  A variant of a gauge theory is formulated to describe disclinations on
Riemannian surfaces that may change both the Gaussian (intrinsic) and mean
(extrinsic) curvatures, which implies that both internal strains and a location
of the surface in R^3 may vary. Besides, originally distributed disclinations
are taken into account. For the flat surface, an extended variant of the
Edelen-Kadic gauge theory is obtained. Within the linear scheme our model
recovers the von Karman equations for membranes, with a disclination-induced
source being generated by gauge fields. For a single disclination on an
arbitrary elastic surface a covariant generalization of the von Karman
equations is derived.
