The Ministry of Education of the province of Santa Fe has opened an investigation with Child Protection Services to determine whether or not the rights of five second grade students were violated by participating in a partisan school play on 9 July that has generated much controversy since it went viral on Thursday, 22 November.

The students attend Public School Juana Azurduy de Padilla, in Los Amores, Santa Fe province. The 5 minute-long play, titled “She who couldn’t save (in dollars)”, was a parody of the Mexican telenovela “She who couldn’t love”, and was not a part of the school curriculum.

The seven-year-old actors, some reading from scripts and some proudly reciting their memorised lines, speak of ‘dollars’, ‘cacerolazos’, ‘social plans’, ‘rich and poor’, and the nationalised oil company YPF, among other topics that are currently the subject of hot debate in Argentina.

The central character, Rosaura, is a wealthy Argentine who criticises President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner for enacting legislation meant to curtail the act of saving in North American dollars.

“How is this possible?” she asks. “Who would have thought we’d have a president that prohibits her people from having dollars? We have to do something, let’s have a cacerolazo [anti-government protest] right now!”

Another student chimes in “I believe it is a just idea, calm down a little, our country deals in pesos and thinking in our own currency is something very logical.”

Although meant to imitate the melodrama of the Mexican telenovela, the school production takes a disturbing turn when Rosaura is shot by a fellow classmate in a dispute over the currency debate, the role of the government in aiding the poor, and what it means to be a patriotic Argentine.

The narrator closes the play, to the applause and laughter of the audience, reading “By not thinking of the poor or seeking justice, ambition killed Rosaura. Careful! It can kill a country. Let’s value what’s ours and we’ll finally be free.”

Santa Fe Minister of Education Leticia Mengarelli said in an interview with Radio Mitre “Regardless of the ideologies or political views of the parents, children cannot be manipulated by adults.”

She added “We submitted a request to Child Protection Services to evaluate whether or not there was a violation of the rights of the children. We have also taken administrative steps to find out who is responsible among the adults in charge of the children.”

Ministry functionaries were impeded from speaking directly with school personnel due to torrential rains that blocked access to the town of Los Amores, though they have been in contact through email and telephone. The school’s principal, Omar Walker, has stated that the play was not meant to proselytise and that it “had a sense of humour”.

When I met Marcelo Pitrola as part of our Author Spotlight series last September, he mentioned he was working on a new project: a collaboration with longtime artistic partner Silvia Hilario and actress Emilse Diaz.

‘Diario de incertidumbre’, which premiered on 5th May and is excerpted in an exclusive English translation here, is an eerie tale about a woman caught in a hospital with a mysterious ailment. As she waits for a diagnosis, she re-lives and then re-evaluates her life, falling further and further away from certainty as the double examination progresses.

The play stars Emilse Diaz as the troubled woman at the center of the story, and Silvia Hilario as both doctor and nurse.

I was captivated by the idea of what is essentially a one-woman play: how would such a thing evolve onstage? How would her memories manifest? How would an actress perform under such obscured conditions? How would a stage director use an atmosphere as cold as a hospital ward to convey so many shades of emotion?

I met up with Marcelo, Silvia and Emilise to discuss the work, the collaborative process, and the creative constraints of portraying an entire life in a single clinic room.

How did you get the idea for ‘Diario’?

Marcelo: Silvia proposed the core image of the story. Afterwards, I began to sort through my own thoughts and questions regarding the different women, selecting here and there in my attempt to construct Diana and her world. I began to write the interior monologue that serves as the linchpin of the play, and the idea of a private diary immediately appeared as the ideal medium.

Silvia: The idea was based on my own experience. I’d had an accident – I was that helpless patient. I wanted to capture that feeling of stasis, of confusion.

Marcelo and I started with the central vision of the woman under diagnosis, and he gave it dramatic form. He invented the mythology of Diana’s life – the ballet teacher, the absent father – and came up with the idea of the acts. It was a very comfortable collaboration and it’s been wonderful to work with him.

Marcelo: Theatre is a collective, collaborative activity. Effective dialogue produces the best work. Silvia is a good friend and she’d already performed as the protagonist in my earlier play, ‘The Peronist Princess’. We’ve always had an excellent rapport, and we have similar ideas about what aspects of theatre are most appealing. I suppose that’s why she approached me with this idea.

And how was it, Emilse, to come into this process as an actress?

Emilse: I have to confess that it was difficult in the beginning, wondering how to convey all of this. The actress is trapped in a single room. She’s always in the bed, but she’s also always moving, changing, transitioning into different states. She’s running back over every minute of her life. It’s exhausting. But in the end, I very much enjoyed the process – the diverse possibilities. It was a game. It was gratifying.

Marcelo, you’ve written many works about women and womanhood – what was it like to develop this specific female protagonist?  

Marcelo: I do seem to have more of an interest in female characters than in male ones. That may be because I have questions about the feminine sphere, and I write in order to answer them.

In this work, as well as in ‘The Peronist Princess’, I wasn’t really sure where the process would lead – I just had a series of questions, and they were pushing me to write more and more. That’s basically how it was all conceived.

And as women, how did you two, Emilse and Silvia, develop this female thematic? 

Emilse: There is, well, an excess of women!

Silvia: Yes, but there’s an important theme about the relationship between femininity and fertility  – what you can make out of yourself. The character of the nurse: she became a mother at 16. She didn’t question it; it wasn’t an existential dilemma. The doctor is another alternative: she has a different attitude. And Diana’s mother, too, represents a different set of obligations – a kind of pressure for Diana to define herself against. And then there’s Diana’s friend, yet another version of womanhood. She’s made different choices too – she has different impulses. Altogether, they form a kind of synthesis.

