2007 ¡AMIGOS POR Y PARA SIEMPRE! 2008

Temporada

XVII


Críticas de Prensa

Mujeres de 50

AllArtsReview4U, by Bob Anthony

DC Theatre Scene, by Rosalind Lacy

Sun Gazette, by Scott McCaffrey (Staff Writer)


Oh, Sarah!

AllArtsReview4U, by Bob Anthony

DC Theatre Scene, by Rosalind Lacy


Del destierro, al encuentro con el alma, el peregrinaje por la tierra, y...

AllArtsReview4U, by Bob Anthony

DC Theatre Scene, by Rosalind Lacy

Washington Post, by Celia Wren


AllArtsReview4U

Mujeres de 50

BestActing: Lilliana Pecora (Teatro de la Luna), Full cast ("Redcoats"), Maggie Glauber/Joe Isenberg (Theater Alliance),Full cast "Hairspray" (Hippodrome), Stephen Gregory Smith Felicia Curry (MetroStage), DanManning Colleen Delany (RepStage), Ole Hass/Milicent Scarlett (the In Series), Steve Connell/Sekou (Signature), Nonie Newton-Breen (Olney), Richard Pilcher, John Dow (Olney)

by Bob Anthony

Liliana Pecora has an amazing comedic talent...closest thing to Imogene Coca you've ever seen...in her one woman show "Mujeres de 50" as part of Argentina's contribution to the annual Teatro de la Luna international festival. She is small in stature but huge in talent as she kept the audience in stitches for a full 90 minutes. She played about half a dozen roles as a group of ladies who meet at their 30th high school reunion. From trying to fit into her 20's clothes to demonstrating a gynecological examination for her friends, she laid one comedy line or routine on top of another. A few break scenes had her doing some wonderful ballet work across the stage. And she used every body muscle to indicate social attitude and age-related illness. Definitely a powerhouse presentation.


DC Theatre Scene

Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website

Mujeres de 50

by Rosalind Lacy

Argentine actress Liliana Pecora is the Sarah Bernhardt of comic actresses. Pecora doesn’t speak English at all, she told us on opening night. That’s like Bernhardt who never spoke or understood English and was featured as the leading character in last week’s play. Also as versatile as Bernhardt, Pecora brought a full-house to its feet for her depiction of eight female characters.
Her characters are grotesque caricatures of the funny things women do to battle the abdominal bulge or to stave off hot flashes, all to survive in a social setting. Especially before attending an ego-threatening 33rd year high school reunion that raises painful questions like: Will we recognize each other? Will my age show? Does it matter that I’m divorced four times? After chatting with a man on the Internet, what’s a first date like? Is all that crash dieting really worth the effort to get a man? Is this journey a mission impossible?
Sound like a re-run of adolescence? Well, maybe the women in Women of 50 are in a mid life crisis of middle-aged adolescence. Not quite 50, only age 49, Liliana suffers “an attack of wrinkles” in the morning because she looks in a mirror. Lights dim and she transforms into another life form: in a hilarious take-off of a ballerina dancing The Swan. Yes, Pecora’s got it right. The body may betray us but in our mind we’re still age twenty. This sequence sets us up later for one of the best laugh lines and truisms in the play: “I have no wrinkles and blotches. They only appear when I put on my glasses.” Age is in the mind of whoever is looking in the mirror.
This satiric 85 minute one-act is written by Daniela Di Segni, and a woman who knows what self-esteem is all about, Hilda Levy, a psychologist specializing in feminine problems. The piece is adapted by Susana Nova. and Pecora herself, who is also the director. A triple-talent threat, Pecora most recently in 2006, was nominated for Best Actress by the FLORENCIO, an equivalent award to the Tony on Broadway. .
Artistic director Mario Marcel introduced Pecora by telling us “pecora” in Spanish means “one who is bothersome.” But by the end of the show, although Pecora may stir up trouble between her imaginary characters in her earthy, energetic portrayals of, Susana, Suzie, Clarita, Christiana, Leticia, among others-I lost count after awhile, as an actress, with the energy of a blowtorch, she’s a charmer. She even works in an impersonation of Lucille Ball after the recognizable “I Love Lucy” theme is piped in. Remember that television show?
After that the play is a fast paced whirl, with silly moments, where characters change, with a flick of the actress’s head or spin of her body; or a dropped register of her voice. There are the screaming moments of recognition. Then there’s the Barbie Doll girl who had “a complete lift” from toe to head, whose wide-eyed, pop-eyed expression is worth the price of admission. “I can’t laugh too much or the stitches might come out,” Pecora says. And “I haven’t slept for a week. When I close my eyes, one of them gets stuck.” She’s so “renovated and repaired,” her class mates don’t recognize her.
We’re not sure what’s real and what’s surreal. And that’s the fun of this show. What holds all this frenetic montage together? Pecora’s infectious energy that keeps you edgy with eagerness for more as she exposes more and more of the absurd standards set for womanhood. I won’t tell you the finale, but Liliana’s birthday cake celebration of turning 50 is accompanied by Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, replete with cannons firing and trumpet fanfare. Tchaikovsky composed the overture to celebrate the rout of Napoleon. No, that’s wrong. Tchaikovsky must have composed it for Liliana Pecora, who conquers her fears.


