THE RIVER BRIDE Opens Next Week at Arizona Theatre Company

The River Bride, Marisela Treviño Orta's poignant story of true love, regret, transformation and the struggle to stay true to your family and to yourself, will have its Arizona premiere at the Temple of Music & Art in Tucson from Oct. 21 to Nov. 16 and at the Herberger Theater Center in Phoenix from Nov. 11 to Dec. 3.

The River Bride, which the San Francisco Chronicle described as "myth meets everyday life with luminous grace," won the 2013 Arizona Theatre Company (David Ivers, Artistic Director; Billy Russo, Managing Director) National Latino Playwriting Award.

ATC's 2017-18 season in Tucson is sponsored by I. Michael and Beth Kasser.

"(Marisela Treviño) Orta has birthed a work of great beauty; a play that is at once transcendent and triumphant," Jeffrey Gillespie wrote in the Ashland (Ore.) Daily Tidings during the world premiere at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival in 2016. "Orta carries, in her very bones, a profound understanding of the history and deep literary legacy within her community."

The play, rescheduled from last season, is the story of two sisters in a fishing village along the Amazon struggling to find their happily-ever-after. Helena is dreading her sister Belmira's wedding because the groom, Duarte, should have been hers. And she knows that her sister only wants to escape their sleepy Brazilian town for an exciting new life in the city.

But three days before the wedding, fishermen pull a mysterious stranger out of the river - a man with no past who offers both sisters an alluring, possibly dangerous future in a story that blends Brazilian folklore and lyric storytelling into a heartrending tale.

"The River Bride is accessible, elegant and poignant, and yet its message will linger, like lost love, for a long while in the hearts and minds of those theater patrons fortunate enough to fall under its spell," Gillespie wrote.

Kinan Valdez, who last directed the critically acclaimed La Esquinita, USA for Arizona Theatre Company, will direct The River Bride.

Single ticket prices range from $25 to $73 in Tucson and $25 to $80 in Phoenix and can be purchased at the box offices at the Temple of Music & Art and the Herberger Theatre Center or online at www.arizonatheatre.org.

The River Bride will be followed by a new production of Man of La Mancha (directed by David Bennett, choreography by Kathryn Van meter) in Tucson, Dec. 2-31 and Phoenix, Jan. 5-28, 2018; Outside Mullingar (directed by ATC Artistic Director David Ivers), from the author of Doubt and Moonstruck, in Tucson, Jan. 20-Feb. 10 and Phoenix from Feb. 15-March 4; Low Down Dirty Blues (directed by Randal Myler), in Tucson March 10-31 and in Phoenix, April 5-22; and The Diary of Anne Frank, directed by ATC Artistic Director Emeritus David Ira Goldstein, in Tucson April 21-May 12 and in Phoenix, May 17-June 3.

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