The synthesis that Diana doesn’t contain within herself?

Emilse: I think she feels profoundly alone. In this place, in the hospital, you feel isolated.  Naked.

Can you tell me a little bit more about what it was like to bring this concept to the stage?

Marcelo: I’d say, first of all, it was difficult to convey something as private as a diary in a theatrical medium. It occurred to me that different interlocutors could appear during this internal monologue, to allow it to become more theatrical, more externalized. Piece by piece, the work was transformed into what you could call “mono-dialogues”. The subjectivity – Diana’s universe – came to life.

Emilse: Yes, and for me, the problem was performing such an internal transformation. How do you act that out? I was also working with a character who doesn’t have a sense of herself. She is what other people call her – she speaks a great deal about what they say about her. And of course, as a patient, she is what the doctor and nurse say she is. All of her traits have this feeling of externality – as thought she exists as a reflection. Her role as a performer is in keeping with all of this. She takes on other roles, and speaks lines written by other people.

But for a work about so many “other people”, it’s very restrained, very narrow. For much of the play, Diana is totally alone.

Silvia: Yes, there’s a restraint in the design that places it firmly in liminal territory: it lacks detail. There’s also a projector that serves as a kind of magic lantern. At first, it’s used to project the radiography slides of the patient’s anarchic body, but then it becomes more complicated than that – less strictly medical.

The stage, the physical dimensions of the theatre, crudeness, unadorned blankness – it’s all very much a part of the design. The cramped little bathroom to one side of the hospital bed is a part of the production space, and the blocking incorporates it into the play. The bed is also ambiguous, deceptively simple, un-identified. It can be seen as a multiplicity of beds. Where you dream, where you wake, where you make love, where you die.

Emilse: In the context of childhood, the bed becomes a place of ‘play’. But then, it’s a sickbed, too: immobility, pain and sickness.

How was sickness given meaning in the play? 

Marcelo: Diana’s character is in the clinic because she had an accident. She’s desperate, in extremis. But then, during this period of enforced stillness, she starts thinking about her childhood, her career, her art. She’s been many different kinds of artist: a ballerina, an actress, a choreographer. And now she’s suffering from this disorder. She’s trying to control her body but soon she starts trying to control her life: to regulate her past, define it and all of its components, keep it from destroying her. When she enters the past, it’s as though she enters another space – a kind of limbo.

Silvia: And as she endeavors to find herself, to undertake this journey, she’s interrupted by the nurse and the doctor. The nurse’s realm is quotidian: she’s trying to impose a rhythm, a routine, something more normal than the emerging consciousness of the intractable patient. Meanwhile, the doctor uses scientific discourse, trying to translate all of these feelings and impulses into symptoms. In this way, the three women have little connection with each other.

They seem to be total opposites. Yet the doctor and nurse are both portrayed by the same actress. Why?

Silvia: Well, for one, because of the clear overlap in the roles. They both represent realism. The nurse is pragmatic, bodily. The doctor maintains distance. She is prone to discussing everything in medical terms of either a sickness or a cure. She has an answer for everything, as it were.

Emilse: These three women are all looking for the truth. The doctor is obsessed with concrete, specific objectives – because the alternative is too alarming. The nurse also represents certainty and uncomplicated things. This play is all about complication. The three women aren’t really antagonistic. They’re like facets of one another.

And what becomes of Diana’s relationship to herself, and to the doctor and nurse, at the end of the play?

Silvia: She never solves the problem. She only asks more and more questions. We decided that the material led us there, and that there’s no way to tie things up neatly. She exchanges the firm ground of a decision for ambiguity.

Emilse: We don’t know what she’ll do, but the sensation at the end is that after all of this, this great production, this investigation…she’s finally ready to ask these questions honestly. Who am I? What am I? We don’t get to find out.

“Marica somos todos.”

An interesting statement, that roughly translates as “we are all queer”.  Yet read it again: apart from the literal meaning of Marica, deriving from Maricón, (meaning homosexual), the slogan of this one-man play hopes to dig a little deeper than that.

Marica is an epilogue to director Pepe Cibrian Campoy’s struggle for rights; an artistic outlet, through explaining and pondering on the death of a famous poet, writer, theatre director and role model: Federico Garcia Lorca.

But more than just a play, Marica is part of the real-life journey of creator and sole protagonist Pepe, whose campaigns for gay rights took him to the Senate prior to the passing of same sex marriage laws in Argentina in 2010.

“This homage to Federico is at the same time dedicated to all of those who, throughout the history of humanity, were sacrificed one way or another; for thinking and being different,” Pepe states in the programme.

Much controversy continues to surround Lorca’s death. It is widely believed that the Spanish poet was killed by a Marxist group on the brink of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 due to his outspoken liberal views. Some historians allege that his sexual orientation were a major reason behind his murder.

In his theatre work, Pepe attributes the death of Lorca to his political views and sexual orientation. Even still, the intricate text tampers and plays with this, questioning life, death, unrequited love and other people’s feelings toward Lorca (and Pepe himself) throughout the monologue.

The play is performed in one act, with Pepe playing all five characters: Federico Garcia Lorca, his father, mother, his murderer, and friend Salvador Dali. The script itself is very moving and can be unsettling in parts, for example, when the role of Lorca questions his death before it occurs (“Will they cry for me on the day that I die?”).

Each line in the play is detailed and poetic. In another moment, Lorca’s personal insecurities and feelings toward his killer are revealed: “Maybe he might have applauded or rejected one of my works or, what’s more probable is that he wouldn’t have even known who I was… I would want him to cry more for me, more than anybody, because of him I have cried more than ever in my life.”