Sun Gazette

Mujeres de 50

U.S. Premieres Abound in Hispanic Theater Festival

by Scott McCaffrey

If those clothes that fit just fine a few years back are too snug now, actress Liliana Pécora knows where the fault lies: humidity. It makes everything tougher to fit into, she says.

Pécora, an actor/director from Argentina, was on stage over the weekend performing in “Mujeres de 50” [“Women of 50”], a one-woman, eight-character show that looked at the impact of hitting the half-century mark on a group of female high school classmates at their 33-year reunion.

Menopause, breast exams, judgmental gynecologists, younger boyfriends, cheating husbands, ungrateful sons, Botox - nothing was off limits.

“Mujeres” was part of Teatro de la Luna's 10th annual International Festival of Hispanic Theatre, running from Oct. 9 to Nov. 17 at Gunston Arts Center in Arlington.

Troupes based in Venezuela, Uruguay, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Spain and the Dominican Republic are taking part in the annual festival. Most of the productions are U.S. premieres.

The festival, which has been backed for years by the county government, also has picked up the support of corporations (Continental Airlines among them) and the Washington embassies of countries featured in the festival.

It also has become a year-long project for Mario Marcel and Nucky Walder, who run Teatro de la Luna.

“One might think we have time to rest and recoup” after each festival, Marcel and Walder said. “But it's not like that. We began to dream as the curtain closed on our last festival.”

The performances are in Spanish, with live English translation through headsets at most productions. Most of those who attend the performances tend to be native Spanish-speakers.


AllArtsReview4U

Oh, Sarah!

by Bob Anthony

Susana Groisman presented her one-woman show for the Teatro de la Luna Festival which dealt with the trials and tribulation of the famous actress, Sarah Bernhardt. Miss Groisman, representing Uruguay, commanded the stage like a seasoned actress but she used an "elocutionary style" of acting (one could predict emotions by certain gestures and postures). Therefore, one never got any introspection of the feelings and deep emotions of this famous actress. There were some fascinating anecdotes given by the playwright, Ariel Mastandrea, regarding the actress's interaction with Freud, heads of states, etc. over the years. One would hope that there would have been a better portrayal of Sarah after she lost her leg. As usual, there was a simple set with only set pieces. But the lighting by Eduardo Guerrero was excellent in showing passages of time and situations.


DC Theatre Scene

Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website

Oh, Sarah!

by Rosalind Lacy

What better way to transcend language barriers than to present a one-woman play about Sarah Bernhardt.  This famous 19th century actress never spoke or reportedly never understood a word of English but did ten extensive tours in America and charmed audiences with her stage presence and sheer acting power.

Sarah Bernhardt was a legend.  Larger than life. The equivalent of a 20th century rock star with the talent of a Katharine Hepburn, she created riots at backstage doors. She was a tabloid headline-maker, an activist, whose off-stage gestures, hairstyle, and style of dressing were imitated. A bundle of contradictions, she reinvented herself offstage and on in memorable French melodramas, in the role of Joan of Arc, and in Shakespearean roles, both male and female, such as Ophelia and Hamlet.

