CWRU will celebrate the lives of three Latin-American heroines in Tres Vidas (Three Lives), a theatrical and musical event, highlighting the accomplishments of the Mexican painter Frida Kahlo, the Salvadoran peasant-activist Rufina Amaya and Argentine poet Alfonsina Storni.

The event takes place at 2 p.m. September 22 in Harkness Chapel and concludes CWRU's Humanities Week (September 15-22), "In these Americas," in the College of Arts and Sciences. Tres Vidas also coincides with Hispanic Heritage Month.

Tres Vidas was conceived by the Core Ensemble, a Florida-based musical trio. The trio includes Tahirah Whittington on cello, Hugh Hinton on piano and Michael Parola on percussion.

Written by award-winning Chilean poet and human rights activist Marjorie Agosin, Tres Vidas features actress Georgina Corbo, who portrays all three protagonists with the Core Ensemble on-stage. Corbo has performed on television in "Law and Order" and "New York Undercover." Corbo also has appeared on stage on Broadway, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and in Russia's International Theatre Festival at St. Petersburg.

The score of Tres Vidas incorporates popular and folk music from a variety of Latin cultures, including the tangos of Astor Piazolla and songs of Carlos Gardel, plus new works by other Latin American composers.

A brief look at the three women of Tres Vidas is as follows:

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) led a life marked by physical suffering. She contracted polio at the age of five and as a young woman was horribly injured in a bus accident. Her great love was painter Diego Rivera, whom she married twice and to whom she dedicated a passionate diary. Her paintings, especially her self-portraits, are noted for their immediacy, frankness and strength.

Rufina Amaya (b. 1943) was a 38-year-old housewife in 1981 when the Salvadoran army swept through the region of Morazon in a campaign to root our guerrillas and their sympathizers. Nearly 1,000 peasants were slaughtered. Amaya, whose husband and four children were killed, is the only known survivor of the massacre.

Alfonsina Storni (1892-1938) was Argentina's first feminist poet. She also wrote novels and plays and worked as a journalist. Storni lived at a time when women in Argentina were in total subjugation to husbands, fathers and social convention. She stood alone in her time in seeing through the hypocrisy of social convention.

The Cleveland production of Tres Vidas is sponsored by CWRU's Flora Stone Mather Alumnae Association, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Office of the President, the Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities, the departments of music and economics, the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the University Women's Coalition.

Beginning August 1, tickets are on sale for $15 for adults and $12 for students and adults over 65. For information, call 368-6996 or e-mail Charlotte Newman at cmn5@po.cwru.edu.