Another particularly gripping scene surrounds Lorca’s killer and the poet having a full conversation before he is murdered.

The master acting by Pepe is what makes the show. He is able to draw passion, anxiety, sadness and emotion to the characters the whole way through the play and cleverly distinguish between them. Dressed simply in a white shirt and white trousers, with but one prop – a wooden chair – above the literal extremity and dramatic content of the story itself, Pepe manages to communicate across with intensity, the complexities of discrimination against people because they are different.

It is clear that this play embodies Pepe – who is as humble and down to earth off the stage as on it – and his personal views are displayed in a very sensitive fashion. Inside the small and intimate Teatro del Cubo – a beautiful and perfect venue for this play hidden the cobbled backstreets of the Abasto neighbourhood – were pictures of Lorca, collections from different periods of his life. The sense of adoration for the Spanish playwright and poet was clear.

The content hits close to home for all of the Argentines who waited so long for the homosexual marriage law to be approved in Argentina. Pepe is seen as a pioneer not just in the theatre world – he is one of Argentina’s biggest and most famous theatre directors and writers– but due to his efforts on spreading the message about gay rights.

With audience members including the likes of Maria Rachid, the former vice-president of the National Institute against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism, and now legislator for the City government, it is clear to see that Pepe has influenced above and beyond the four walls of the theatre.

Having experienced the more musical side of Pepe Cibrian Campoy’s work as a writer and director in the world of Argentine theatre (including Dracula and Excalibur), it is refreshing to see a whole new side to his skills as an actor.

This play managed to delve deeper into the issues of homosexuality, society, feeling, overall being different and being discriminated against. Even if your Spanish is not fully up to scratch, it’s definitely worth a look into, especially if you’re a fan of Lorca.

My hat goes off to Pepe. This is a thought-provoking, wonderful production.

The 30th anniversary of the Malvinas/Falklands War has spawned a number of cultural events -books, films, exhibitions- which seek to analyse and to make sense of the motives behind the war. At a time when the United Kingdom is being governed by the Tories after a 13-year hiatus, the figure of former British Primer Minister Margaret Thatcher has been put on the spotlight once more.

The play ‘Hundan el Belgrano’, which opens tonight, is a satirical take on the behind-the-scenes of the war and of one of its most crucial and tragic moments, the sinking of the Argentine cruiser General Belgrano. The play is based on ‘Sink the Belgrano!’ by British writer Steven Berkoff. It revolves mainly around the character of Thatcher, called Maggot Scratcher in the original and renamed Amargas Cachas for the Argentine version (something like ‘bitter bum cheeks’).

The play has only been performed once before, in London in 1986, to mixed reviews. Unsurprisingly, since 1986 was only four years after the war and Thatcher was still the triumphant primer minister. About the play, the author has stated that “…this kind of theatre is so powerful, so visceral, that it forces audiences to react: either they feel like fleeing the building or they are suddenly convinced that it is the best thing they have ever seen”. That is a fair description.

In the current adaptation by director Claudia Marocchi, the stage is empty but for a couple of big wooden modules that get shifted around between scenes. Lighting and music effects are powerful and make up for the bare scenography. There is a guitar player on stage at all times and every now and then the characters break into song.

The wardrobe is definitely odd: all the male characters, save for the Argentine president, wear high heels. Some even wear patent leather, S&M-style knee-high boots. The dialogue, in verse, is crude but funny at the same time.

Just like Berkoff said, the spectators find themselves wondering what on earth is this bizarre display they are witnessing, only to forget about their reservations the moment the next funny line comes along (and they abound). The eccentric and hilarious interactions between Amargas Cachas and her sidekicks are interrupted by scenes of the submarines making their way south, and trying to make sense of their situation. The brief solemnity is in turn interrupted by bouts of camp Village People-style dancing and the appearance of the Admiral in his tight, silver hot pants.

Whilst bizarre and laugh-out-loud funny, the play is deeply political. It brings to the forefront the domestic political landscape of the UK

in 1982 -the unemployment, the strikes, the threat of the Labour party- giving a context to the decision to fight back against Argentina. Amargas Cachas’ question “Where are the Falklands?”, repeated a couple of times at the beginning of the play, reinforces the point that this war was not about the islands or the islanders. In that respect, the main message of ‘Hundan el Belgrano’ is faithful to the maxim of Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz, who famously said that “war is merely a continuation of politics by other means”.

The actors do a great job in their physically demanding roles, especially the protagonists Monina Bonelli (Amargas Cachas) and Gastón Rodríguez (Alcahuete/Admiral). The translator, Rafael Spregelburd, deserves a special mention for adapting the language of the play to an Argentine slang-heavy, curse-heavy dialogue that is funny and doesn’t sound contrived.

Whilst the play is a satire, it never forgets that it’s dealing with a serious historical event. Towards the end, as the moment when the sinking of the Belgrano approaches and the message about the hundreds of lives lost hits home, the comically bizarre reveals itself tragically grotesque. The burlesque-style music number at the end of the play is not enough to shake the viewer out of a reflective mood. Because despite the glitz, war is always a serious matter.

On the eve of Britain’s entry into World War II, Sigmund Freud, a Jew exiled to London from Vienna, is plagued with oral cancer, fast approaching death, and remains as avowedly unconvinced as ever, by the illusion of God.

Enter C.S. Lewis, an established middle-aged novelist and Oxford academic with unparalleled imaginative gifts who fervently believes in God.

