Do you need help with HOW TO ORDER A CHOCOLATE CAKE?

This weekend, Jersey City Theater Center (JCTC) presents a provocative multimedia performance piece that might get messy. How To Order A Chocolate Cake, created and directed by David Antonio Cruz, is an original and interactive work based on Sonnets of Dark Love, a posthumous collection of love poems by Garcia Lorca.

"How To Order A Chocolate Cake is a fun and experimental bilingual performance about visibility based on the last eleven poems by Garcia Lorca," said Cruz. "I'm excited to present a longer theatrical version with projections and additional songs at Merseles Studios."

How to Order a Chocolate Cake - which looks at physical image issues, especially how it relates to LGBT individuals - is part of JCTC's Vanity Series, exploring the nature of self, narcissism, and celebrity in today's society.

Lorca, the beloved Spanish poet and playwright, lived in New York before returning to Spain to fight in the Spanish Civil War, where he was assonated in 1936 by Nationalist Forces. Lorca was a gay writer and Sonnets of Dark Love was inspired by his love for another man. Cruz calls his interpretation - which features filmed projections, an original score by Daniel de Jesus, and three actors - and a climax involving chocolate syrup - "a commentary on the visibility of the queer brown body in society."

How to Order a Chocolate Cake was first presented on the High Line Park in a shorter version in 2015, another, longer version soon followed at BRIC in downtown Brooklyn. The version presented by JCTC at Merseles Studios on September 30th and October 1st has been expanded into the longest, and most complex version yet. Cruz is a multidisciplinary, New York-based artist who fuses painting, video, and performance to explore the invisibility and silencing oF Brown and black queer bodies throughout history and within our communities."

Cruz's films have been shown at the Big Screen Project, the Anthology Film Archives, Arte Americas, and various installations in Philadelphia, Chapel Hill, Los Angeles, and Miami. Recently he produced and performed The Lorca Project Performance: Green, How I Want You Green at Snug Harbor Cultural Center and Botanical Gardens. His body of work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Journal USA, Studio Magazine, Arc Magazine, Time Out New York, Bomb Magazine, and El Centro Journal.

While the first time for a performance art in Jersey City, Cruz has shown his visual art here. In 2006, he was included in Tropocalisms, an exhibition curated by Aranda-Alvarado at the Jersey City Museum.

In addition to Cruz, How To Order A Chocolate Cake also stars Jennifer Jade Ledesna and Lisa Rosetta Strum. Daniel de Jesus will provide musical accompaniment, playing his original score live during the show.

How To Order A Chocolate Cake

September 30/7:00 PM - 10:00 PM
October 1/7:00PM-10:00 PM.
Tickets: $18 online/$20 at door

To purchase tickets visit>jctcenter.org

Jersey City Theater Center
Merseles Studios
339 Newark Avenue
Jersey City, NJ 07302
(201) 795-5386

Vanity is made possible through the generosity of Ben LoPiccolo Development Group, JCTC's Board of Directors, private donors and local Jersey City businesses.

Jersey City Theater Center, Inc. (JCTC) manages programming at Merseles Studios and the adjacent White Eagle Hall, currently under construction. JCTC is a nonprofit, 501c3 arts organization committed to presenting innovative and progressive performing & visual arts as well as educational arts programs that embrace the multicultural identity and preserve the rich history of Jersey City, bringing its community closer together and enhancing its quality of life. > jctcenter.org

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