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2011 |
| LATIN AMERICA... |
| PASSION FOR THEATER! |
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2012 |
21st
Season
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Relatos Borrachos
(Tales Told Under the Influence) |
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DC Theatre Scene,
by
Rosalind Lacy |
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El Gato y la Gaviota
(The Cat and the Seagull) |
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DC Theatre Scene,
by
Rosalind Lacy |
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DC Theatre Scene |
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Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website
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Think of the present day Arab Spring. In 1868 Spain, public dissent was in the air. The revolutionary fervor, called La Gloriosa (Glorious Revolution) led to the overthrow of Queen Isabella II and outcries for a government that spoke for the people. Real life events inspired composer Federico Moreno-Torroba who collaborated with librettists Federico Romero and Guillermo Fernandez Shaw in 1932 to find parallels and address bigger themes in Luisa Fernanda, now considered one of the most beautiful, and challenging zarzuelas of the 20th century.
The main characters in Luisa Fernanda are up in arms, fighting for justice, democracy and freedom. But what emerges as this production arcs into a climax is that Javier, Duchess Carolina, Luisa and Vidal fight for themselves as individuals. The characters are an odd lot of down-to-earth humans, who do not fit a precise definition of exalted 19th century romantic heroes and heroines. There are no true believers who remain loyal to a cause, except for Luisa, the only character who seems deeply committed to the Republican freedom fighters.
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Relatos Borrachos
(Tales Told Under the Influence) |
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DC Theatre Scene |
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Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website
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“I’ve been dying for a drink,” says Young Woman (Daniela Alvarado). That’s scene one’s startling first line that unreels Venezuelan playwright Enrique Salas’ glib dialogue. When one drink becomes one drink too many, the results can be high hilarity (pun intended) or a desperate search for dignity and recovery.
Relatos Borrachos/Tales Told Under the Influence is a wild satire, replete with fresh material drawn from real life testimonials of ordinary people who enjoy alcoholic beverages. That is, until boozing poses a problem. What makes the enactment by three Venezuelan actors relevant is that the characters are written as allegorical types, with generic names, representing three stages of life. We all can relate. In addition to Mujer Joven/Young Woman, there’s Mujer Adulta/Adult Woman (Caridad Canelon) and Hombre/Man, also known as Everyman (Eduardo Orozco). All three characters are hell-bent to prove to us that the only way to relax and take pleasure in a happy and carefree lifestyle is to party on.
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DC Theatre Scene |
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Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website
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We could all be going through airport security instead of being ushered onto a black box stage where we are about to become part of an art-making process. “Please come in. Leave your belongings on the seats. You can leave your keys, your purses. It’s a secure zone…. Put your cell phones on silent mode, take off your shoes and come into the area where I am…,” actress/playwright Teresa Hernandez says.
From stage center, Hernandez asks us to form a circle around her. Like a physical trainer, she puts us through maneuvers telling us to relax our shoulders, let our arms drop to our sides, take deep breaths, and travel through our minds. By the time she orders us to disconnect eye contact with anyone else, and line up against the upstage wall, I feel totally immersed, but watched and uneasy. That is, until we are told to take our audience seats.
Hernandez is a teller of unsettling stories with long, run-on sentences, and low-level humor. Her focus is on violence in a highly militarized country engaged in wars overseas as well as turf wars over the drug trade at home. She adopts different characters and voices to teach us how to cope with a surreal, modern age in which you’re safer and better off in the army than on the city streets.
is:
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El Gato y la Gaviota
(The Cat and the Seagull) |
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DC Theatre Scene |
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Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website
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Every storyteller knows that a good fable has a moral. The
Cat and the Seagull has a beautiful one, loaded with enough
imaginative power to spellbind adults as well as pre-schoolers
for 50 magical minutes. But look out! One of the cats making
an aisle entrance may land in your lap.