Playing to a packed house on opening night, Oh, Sarah by playwright Ariel Mastandrea, pays tribute to the down-to-earth woman behind the legend and, at the same time, reminds us of the strong ties between European theater, Uruguay and other Latin American countries.

Mastandrea humanizes Bernhardt by taking us back to the steamy streets of late-1800’s Paris, teeming with syphilis and tuberculosis, when the risks for a woman who was born an illegitimate child were great. “I could be either a whore or an actress. I chose the theatre.” The child of a courtesan, Bernhardt became a courtesan herself to royalty.

Uruguayan actress Susana Groisman, costumed in white, her hair unruly, plays Bernhardt, as an embittered, sensitive soul who searches for identity like a frenzied moth; who then heals herself through her stage performances and her patriotic wartime efforts for France during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-71) and W.W. I. Abandoned by the great love of her life, the Belgian aristocrat who fathered her son, Maurice, her only child, Bernhardt could have been playing her own life on stage. And Groisman in her performance lets Bernhardt’s  vulnerable side come across as a disappointed but never embittered survivor.  

Playwright Mastandrea doesn’t skip the madcap prankster Bernhardt, known for making deliberately scandalous public comments: “There is nothing closer to death than sex.” And “nighttime is the better half of life,” indirect reasons for her purchase of the famous coffin, lined with “black-satin and gold trim” that she slept in as a bed for photographers. But the reasons for her leg amputation are not really made clear, although Bernhardt talks about her phantom limb with Sigmund Freud. She lost her leg in 1915 as a result of a fall on stage. The injury became infected and gangrened.

Also, there’s Bernhardt’s desire for immortality that magnetized her to the fledgling silent film industry starting up in the early 1900s. No mention of Bernhardt, the pioneer who allowed some of her performances to be preserved, not just in stills but in moving pictures.

But let’s get back to what her biographers say that’s mentioned in this monologue play. Bernhardt’s secret to portraying infamous courtesans like Marguerite Gauthier, better known as Camille, in Dumas’ La Dame aux Camelias, was her underplayed simplicity, poetic pathos and directness in melodramatic roles, although the critics made fun of her gestures and theatrical style. Bernhardt deliberately shunned Ibsen, Strindberg, Chekhov, and naturalistic dramas. She wanted a transcendental style on stage and off. Her style. She was both of her time and out of her time.

Simultaneous English translation of the Spanish by Marcela Ferlito through headsets is excellent and makes the text clear.  But you need to bring some knowledge of the actress’s life and impact on theater history to fully appreciate this performance.


DC Theatre Scene

Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website

Del destierro, al encuentro con el alma,

el peregrinaje por la tierra, y...