This is the sure-to-go-well scenario concocted by the US playwright Mark St. Germain, whose thought-provoking play, ‘Freud’s last session’, debuted in 2009 and went on to win the Off Broadway Alliance’s Best Play Award in 2011.

Now, starring Jorge Suarez as Freud and Luis Machín as C.S. Lewis, Daniel Veronese’s Spanish language adaptation ensures all of the power, humour, and intimacy of St. Germain’s fictional rendezvous remains alive, if unwell.

The concept of a two-man play always invites the danger of coming off static, or lacking in the crises of deceit that rivet our taste for dramatic irony. But here, the thrill and charm are quite the opposite: two unacquainted men are brought together by fame, in a place as candidly transparent as the office of psychoanalysis’ founding father.

What you lose in classical arc is repaid in full with a pervading sense of reality enacted for voyeurs who aren’t even there.

Essentially, what makes ‘La última sesión de Freud’ work so well is its scenery, coupled with the hour of war scenario grounding the encounter.

Freud’s office, tasteful and pacifying, is spacious and grandfatherly, made even more interesting by the fact that Lewis’ visit is not technically an appointment.

Several times, the two men joke about Freud’s psychoanalytic couch, creating a mood that despite their levity has all the emotional investment of a therapeutic meeting risen to confrontation by mutual respect.

It is because of this admiration that C.S. Lewis, in St. Germain’s alternative history, pays visit to Freud just three weeks before the psychoanalyst’s assisted suicide in September of 1939.

Lewis, having converted to Christianity in 1931, feels compelled to debate with Freud over the existence of God. Having read Freud’s work against theism, he longs to understand, from a place both personal and academic, why Freud so vehemently denies the Creator.

Jorge Suarez (who previously starred in ‘Gorda’ and ‘El desarollo de la civilización venidera’, both directed by Veronese) does a masterful job of capturing the wit and erudition of an enervating Freud. More barbed than rigorous, less stern than confounded, Suarez manages to skilfully portray an incredible mind, advanced to the point of accomplished detachment.

It’s still Freud, so he is naturally strident and animated, but impending death and the prospect of world conflagration imbue his character with something very troubled that can’t, however, be troubled anymore.

In contrast, Luis Machín (‘Felicidades’ and ‘Lobo’) portrays a C.S. Lewis who is fleet, passionate, and desperately earnest. Though he knows what to expect from Freud, he comes prepared with counterarguments and holistic appeals to Freud’s uncompromising reason.

As the two men carry on their debate – Lewis equating psychoanalysis with intellectual religion and Freud swatting away God as an infantile fantasy – the conversation and circumstances take multiple turns in subject, intensity, and competitive edge, bringing the men together at a historically fateful moment.

Intermittently, one or the other of the characters turns on the radio to hear the latest war developments, heavily laden with grave and devout overtones.Several times, Freud must excuse himself as his late-stage cancer prompts uncontrollable coughing – complete with saliva and blood – or to answer phone calls from his daughter Anna or the doctor, who is unforgivably late.

Perhaps the most fascinating element of Veronese’s adaptation is the way it calmly engages so many big questions that probably make an overview sound trite. It’s funny in order to be just so serious, but sad in order to be an enduring reminder of a time when these questions defined the future of the world we now inhabit. Maybe even more relevant now than ever before.

Some will object that the canvas here is too broad, or the themes too boilerplate, but they would really be missing the point. What ‘La última sesión de Freud’ reveals, and with great success, is the ultimately social and personal basis of our systems of belief – right down to the loss of a daughter, a friend at war, or the sources of inspiration for artistic and scientific genius.

God, love, sex, and the meaning of life may be suitable tag words for this play, but overwhelmingly it is a display of the walls we build up and break down in dialogue with ourselves and others.

“If they will not stage our plays in the official theatres,” Argentine playwright Robert “Tito” Cossa wrote in a 1981 article, “if they will not mention us on the television channels, if we do not appear in any of the second-rate syllabi in our main theatre schools, do we Argentine playwrights even exist?”

Soon after Cossa’s condemnation of artistic censorship, he and 20 other Argentine playwrights launched ‘Teatro Abierto’ (Open Theatre), a movement that would become one of the most important artistic resistances during the dictatorship.

In a massive festival that generated over 25,000 spectators, some of the nations principal playwrights, directors and actors came together to stage one-act plays that directly or indirectly spoke out against the dictatorship and proved that yes, Argentine playwrights do exist.

This Thursday marks 30 years since the first play premiered.

An Idea Takes Shape

During the dictatorship, Cossa recalls: “We lived with fears, precautions, and doubts. We didn’t know all the terrible, criminal, and brutal things that were happening, but we knew about the disappearances. We had friends who were disappeared.”

Unlike other forms of expression such as film and journalism that were subject to strict censorship during the dictatorship, there was no censorship for plays before they were staged. According to Cossa, “we premiered what we wanted to, and they didn’t prohibit us.”

After the premier, some plays, like Eduardo Pavlovsky’s intense family drama ‘Telarañas’ (1977), were banned. However, many plays with decidedly political undercurrents premiered to great public and critical success. One need only think of Cossa’s ‘La Nona’ (1976) in which a ravenous grandmother ends up killing her children; or Ricardo Monti’s ‘Marathon’(1980), a dance contest that turns into a critique of fascism.

Still, the environment was far from friendly towards playwrights. From 1977 to 1979, the number of theatergoers dropped by nearly 25%. Most of the important playwrights, being leftist, were excluded from official theatres and cinema, and were forced to premier their works in small independent theatres. Osvaldo Dragún, an Argentine playwright and one of the main architects of Teatro Abierto, characterised the experience as working on “little floating islands” isolated from the mainland of official artistic representation.

