonates beyond the confines of the flesh. Bradford examines how an artist's life may end, but their work continues on. Riveting and thought provoking, this plunge into the resonance of art is directed by Gary M. English (Pentecost, A Man for All Seasons)

Preview performance is tomorrow, October 2, 2014. Opening night is Friday October 3, performances continue through October 12, 2014 onstage at the Nafe Katter Theatre on the campus of UConn in Storrs, CT. Tickets are available online at crt.uconn.edu or via phone at 860-486-2113. Subscriptions for the entire 2014-15 season are still available.