Performances will take place at 8 p.m. on Thursdays through Sundays and at 2 p.m. on Saturdays in the Drama Theatre of the Center for the Arts on the North Campus. Tickets are $10 (general admission), $5 (students and seniors) and may be obtained through the Center for the Arts box office, 645-ARTS. Group rates are available.

The production, directed by Maria S. Horne, assistant professor of theatre and dance, has been invited to represent the U.S. in the International Festival of the Arts '96, to be held March 15-30 in San Jose, Costa Rica. The fifth biennial festival will be presented this year under the auspices of President Jose Maria Figueres Olsen of Costa Rica.

The UB production will be choreographed by Linda Swiniuch, with set and costume designs by Leandro Soto. Lighting is by Gary Casarella and sound design is by Bryan Sidorowicz.

Featured players will include Joshua Sternlicht, Stephanie Bakowski, and Elizabeth M. Polito alternating in the role of the shoemaker's wife; Leonard Ziolkowski as the shoemaker; Jason Hare and Chelsea Leigh Horne as the boy and girl. Joy Scime plays the sacristan's wife, Jacob Mirer plays the mayor and Meron Langsner plays Don Mirlo. The cast also includes Brian Hemedinger, Rachel Venokur, Jill McGuinness, and Rebecca Simon.

Frederico Garcia Lorca is the most significant figure in modern Spanish literature and, as a poet, must be ranked among the greatest of the 20th century.

A master of voluptuous, sulfurous, vibrating language, he is known principally for intense poetic tragedies in which he treated such themes as frustrated womanhood and the conflict between love and honor, motifs reflected in his magnificent dramatic trilogy comprised of "Blood Wedding," "Yerma" and "The House of Bernardo Alba."

His evocative portrayals of Andalusian peasant life haunted by premonitions of violent death earned him his reputation, but he also has written lighter fare, including farces for stage and puppet theater. These, too, however, are often clouded by a somber mien.

"The Shoemaker's Prodigious Wife" is a fine example of this type of work. It is a lyrical, experimental play for which Lorca adapted and harmonized folk songs and "surrealized" folk dance in a spirit of revolt against the contemporary fashion for Realism.

He described it as a "violent farce," but the play contains no violence and is less of a farce in the French or Anglo-American tradition than it is a comedic poem about the human spirit.

"That spirit," Lorca said, "is the only really important character in the play....After all, the shoemaker's wife is not a particular woman but all women....The whole audience has a shoemaker's wife within its heart."

The play recreates an old folk tale about a hardworking but dull shoemaker who is unhappily married to a beautiful daydreamer much younger than himself. No longer able to bear the village gossip about her flirtations with other men, the shoemaker runs away.

Abandoned by her husband but faithful to him alone, the wife takes to supporting herself by running a tavern. The shoemaker returns, disguised as a puppeteer and is delighted to learn how much she loved her errant husband and reveals his true identity. She is at once horrified and thrilled and, despite her scolding, they stand together, united against the villagers.