By 1980, as Cossa remembers, “a small light at the end of the tunnel appeared, suggesting that the dictatorship might end. The repression had begun to ease.” The majority of what human rights groups estimate were 30,000 disappearances had already occurred. General Jorge Rafael Videla was poised to hand over power to General Roberto Eduardo Viola and the Falklands/Malvinas War was still come.

The flames of resentment felt by many Argentine playwrights were fanned in 1980 when, at the command of the military, the National Conservatory of Dramatic Arts eliminated the course on contemporary Argentine theatre from the curriculum.

After the incident, a group of Argentine playwrights began to meet every week over pastries and mate. In these meetings, Cossa remembers that they “got up to date on what was going on” and about who had left the country, and they “consoled one another” through the difficult time.“We were exhausted,” adds Cossa, “and we felt like we had to react. But rather than pick up arms we did what we knew how to do, which is theatre.”

Through these meetings, Teatro Abierto was born. Dragún, who passed away in 1999, brought to the table an idea suggestedby a group of young people: a series of short plays that addressed the censorship and prohibition they faced.

The playwrights involved in the meetings wrote each original one-act plays. Late at night in bars on Avenida Corrientes the playwrights began to plan for the event. Dragún remembers, they met “quietly, so as not to frighten anyone. Not even ourselves. The police sirens were louder than our voices.”

A Movement Is Born

With Teatro Abierto, members of the theatre community came together to stage 21 plays. The rehearsals happened “wherever possible, at whatever hour possible. The morning, the afternoon, the night, at dawn”, Dragún explained.

In May of 1981, the playwrights decided to go public in a press conference covered by nearly all the city’s major publications.

The buzz began during open rehearsals for the plays, and lines stretched around the block to purchase tickets. On opening night at the Teatro del Picadero theatre, actor Jorge Rivera López read the declaration of the principals of Teatro Abierto: “Because theatre is an eminently social and communitarian cultural phenomenon, we are trying, through the quality of the shows and the low ticket prices, to recover a mass audience; because we feel that all of us together are much more than the sum of each one of us alone.”

A different trio of plays costing less than the price of a movie ticket, was performed each afternoon in seven-day cycles for two months. Plays included Griselda Gambaro’s ‘Decir sí’, a chilling allegory of the victim/perpetrator dynamic set in a barbershop, ‘Gris de ausencia’, Roberto Cossa’s examination of life in exile, and Eduardo Pavlovksy’s ’Tercero incluido’, which staged a war ritual enacted between a couple in bed.

The Fire

A week into the performances came what Cossa describes as a “great political error” on the part of the dictatorship. Early morning on 6th August of 1981, the night that Frank Sinatra crooned across town, the Teatro del Picadero was destroyed by a fire. While it has not been confirmed that the fire was an intentional act by the dictatorship to squelch the movement, most assume as much.

But rather than ending the performances, the fire only energized the movement. A press conference held the next day was attended by Nobel Prize winner Adolfo Peréz Esquivel, and Ernesto Sábato. Jorge Luis Borges expressed his support in a telegram. Out of numerous theatres that offered their space, organisers chose Teatro Tabarís, expanding the nightly capacity from the 300 seat limit of the Teatro del Picadero to 700 seats. According to Cossa, after the fire the movement became “political in nature”.

After 1981 

The success of Teatro Abierto inspired other movements such as Danza Abierta, Poesia Abierta, and Cine Abierto. But although the organisers also continued the festival until 1985, they had difficulty generating the same excitement. The years following 1981 were met with mixed critical reviews and a dwindling public interest.

Much was due to the changing political times and the fact that Teatro Abierto was built as a reaction to a “closed” society, and – as Argentina approached democracy – the tenets of Teatro Abierto began to lose their vigor.

In 1982 the lack of connection between the festival and the political context was even more dramatic. The competition for plays to be included closed in mid-March, and on 2nd April, Argentine forces attacked the Falkland Islands. As playwright Mauricio Kartun, whose play was included in the 1982 festival, writes” “The festival started in October without any material that alluded to the conflict” that had been going on at that point for nearly six months.

The festivals in 1983 and 1985 emphasized Teatro Abierto’s commitment to freedom of expression. The 1983 festival opened with a huge march from the Teatro del Picadero to Avenida Corrientes behind a banner that read “for a popular theatre, without censorship.” In 1985, the last year, organisers staged a two-day celebration of theatre throughout the country called the “teatrazo“. Performances took place in non-traditional venues, from plazas to train stations to warehouses to buses. The plays that year, however, were panned by critics.

Despite the fact that the movement continued after 1981, Cossa affirms, “what I always remember is the first year.”

30th Anniversary

A certain aspect of the legacy of Teatro Abierto has been carried out in the present-day theatre movement, Teatro x la identidad, which has claimed status as the child of Teatro Abierto because, as organiser Amancay Espíndola explains, “we are in search of the children of the disappeared people that Teatro Abierto spoke about.” Their festival is also modeled on Teatro Abierto, in its inclusion of short plays, its attempts to involve famous members of the theatre community and its attempt to represent “through theatre what is happening,” says Espíndola.

Of course there are important differences: Teatro x la identidad was launched by the Abuelas of Plaza de Mayo with a specific mission to find children of the disappeared; whereas Teatro Abierto was formed in response to frustration around artistic censorship during the dictatorship.