Jacqueline Briceno’s stage direction, backed by co-director
Marisol Flamenco seems aimed at drawing out the physicality
of the Teatro de la Luna actors, who make the bird and cat
roles credible and real. The results are a joy to watch as
the actors’ gleeful zest shines through for this cautionary
tale about the dangers of ocean oil pollution. But what is
also impressive is Briceno’s adaptation of Luis Sepulveda’s
novel History of a Seagull and the Cat Who Taught Her How to
Fly. Her snappy bilingual dialogue, intermingling Spanish
with occasional remarks in English, allow the English-only
speakers to follow the action without headsets or sur-titles
on an overhead screen. It’s just enough to give the
narrative clarity without slowing the pace. (It also
reinforces learning two languages at once.) Nonetheless, it
certainly helps to know the plot.
Don’t be confused by how the play begins at the end of the
story and then flashes back to the beginning. Presenting the
story this way hypes the suspense and keeps you on edge.
Colonnello (Marcella Ferlito), a rather snarly, menacing cat,
and Sabelotodo, whose name means Know-It-All (Alex
Alburqueque) are searching for their missing friend Zorbas
(Peter Pereya), the cat with a conscience whose mission has
earned the cats’ respect. Zorbas, a black cat, has succeeded
in teaching the little seagull, Afortunata (also played by
Ferlito) to fly. But Zorbas, troubled by an empty nest now
that the little bird has flown away, has isolated himself in
the church belfry to scan the sky and feel closer to her. It
is only when Zorbas relives how he not only protected but
also adopted Afortunata as a daughter that we begin to
understand the back story... which is:
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Medea Llama por Cobrar
(Medea Calls Collect) |
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DC Theatre Scene |
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Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website
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Ecuadorean Peky Andino sheds new light on the Greek myth of
Medea as the child-killing mother who gets away with murder.
The playwright/poet changes Medea into a sympathetic, blind
saint from Ecuador and skillfully creates a hauntingly
surreal, dramatic monologue about all emigrants who seek a
better life by leaving their homeland.
According to the program, Andino intends Medea Calls Collect
to be allegorical. Medea, who personifies the Motherland,
started her peripatetic search for Jason’s lost sons, that
is, Ecuador’s people, in Guayaquil, a port city significant
for its name. (More on that later.) It pays to know the
Greek myth first because this richly-textured monologue is
pegged to it:
Endowed with magical powers, Medea helped Jason seize the
Golden Fleece that represents a mantle of power from a
sacred golden ram. The lovers fled the scene, and Medea gave
birth to two sons. But Jason cheated on her by marrying
Creusa, a king’s daughter, for political advantage. So Medea
sent a gift of a poisoned tunic that burned the bride’s
flesh to the bone; and thereafter the discarded wife
committed filicide to teach Jason not to play around. Medea
then flew away in a chariot, drawn by dragons.
Read more |
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DC Theatre Scene |
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Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website
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Denise Duncan, a new voice from Costa Rica, knows the issues of immigration first-hand. Her play, Latinas, premiering in Teatro de la Luna’s International Festival of Hispanic Theater, is about the frustrations and anguish that immigrants in the Spanish-speaking world face when trying to get citizenship in a foreign country.
On a stripped bare stage, four vibrant, young performers enter from different directions, cross the stage to stand in individual spotlights. Actresses Maria Jose Callejas, Catalina Calvo, Raquel Salazar and Katherine Peytrequin Gomez, who also directs, form a four person ensemble that does a first-rate job in bringing to life the stories of four Latin American women living in a European country (most likely Spain) on guest visas. All four clap to a rhythmic beat and chant dialogue that speaks with the one voice. The one-act play is a series of seven segments, based on the theme “we are different,” shown throughout the narration.
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From the moment you walk into Teatro de la Luna’s dedicated space at the
Gunston Arts Center you are transported to Latin America. From the
costumes on the walls, to the music, to the homemade empanadas at the
concession stand, the warmth of the Hispanic community is everywhere.
This was an evening of firsts for me: my first time to Teatro, my first
show entirely in Spanish, and my first live simultaneous English
translation, via a headset. I enjoyed it, though the ‘voice in my head’
translation took some time to get used to. Once I felt comfortable, I
started to wish I could always have someone commenting on my daily
decisions. “Ally, that hair color is a bad choice.” “Ally, do you really
need that piece of cake?” On second thought, I’ll stick to Siri.
