Mexico City's Spring 2006 Theatre Season
2006; Department of Spanish and Portuguese, University of Kansas; Volume: 40; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1353/ltr.2006.0030
ISSN2161-0576
Autores Tópico(s)Theatre and Performance Studies
ResumoFALL2006 153 Mexico City’s Spring 2006 Theatre Season TimothyG.Compton Numerous theatre people asked while I was in Mexico if I felt, as they did, that this year’s offerings were weaker than in the recent past. I reserved judgment until finishing my recorrido, but in the end I had to agree with the general sentiment. The closest things I saw to big-scale spectacular theatre this year were translations. Even those plays, however, were mediumscale at best, albeit with excellent performances. Cupo limitado seemed to characterize most of this season’s most memorable theatrical offerings. The second tiniest foro I have ever seen (second only to the forito of Utopía Urbana) housed two of this season’s most unique plays, Asalto al agua transparente and Ensayo sobre la inmovilidad. La Madriguera is not easy to find and is not well-marked. The box office consists of a portable stand placed on the sidewalk in front of the theatre’s door about 45 minutes prior to a performance. The theatre has no lobby and does not even have a ground level floor – a long stairway takes spectators directly up to a small, misshapen, bare, second-story apartment which La Máquina del Teatro, a small theatre group headed by Alberto Villareal, maintains as an unlikely performance space. The subtitle for Asalto al agua transparente, a play written, directed and acted by Luisa Pardo and Gabino Rodríguez, was Historia del agua y la ciudad de México. The play chronicled the history of Mexico City through the lens of water, culminating in a focus on the presentday crisis of trying to provide it for more than 20 million people on a daily basis in a city far from any major rivers. And yet the performance did not feel like a history lesson, but a play focusing primarily on the developing relationship of a young couple in the city, and on their concern for the environment. On the way they took on the roles of historical figures such as Cortés, Moctezuma and Malinche. The set could not have cost more than 154 LATINAMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW few dollars, but was exceptionally effective. It consisted of 19 empty wooden crates, 16 of which were neatly arranged, upsidedown and center stage in rows of eight at the beginning of the play. This arrangement left seating for 15 spectators. In addition, the set included several seats, several wash tubs, an altar, and half a dozen small, quirky items hanging from the ceiling, including three baggies filled with water. During the play the pair arranged the crates in at least ten different formations representing different things, such as an avenue, a bed, a river bed and a drainage causeway. In a particularly powerful scene Rodríguez hurled empty food packaging at Pardo and into the “water,” representing the contamination of scarce resources over the years and continuing in the present. Several times water itself became a prop, most notably when Rodríguez punctured the baggies toward the end of the play, releasing water in tiny spray into tins. It created an effective auditory and visual effect and symbolized the depletion of water resources in Mexico City. This play was dramatically sound, extremely well acted and broached a subject of major social importance. Part of its charm and power was its “clandestine” setting, but it deserved a much bigger audience than the venue could accommodate. The other play in La Madriguera was a strange yet fascinating play written and directed by the theatre’s director,Alberto Villarreal Díaz. Ensayo sobre la inmovilidad exploited the nooks and crannies of the quirky apartment/theatre, presenting an avalanche of symbols coming at spectators from numerous directions. In fact, the experience of the play was vastly different for each spectator depending on where each sat. The 28 spectators Asalto al agua transparente. Foto: Juan Leduc FALL2006 155 sat arena-style in the center of the stage, with perhaps two feet between the facing sides. Action occurred in that middle passageway, around the entire perimeter of the room, in a pair of adjoining rooms linked by open, arched doorways, in rooms or closets linked by eight sets of...
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