Teatro x la identidad is prominently featuring Teatro Abierto in this year’s cycle by re-staging of two plays that premiered in the 1981 cycle: Cossa’s ‘Gris de Ausencia’ and ‘El Acompañamiento’ by Carlos Gorostiza. Teatro x la identidad will also pay homage to Teatro Abierto with activities on 1st August in front of the Picadero theatre. And the political council Comuna 3 organised a festival in front of the Picadero on 23rd July, which they follow with a ceremony to honour the protagonists in Teatro del Pueblo on 28th July, the official anniversary of Teatro Abierto.

On the 30th anniversary things are also looking up for the Picadero theatre, which has not been a working theater since the 1981 fire. After ownership changed hands numerous times, and the space narrowly escaped demolition, a new owner took charge again at the end of June of this year. Sebastián Blutrach is a theater producer who has worked with well-known Argentine playwright, Daniel Veronese. Blutrach intends to open the space this summer, perhaps in time for the anniversary.

Two parallel archetypes of North American and Argentine culture are the subjects of ‘Rodeo’ by playwright Agustina Gatto.

Halfway through the one-man show, Cody Right, a western cowboy with a rimmed hat and a thumb lodged under his belt, sits down on a bench, takes out a thermos, and pours himself a mate. The cowboy has been forced to flee Texas because of a family crime, and finds himself far from his native land in the home of the gauchos.

The image of a rugged Texan sipping mate rather than, say, sucking on a cigarette as the ‘Marlboro Man‘ did for nearly fifty years is exactly the kind of cultural dissonance Gatto is trying to create in her newest work. Gatto plays on stereotypes and clichés of the two archetypes and in the process, reveals something larger about national identities of both the United States and Argentina.

“The cowboy and the gaucho are born walking over the bodies of indigenous peoples and have a dark and conflictive relationship with their own origin” Gatto explains over email. “Because of this, they embody the history of the colonization of America.”

Agustina Gatto’s thought process may go deep into the wounds of the past, but the play itself focuses on an earnest cowboy driven far from his father, and far from his motherland. “I’m going to tell you a story,” begins Cody Right, played by actor Germán Rodriguéz. The cowboy goes on to relate that the three sons of his grandfather had a plan to rob a bank. When the bank robbery went awry, he and his mother were forced to flee. In a move that calls to mind the notorious bank robber Butch Cassidy’s escape from the law, they settled in Argentina, a place that thankfully reminded them of home. In Argentina, after a run-in with a gaucho and a guitar-strummed ode to the past, Cody Right sets about clearing his tarnished name.

The actor speaks with a vernacular Argentine Spanish, exposes a decidedly protestant ethos, calls revolvers by their names (“Colt Dragoon” and “Winchester Yellowboy”), and of course, drinks mate. In short, Cody Right enacts a mix of the gaucho and cowboy mythology.

The two archetypes share many similarities: a lifestyle on the open land once occupied by indigenous peoples, a dismissal of law and order, and more than anything a powerful presence in culture, politics and identity formation of Argentina and the United States.

The gaucho, scorned in Domingo Faustino Sarmiento’s 1845 book, ‘Facundo‘ was rehabilitated 30 years later by José Hernandez’s poem, ‘Martín Fierro’, which describes a victim of authoritarian society who had been stripped of an idyllic past. Following the iconic poem, literature and cultural references that idealized the gaucho took off. Representations of the cowboy, although far removed from the original animal herder of the 19th century, are also of course rife in United States culture. One only need think of John Wayne flicks, Frye boots or Ronald Reagan’s exalted status as a “self-made man”.

‘Rodeo’ does more than explore what might happen if a fugitive cowboy of the 19th century came face to face with gauchos. The play reminds us of how much influence these archetypes continue to have in the way the two countries present themselves to the world, from former president George W. Bush’s ‘cowboy diplomacy’ ‘cowboy diplomacy’ to the gaucho as a mainstay in Argentine tourism.

The short production takes place at the intimate theatre, NoAvestruz, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary this year. Their café offers a modest selection of empanadas and bruschettas, and there’s little of the routinized engine of larger theatres: the employee who rips your ticket also gives you a personal reminder to turn off your cell phone. The audience reclines on pillow-softened bleachers in a theatre that seats no more than two-dozen.

Cutely tucked away in a colonial house in the province of Buenos Aires, laughter is heard from behind a folded black curtain on a Saturday night. Peeping through the curtain’s gaps, you see bright lights shine onto the stage and feel a positive, relaxed energy coming through. This is a typical play night alongside The Suburban Players.

Recently I was recommended to go and see the theatre group in San Isidro, who not only happened to be very good, but also happened to be the best known English-speaking theatre group putting on plays in Buenos Aires. It had been a long time since I’d seen any English language theatre, so, intrigued, I went on down.

Hurriedly jumping on the train to Tigre with a friend, I was quite excited to see what they had in store. Arriving at the old house, there was very little light, making me wonder whether I had come to the right place. Unfazed, I tapped discreetly on the door. Quietly asked my name; greeted and nodded at (acknowledging our lateness) my friend and I entered. As we slipped into the front hall, murmurs of laughter drifted through the black curtains before us as the stage lights loomed through. Seconds later we were ushered inside, and took our seats.

The play running that night was, ‘The Thieves of Bad Gags’, directed by a fellow named Nicolás Sansalone and performed by the latest selection of Suburban Players. The show contained a very mixed cast; old, young, men, women, and went through a series of different comedic sketches, which were of varied tone. There was a little slapstick, a little mime, some of it outrageously outright; something for everyone really. Comedy having its particularities of course, some were funnier than others; however I have to admit I was chuckling away with everybody else throughout a fair few scenes.

Everybody in the audience was having a superb time, smiling, laughing; it was great.