by Rosalind Lacy

Venezuelan actor Victor Ovalles, as The Actor, walks toward us. Another performer, Mildred Maury, as The Actress, is wrapped like a vine around him. They are in a spot light of white light against the dark, sounds of drums and exotic bird calls. He screams as the two, male and female, pull away from each other. Or is that anguished cry coming from a voiceover piped in behind us? No, the scream is from him. But The Actor seems larger than life. What’s going on here? Just keep that opening image in mind.
Clearly this is experimental theater of the highest order; the human body used as moving poetry. From Banishment to Meeting with the Soul, a Pilgrimage on Earth and…, a Group Creation, inspired by artistic director Juan Carlos De Petre presented by the Altosf Theatre (The Unknown Theatre), is Venezuela’s entry to Teatro De La Luna’s Tenth International Hispanic Theater Festival.
This isn’t madness we’re seeing danced and enacted before us. Juan Carlos De Petre has a method, called “The Unknown Theater,” or “Actor as Creator,” we’re told in the program, worth reading in detail before the performance. This is an exhilarating theatrical enactment that fuses modern dance, pantomime and story telling without words, and even reenacts iconic images from great paintings. No need for sur-titled English translation
Admittedly, I was baffled at first but immediately drawn in by heavy breathing sounds, syncopated drums, haunting flute melodies. Then for 50 minutes I felt suspended in a wind tunnel and was totally conquered. We’re strangers in a surreal territory. What cannot be written can only be danced.
The Actress is on the floor. The Actor stands, his legs apart. He reaches down and pulls The Actress through his legs, as if she is emerging from a birth canal into life. The Actor utters a wailing sound in open vowels; The Actress croons, her voice an octave above. She kneels, as if in prayer, then slithers onto The Actor’s back. Her arms extended, fingers flexing like feathers, as a bird. The Actor, arms also extended, soars like an eagle. Together they are flying, accompanied by sounds of the wind. It’s an exquisite sequence that says so much about a symbiotic relationship.
Then the lights change. Both fall screeching to the floor and yell gibberish at each other. Is this a domestic quarrel? Or a struggle within the self? It could be either. Both are separated. But when The Actor, alone downstage right, extends his forefinger to The Actress, upstage left, I was reminded of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam,” on the Sistine Chapel ceiling. God’s forefinger reaches out to touch Adam’s hand to infuse him with life. In From Banishment to Meeting with the Soul, the same hand gestures are recreated but with a variation. When the performers touch fingers, they fall into a ballroom position. They tango to wild music and fall to the floor. We’re watching the joy and pain of creation danced out before us, especially in the highpoint scenes that reenact the ritual of sowing and reaping, that must be noted as a highpoint.
The Actress, dressed in a simple, pale-white dress, scatters seeds, (actually lentils) from a rimmed, brown hat. The Actor follows and mimes planting. The lights fade. When the lights come back up, he gathers the seeds in harvest. Their singing in open-vowels seems joyous. Then comes harsh lighting and audio changes. Red lights bleed over the performers. Sounds of kettle drums, machine guns, and barked orders come from overhead. And The Actress and The Actor simulate a machine-gun execution. As the Actor moans on the floor, we’ve descended from order to chaos, from joy to despair.
But the rituals repeat as the performers again rise to dance athletically, sometimes with prayer-like gestures. Absolutely memorable is the image of The Actor pouring grain seeds, like rain, from the hat onto The Actress’ feet. The cycle of life repeats through the rituals and ends where it begins. The Actor and The Actress are indeed symbiotic. They cannot exist, one without the other.
The timing of lighting changes are perfectly synchronized. When one spot fades and the lights come up again, we’re in another scene. Dramatic impact is heightened by the highly effective lighting changes and scenery designer Maria Egea’s chromatic blend of blue, pinks and cream on the backdrop.
I’ve always been challenged by the entries that are performed in the Teatro De La Luna’s International Festival and this year promises to be no exception. I reemerge invigorated, renewed, as if I too have been on a spiritual journey.
Past festivals have shown us how Latino theater performers through the spoken word are preserving disappearing oral traditions, ancient myths, facing extinction from confrontation with modern culture. Pantomime and dance communicate universal themes. This 50-minute Venezuelan piece from the Altosf Theatre, a troupe that has performed internationally and won numerous performing awards, was over too quickly. That’s my only complaint. But look at what’s ahead.


AllArtsReview4U

Del destierro, al encuentro con el alma,

el peregrinaje por la tierra, y...

by Bob Anthony

Teatro de la Luna has opened its 10th Festival International de Teatro Hispano (10/9-11/17) with a dazzling modern dance drama "Del destierro, al encuentro con el alma, e peregrinaje por la tierra, y..." by the Creacion Grupal of the Teatro Altosf from Venezuela that had the stilled audience on the edge of their seats throughout. On a simple empty stage blocked in by a back and two side scrims that had a colored planetary spatial theme, two very lithe dancers (Victor Ovalles and Mildred Maury L.) moved from floor spotlight to floor spotlight as they progressed from procreation through troubled times and turmoil, including war, and then through purgation to spiritual reawakening and rebuilding. The modern dance movements by director Juan Carlos De Petre was brilliant throughout... especially the war interlude which was helped by threatening music (Jorge Salazar) and color design (Maria Egea). The two dancers also added grunts, singing and echoic sounds and they created vicious dialogue during the conflict scenes. It was 60 intermissionless minutes of riveting stage work by all involved.


Washington Post

Del destierro, al encuentro con el alma,

el peregrinaje por la tierra, y...