The theater company’s 14th Annual Festival Internacional de Teatro
Hispano (International Festival of Hispanic Theater) is a six-week
celebration of Hispanic theater and features companies from all over the
world. Plays from Ecuador, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Venezuela and the
U.S. compose the other shows in the festival.
I had the pleasure of seeing Latinas from Teatro Ruiz in Costa Rica
written by Denise Duncan. This show, featuring four young women, touched
on the trials and tribulations of being an immigrant in a foreign
country.
Performed on a bare stage with minimal props and lighting, the four
women (María José Callejas, Catalina Calvo, Raquel Salazar and Katherine
Peytrequín – who is also the director) had an easy rapport with each
other. This was explained further when at a post-performance discussion
– the actors explained that they had been performing this show for a
year and a half all over the world.
Woven together with music, chanting and a cacophony of sound, each actor
touches on a specific aspect of being an immigrant from staying in a
country because they fell in love, to the pain of not being able to go
home because the money they earn helps their family survive. The show
also features several other themes of immigration: the daunting
paperwork, looking and sounding different, finding and keeping a job,
meeting people, visas and green cards, and the ever present feeling of
being alone among a crowd.
I appreciated the abstract nature of the show but felt the script did
some disservice by not tying the stories together. How did the four
women know each other? Were their stories unique or intertwined?
Additional explanation from the playwright would have made a good script
great. The women remain unnamed for the duration of the show and while
this was a little confusing to this reviewer. I think this choice by the
playwright was clever – as you are forced to be invested in the story
that is being told and not necessarily the character.
Katherine Peytrequín stages the show cleverly by designating a square of
the stage for each actress and bringing them together in the center for
transitions. She also uses the overlapping dialogue as a way to show the
confusion of being an immigrant. In a bit of irony, Peytrequín was a
substitute for the original actor who was denied a visa to come to the
U.S to perform.
I really enjoyed my time visiting Costa Rica. If you are looking for
unique theater with a global view that makes you think, laugh and see
the world differently, Latinas and the International Festival of
Hispanic Theater is for you. I look forward to recommending the show,
the festival and Teatro de la Luna to everyone I know.
¡Un espectáculo maravilloso!
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Quien lo probó lo sabe (Those Who Taste It, Know) |
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DC Theatre Scene |
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Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website
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Love! How do you define it? An insane passion kept Lope de Vega (1562-1635) churning out plays, sometimes a play a day. Nothing could stop this 17th century genius, once called “a monster of Nature,” from writing so truthfully about what he observed.
Did de Vega live a rough and rowdy life and write from what he
knew? Did art follow life? Or did he dream up plots and allow
his life to follow his wild imagination? Did life follow art?
These are questions that Argentine writer/director Mariano Moro
raises in a torrid tell-all about de Vega’s life and invincible
spirit in Quien lo probó lo sabe (Those Who Taste It, Know), a
U.S. premiere and the first of six plays from different award-winning
Latino theatre troupes, (plus three children’s plays), in Teatro
de la Luna’s 14th International Hispanic Theatre Festival.
Read more
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For the 14th year, Teatro de la Luna has started its annual International Festival of Hisanic Theatre. This year, the festival includes performances from Argentina, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Puerto Rico and Venezuela and includes zarzuela and children's performances from the United States.
The first offering is a stunning one-man show from Argentina's Compania Los del Verso: "Quien Lo Probo Lo Sabe" ("Those Who Taste It Know It") written and directed by Mariano Moro. A tribute to the man who was the world's most prolific playwright, Lope de Vega, Moro's script pictures Lope waking from death in a chapel in Madrid in 1635, where his devoted followers have left to mourn his passing.
Moro's Lope begins to recount the events of his extraordinary life, telling of his poetry, his drama, his loves, his wives, his children, his time spent with the "Invincible Armada," and his acquaintances with other writers of the time, notably Cervantes. It's a long and rich story that sounds like the invention of a man determined to set the record straight.
But clever as Moro's script is, it provides only part of the appeal of "Quien Lo Probo Lo Sabe." At least as much credit must be given to the brilliant actor who portrays Lope de Vega, Mariano Mazzei. From the first moments of the play, when he jerks himself upright in the manner of a puppet being controlled by an unseen puppeteer, until the play's final moment, Mazzei gives a performance that is astonishing in terms of pure energy and technical ability.