On my second trip to see the Players, I went along to a rehearsal. Speaking to a few actors and director, club president Hugo Halbrich, I got the chance to gain a better insight into who the actors are and how it all came about.

I learned that the amateur theatre group includes actors from all walks of life, and all ages, who get together to produce plays in English. There are Argentines, Brits, Anglo-Argentines, Scandinavians, and well… the list goes on. It doesn’t matter where you come from; as long as you share a passion for the theatre, and know how to read your lines in English.

The group itself is technically amateur, some start with no experience whatsoever, but there are many who join who have trained elsewhere, or used to act and wanted to start up again, or to polish certain skills. Hugo himself has been in the Argentine theatre world for longer perhaps than he’d like to admit, but he actually trained as an actor and studied theatre in the US, gaining a degree and masters from two different universities in Theatre Studies.

He mentioned to me that a fair few of those who passed through the Players went on to study acting, and some made it very well in the professional world. It is also useful to include that none of the actors get paid for performing with the group, making the project much more about the power of the craft; thus taking away the complications that money can bring to a project of this type.

One of the oldest – and eldest – actors in the group, Ronnie, is Argentine, but lived for many years in England (and I have to say completely fooled me that he was British with his perfect accent). He studied theatre over in dear Blighty and – despite drifting in and out of the group due to work commitments – has quite a few productions under his belt.

And the group of actors chosen for the plays is not always the same – sometimes actors are repeated, but auditions are held for each play or mixed bill. The age-range goes from “birth to death”, Hugo says – you cannot be too old to join, and sometimes members bring their children to watch and participate. Club treasurer Alistair Berry, who has been there since the house was converted in the 1960s, used to rest his one-year-old daughter Natasha to nap, whilst he painted sets with his wife Silvina and prepared for performances.

The actors also come from all kinds of different professions, from insurance brokers, to managers and teachers, to mention but a few. The variety in the group brings a wonderful appeal for the audience, and enriches the quality of acting in each performance.

And the performances are of a whole range of genres, from Shakespeare, to musicals, from more well-known playwrights, to lesser-known ones. Ronnie spoke to me about the ‘glory days’, having been there since it all started, and reaffirmed that the plays listed on the walls of the entrance hall were only about 10% of the overall repertoire from over the years, but it cannot be denied that they’ve put on a great range of stuff.

They normally put on between three and four plays per year and how long each play runs for can vary, usually depending on demand. If the play is popular then they extend its run for further performances. However, it isn’t just plays that run through the house; there are workshops put on all the time, and even play readings on Sunday, where you can stay after and have a cup of tea and a piece of cake.

Anyone can go along, and one of the most important things to underline about the group is the welcoming community feel it has to it. Ronnie told me that “it’s very much like a family, where everybody gets involved,” adding: “But most of all, it’s good fun.”

The breadth of the Argentine stage is broadening as Broadway-style musicals flood back into Buenos Aires theatre. Over the coming months there’ll be a whirlwind of wonderous theatre works to go and see. One of the front runners showing currently is ‘Sweeney Todd: The cruel barber of Fleet Street’.

The theatre grapevine has been busily buzzing with talks of the show since it opened a few weeks ago at the Teatro Maipo downtown. It’s the first time the successful Stephen Sondheim musical adaptation of the story has been translated into Spanish for the Argentine stage.

A general issue many Broadway-style musicals tend to have when they are translated into different languages is that oftentimes the cultural angle of the story can’t quite come across, or be portrayed the same way as it can in its original language.

With regard to Sweeney Todd, would a story about a demonic barber from London translate to the BA stage, but more importantly, will the Argentine audience get it? The reviews are in, and local press loves it. The Indy theatre team went in to investigate further.

What’s it about?

The barbaric and demonic barber, ‘Sweeney Todd’ is said to have been born in 1756, and to have owned a barber shop along Fleet Street, in the city of London. It has also been suggested that he lost the plot after losing a long lost love, and joined forces with his crazy landlady ‘Mrs Lovett’ who owned a meatpie shop downstairs. He began murdering his customers by slitting their throats and then casting their bodies into the basement of the shop.

Whether the real man existed or not, the character of ‘Sweeney’ himself officially emerged from the original ‘String of Pearls’ stories dating back to the mid-1800s, which were written as a series of short works published in the cheap ‘penny dreadful’ magazines in Victorian times.

The story has been adapted and readapted numerous times, with each version portraying the character of Sweeney in a slightly different way. There have been ballet interpretations, comedic play versions, aswell as being reworked for TV and film.

‘Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street’, published in 1979, was the official title of the Sondheim musical version, based on the play written by British playwright Christopher Bond in 1973. Its stage debut along Broadway starred Angela Lansbury as ‘Mrs Lovett’, and her outstanding performance set the bar for productions to come.

The show has since been performed across the world, and has become a well-famed tale in theatre. The lurking question though, was if it would be possible to tell the tale of a tainted London barber and his wacky sidekick landlady, through singing and dancing, while managing to convince its Argentine and international spectator?

The Maipo Production

This production of ‘Sweeney Todd: El cruel barbero de Fleet Street’, directed by Ricky Pashkus, premiered fittingly just in time for Halloween at the Teatro Maipo. With Julio Chávez as Mr Todd and Karina ‘K’ as Mrs Lovett, the show was already deemed to attract the curiosity and excitement of many fans.

For the Argentine audience, most will have been introduced to the story and to the theme by having seen the 2007 film adaptation by Tim Burton, starring Johnny Depp as Todd. Other audience members would go in with a blank canvas, to be educated by this interpretation.