Pantomimists Come and Go, Not Talking of Michelangelo

by Celia Wren

Special to The Washington Post

Thursday, October 18, 2007; Page C05

Echoes of Michelangelo reverberate through "Del Destierro, al Encuentro con el Alma, el Peregrinaje por la Tierra, y . . ." ("From Banishment to Meeting with the Soul, a Pilgrimage on Earth and . . . "), a nearly wordless theatrical duet created by the Venezuelan company Teatro Altosf. Treading a fine line between profundity and pretentiousness, this choreographed drama broods on existential themes - in part through images that recall the "Creation of Adam" fresco in the Sistine Chapel.
A male performer (Victor Ovalles) and a female one (Mildred Maury L.) prowl and orbit over a nearly bare stage, sometimes clinging to each other, sometimes separating -- and occasionally just letting their index fingers connect or almost connect, like the human and deity in Michelangelo's masterpiece. Meanwhile, solemn sounds play in the background: eerie chants and drones, ominous percussion, with pregnant silences and, briefly, a tantalizing snatch of tango. (Juan Carlos De Petre, Teatro Altosf's founder, directs the show; the music is credited to Jorge Salazar.)
It's highfalutin stuff, larded with artiness, and cynics might say it made a rather bombastic opening act for the 10th International Festival of Hispanic Theater. The festival, produced by Arlington's Teatro de la Luna, continues through Nov. 17 at the Gunston Arts Center. On the other hand, given a mere 45-minute running time, it's not hard to sit through "Del Destierro," which has won prizes at two international festivals, according to publicity materials.
And it can be sort of interesting to watch the archetypes volley by.
Sometimes the barefoot Ovalles and Maury -- he in worker's clothes, she in a frilly white dress -- seem to be the prototypal Man and Woman, struggling in the aftermath of a mythic fall from grace. At one point, a toadstool-like object on the otherwise empty floor turns out to be a hat full of lentils, which the performers scatter in rows across the floor, as if sowing crops. In another sequence, the actors writhe on the ground while thundering explosions and chiaroscuro lighting conjure a vision of war.
At other times, the performers seem to represent a body and soul that have been ripped apart and yearn to re-fuse. "Love, did you swear to love me eternally?" Maury asks in one of the show's two lines of Spanish-language dialogue. "Yes, eternally, eternally," Ovalles answers. This mystical bond finds physical expression in carefully poised tableaux, as when Ovalles makes a table of his back and Maury lies on top of it, her arms outstretched, like Peter Pan zooming off to Neverland. The production's dappled, blue-and-yellow canvas backdrops heighten the suggestion of creatures wandering through a lonely universe.
Audiences who missed this theology-tinged pantomime will have the option of lighter fare for the rest of the festival. (Whew!) The next few weekends bring several comedies, including the Uruguayan play "Oh, Sarah!" about Sarah Bernhardt; the Argentine satire "Mujeres de 50" ("Women of 50"); and "Tres" ("Three"), a comedy from Ecuador. Compared with the Delphic philosophizing of "Del Destierro," those shows will surely be refreshingly down-to-earth. Even the Sistine Chapel has its limitations.

© 2007 The Washington Post Company

 

Funciones:
Semana 1

Venezuela

Jueves 10/11 (8PM)
Viernes 10/12 (8PM)
Sábado 10/13 (3PM)
Sábado 10/13 (8PM)

Semana 2
Uruguay
Jueves 10/18 (8PM)
Viernes 10/19 (8PM)
Sábado 10/20 (3PM)
Sábado 10/20 (8PM)
Semana 3
Argentina
Jueves 10/25 (8PM)

Viernes 10/26 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)

Colombia
Sábado 10/27 (11:30AM)
Argentina
Sábado 10/27 (3PM)

Sábado 10/27 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)

Semana 4
Ecuador
Jueves 11/1 (8PM)
Viernes 11/2 (8PM)
Colombia
Sábado 11/3 (11:30AM)
Ecuador
Sábado 11/3 (3PM)
Sábado 11/3 (8PM)
Semana 5

España

Jueves 11/8 (8PM)
Viernes 11/9 (8PM)
Sábado 11/10 (3PM)

Sábado 11/10 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)

Semana 6
Puerto Rico /

República Dominicana

Jueves 11/15 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)

Viernes 11/16 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)

Sábado 11/17 (3PM)

Sábado 11/17 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)

 
 

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