Mazzei speaks as Lope virtually nonstop for nearly 90 minutes and makes that time seem like half an hour. As he races and spins and dances through Lope's monologue, it's easy to see in Mazzei's performance strains of Commedia Dell'arte influence: Here Lope is the lovesick fool, there the swordsman. Unfortunately, this show will not be played again during the festival, but it's a performance that is indicative of the quality of the productions brought to Arlington by Teatro de la Luna each year.
This weekend, Teatro Raiz from Costa Rica will perform "Latinas." Through Saturday, Zero No Zero Teatro from Ecuador, will present "Medea Llama Por Cobrar." The following weekend, two theaters from Puerto Rico will bring "Coraje II." Nov. 10 to 12, I. E. Producciones C.A. from Venezuela will present "Relatos Borrachos." Zarzuela Di Si and Teatro de la Luna will put on "Luisa Fernanda" Nov. 17 to 19. And on Oct. 29, Nov. 5 and Nov. 12, Teatro de la Luna presents children's theater. All performances are in Spanish with simultaneous translation.
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Washington Post |
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Play reveals adventurous, productive life
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of Spanish dramatist Lope de Vega |
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by Celia Wren |
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Washington Post Staff Writer |
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Sunday, October 16, 2011 |
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Amorous escapades; a voyage with the Armada; a literary output that included hundreds of plays — the Spanish Golden Age dramatist Lope de Vega led one busy life. His death in 1635 was pretty eventful, too, if Argentinian playwright Mariano Moro’s account is anything to go by.
Moro’s “Quien lo probo lo sabe” (“Those Who Taste It, Know”) — a Spanish-language monologue that kicked off the 14th International Festival of Hispanic Theater in Arlington this past weekend — depicts a just-deceased Lope who experiences a brief resurrection in the crypt.
Still drunk on beauty, self-importance and the vitality of his native Madrid, the writer recalls his adventures and losses, quoting extensively from his own verses for the benefit of an audience he concludes must be a pack of souls in Purgatory.
Interpreted with spry intensity by Argentinian actor Mariano Mazzei — looking like a figure from a Velazquez painting, with a goatee, long hair, white blouse and trousers — the play proved a lively conduit for information about an icon of classical drama.
Reciting verse with an air of rapt elation, stalking around or crouching on the set’s two tombs and — in one comical sequence — tickling himself compulsively with a stalk of wheat (a stand-in for a quill pen), Mazzei’s Lope was ardent, self-assured and a little mischievous.
At any given moment, he might be confessing to a past elopement, recalling the death of a beloved child or disparaging his literary rivals. “Who will remember ‘Life Is a Dream’ by Mr. Pedro Calderon de la Barca in 20 years?” he demanded loftily at one point. (Lope’s own works have recently been staged by GALA Hispanic Theatre and the Shakespeare Theatre Company.)
Dramatic shifts in lighting emphasized the beyond-the-grave storyline, as did sequences in which Lope’s body stalled and twitched like an unruly puppet. (Moro directed and designed the lighting; Veronica Lavenia devised the set and costumes.)
A valentine to the artistic temperament and to the legacy of Spanish-language theater, “Those Who Taste It, Know” (the title quotes from Lope’s writings about love) seemed an apt-enough springboard for this round of the festival, which is hosted annually by Arlington’s Teatro de la Luna.
In upcoming weeks, the festival will showcase stagings from Costa Rica, Ecuador, Puerto Rico and Venezuela, as well as a zarzuela (a Spanish music-theater genre) co-produced by Teatro de la Luna and Zarzuela Di Si, another local troupe.
“Those Who Taste It, Know”
Teatro de la Luna’s 14th International Festival of Hispanic Theater. In Spanish with English translation available via headset. (The shows in the festival’s children’s series are bilingual).
Through Nov. 19 at Gunston Arts Center’s Theater Two, 2700 S. Lang St., Arlington.
Call 703-548-3092 or 202-882-6227
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© 2011 The Washington Post Company |
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