To begin, the production of the show can not be faulted, as it was a visual treat. Costumes were fitting for each character, and Mrs Lovett’s costume changes reflected a different part of her outright personality for each scene.

The set had a grimy, red and rusty feel to it. It perfectly painted the picture of smoggy 18th century London by using the backdrop of a blue-grey foggy lit curtain along the back of the stage.

The original script (written by Hugh Wheeler) adapted and translated into Spanish by Fernando Masllorens and Federico González del Pino was one of the lower points of the production. They opted for totally neutral Spanish, which included the cast using a pretty neutral tone and drone while they spoke. For the most part it caused the dialogue to be dry, unconvincing and generally quite boring to follow. Luckily the cast mostly sang, which tended to be excellent.

In terms of the music, it was just spectacular. Sondheim’s genius writing came through as the sweet trill of soprano Johanna (played by Carolina Gomez), was tainted by the skilfull shrill of Mendiga (Belen Pascualini). The cast as a whole blended well and the other major noteworthy voice talent was that of Anthony Hope (Fernando Dente). The musical mastermind Alberto Favero conducted his small orchestra, while popping his head out of the box to wave directions at the cast as they sang chorus.

In terms of Todd and Lovett, singularly the characters were on very different levels in terms of performance. Karina ‘K’ is a musical genius, and her portrayal of Lovett brought out the wacky and surprise with sheer fervour.

Todd by himself unfortunately did not convince me with his performance. Chávez is an acclaimed actor, but there was just something too normal about him. The character of Todd is supposed to be demonic, and that never quite came through in his expression.

The two characters together however, balanced out and could be comparable to the creative characters of Thénardier and Madame Thénardier in ‘Les Misérables’, through their witty portrayal.

To sum it up:

- It dares to show the boiling and burial of bodies in the basement of a butchers shop to ballad music; even if the dialogue doesn’t grab you, the action and talented cast will surely pull you in.

- The experience of going to the Maipo theatre is worth it in itself, as it is one of the most traditional theatres in downtown BA.

- The murderous musical thriller has a strong cast able to portray a murky and unsettled time in the city of London.

- A safe performance and interpretation of the musical, and where perhaps not as demonic as the Indy would have liked, it’s still definitely worth seeing.

Marilyn Monroe – the original paragon of beauty and class, the first all-American sex symbol – became the inspiration for generations of contemporary stars such as Cristina Aguilera and Madonna. But the life of Monroe was filled with much darker hues than those depicted in Andy Warhol’s pop art.

‘Secuelas’, a play currently showing at Teatro Gargantua, attempts to capture this hidden torment. A dark interpretation of the life of Marilyn Monroe, ‘Secuelas’ rips the 1950’s icon out of her familiar shell and skins her down to her brittle bones.

The production does not neglect Monroe’s recognisable fanfare – her ‘Happy Birthday, Mr. President’ voice and her Playboy bunny smiles. This works only to deepen the contrast between Monroe the legendary pseudonym and her true persona as Norma Jean Mortensen – the chosen name of the play’s main character.

Renata Francani, the 22-year-old playwright and director of ‘Secuelas’, explained her reasoning behind naming the bleach-blonde protagonist ‘Norma’.

“When you hear the name ‘Marilyn Monroe’ you immediately get an image in your mind of this icon who carried herself in such a unique and lavish way in public,” Francani said. But I wanted to disassociate the celebrity from the real person. I wanted to show Marilyn’s real-life struggles and her true humanity. So to avoid the typical ‘Marilyn’ imagery we refer to her using her real name, ‘Norma’ instead,” she said.

While spending a year of university studying in the US, Francani became infatuated with Monroe’s life. She read Monroe’s biography and watched several films related to the celebrity’s life. What fascinated Francani the most was Monroe’s off-stage life as Norma Jean Mortensen – the disturbed woman who drove herself to a fatal drug overdose at the age of 36.

Marilyn-as-Norma is a stranger to most – and what Francani teaches the audience about the mechanisms of her mind is enough to make teeth grind. This production feels like being thrust into a nightmare. But the story does not illustrate just any bad dream, but the kind that crawls into the shadows of the brain and collects dust – until a wayward ray of light reignites its predatory thirst.

From a broader perspective, Francani’s play sheds the human consciousness down to its atavistic core, torching logic and order and leaving the audience to gnaw on raw emotions. The sporadic bursts of Broadway-style fanfare provide a sense of familiar security, but as soon as comfort settles in Francani yanks the audience to a world where screams, shouts, and sobs become the only forms of expression.

‘Secuelas’ or ‘consequences’ may seem as a peculiar title choice for a play in which the main character makes hardly any choices of her own. But a consequence is exactly what the director is looking for.

“I want people to feel something. If they feel shocked or disturbed, than that’s one kind of feeling. But if they feel anything during the play, than I believe I’ve done a good job,” Francani said.

‘Secuelas’ is not intended raise spectators’ spirits, but rather to evoke a sense of compassion. But not just ‘compassion’ in the everyday sense, but that of the true sense of the word’s Latin construction – “cum” and “pati”, meaning “to suffer with”. For the majority of the 90-or-so minutes of the play, the audience suffers with Norma. You will flinch at the sudden slaps, screams, and shouts and wonder how such a beloved icon could endure so much.

Great art cannot exist without truth, and Secuelas’ vicious honesty in deconstructing Marilyn Monroe’s life makes this play deserving to be placed in that category.

‘Secuelas’ will be shown at Teatro Gargantua – located at Jorge Newbery 3563 –  every Saturday at 11:15pm until 11th September 2010. The play is in Spanish.