2012

A FULL MOON... OF THEATER

2013

22nd

Season


Sexo, Pudor

y Lágrimas

Sex, Shame and Tears

by Antonio Serrano (Mexico)

directed by Mario Marcel (Argentina)

Feb. 14 - Mar. 9, 2013

at Gunston Arts Center  -  Theatre 2
2700 South Lang St., Arlington, VA 22206

In Spanish with English Surtitles

Comedy   -   Area Première   -   Ages: 15+

"Hey, tell me about acupuncture... Do you think that needles can cure unhappiness?"

Humorous, passionate, playful, provocative, irreverent... infidelity and its consequences, separations and reconciliations ... the Battle of the Sexes and the long-awaited perfect relationship that emerges in that desperate search for love.

Noche de Luna / Luna Night - Fundraising Night:

The first Saturday performance of each production

 will be followed by a reception. General admission is $40.


Artists

Photo Gallery

Press Reviews


Press Reviews


DC Metro Theater Arts, by Flora Scott
DC Theatre Scene, by Amrita Khalid
The Examiner, by Barbara Mackay (Special to The Examiner)
Washington Post, by Celia Wren

DC Metro Theater Arts

‘Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas’ (Sex, Shame and Tears)

Although Sexo, Pudor Y Lágrimas (Sex, Shame and Tears) is a charming comedy. I found it a thoughtful meditation on sex and how it has, does and always will separate men and women. Beyond the differences genetically inherent to the genders, Sexo submits that despite ones anatomy, the inborn physical and emotional – or lack of – consciousness of the act will always keep us, to a large degree, emotionally alone. Written by Antonio Serrano, the play ran for two consecutive years in Mexico before being turned into a film that broke box office records in its homeland. It’s a stimulating piece of work.

The play, splendidly translated by David Bradley, is filled with epigrams and words of wisdom on the various dispositions held on sex. They were simultaneously amusing and thought-provoking. Carlos (Alfredo Sanchez) is an intellectual who is writing a book on his sexual sufferings and musings and is married to Ana (Yovinca Arredondo Justiniano), a sex kitten who is denied her nature and finds solace in a like-minded ex-boyfriend named Tomas (Alex Alburqueque) visiting from out of town. Both men offer wonderfully insightful and honest views on their opposing sentiments while Ana’s untamed sexual persuasion compared to her husband’s timidity was a considerate twist.

Next door lives Miguel (Juan Pablo Vacatello) and Andrea (Marcela Ferlito Walder) whose union is so too troubled by and with ones ever evolving struggle to understand, accept, be honest with and satisfied with the nature of sexuality – how it bonds you to another and is tied to your own emotional comfort level. Maria (Liliya Ilnistky), a previous girlfriend of Miguel, likewise shows up needing a place to stay and so ensues the drama eventually entangling both apartments together.

The multi-talented Mario Marcel combines his efforts as director, and set and sound designer with that of Gary Hauptman’s lighting design with Silvana Fierro, Nucky Walder, and Rosa Becker’s costumes and props – and they work to set a fine stage.

Teatro de la Luna is the sole Hispanic Theatre Company in Arlington and provides English surtitles or live English dubbing at mainstage productions and International Festivals for their non Spanish-speaking audience members. Their mission is to offer a source of quality theater from the Latin American perspective and I feel the choice of Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas by director Mario Marcel was a spot on choice. Behind the abundantly witty dialogue resides the sad truth that not only are ‘Men from Mars and Women from Venus,’ but that each of us individually are in some way, shape or form a slave to or enslaved by our own sexuality.

Running Time: Two hours and 15 minutes, including one intermission..

Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas plays through March 13, 2013 at the Gunston Arts Center – Theater Two – 2700 South Lang Street, in Arlington, VA. For tickets, call the box office at (703) 548-3092, or purchase them online.

http://www.dcmetrotheaterarts.com

DC Theatre Scene

Washington’s Liveliest Theatre Website

Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas / Sex, Shame and Tears

The dysfunctional sex lives of six urban dwellers living in Mexico City in the 90’s makes great fodder for comedy in Sexo, Pudor y Làgrimas, the newest production from Teatro de la Luna.

Translated in English as “Sex, Shame and Tears”, the Mexican tragicomedy centers on the unhealthy dynamics of two mismatched couples who live across from each other in the same apartment building, and the game-changing sequence of events that transpire when they each have attractive houseguests crash on the same weekend.

Directed by Mario Marcel (formerly of the GALA Hispanic Theatre), Teatro de la Luna’s production of Sexo, Pudor y Lágrimas is a candid, hysterical, though sometimes overbearing look at the on-going battle of the sexes.

“The new woman is a fountain of male impotence, a cause for castration and divorce,” laments Carlos (Alfredo Sanchez), who sits home and meditates all day while his photographer girlfriend Ana (Yovinca Arredondo) is out making bank.

Read more


The Examiner

An emotional relationship roller coaster ride

at Teatro de La Luna

When Shakespeare wrote, "The course of true love never did run smooth," he might well have been stating the central theme of "Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas" ("Sex, Shame and Tears"), currently at Teatro de La Luna. Written by Mexican dramatist Antonio Serrano, the play outlines the lives of two couples who are friends.

Carlos (Alfredo Sanchez) is a writer/philosopher and a student of New Age spirituality. He spends a lot of his day doing yoga. His wife, Ana (Yovinca Arredondo Justiniano), supports him begrudgingly and is bothered by his lack of desire to enjoy the pleasures of the flesh as she does.

Nearby lives another couple, Miguel (Juan Pablo Vacatello), and his wife, Andrea (Marcela Ferlito Walder), who experience their own kind of disharmony. Miguel has strayed from the marriage, causing his wife much heartache.

Those problems would be enough to deal with in any plot, but Serrano ups the ante and accentuates the couples' marital stress by having two ex-lovers return. Tomas (Alex Alburqueque) comes back from a long trip around the world to visit Carlos and Ana, who just happens to be his ex-girlfriend.

And Maria (Liliya Ilnistky), a zoologist returning from Africa, comes to visit Andrea and Miguel, who just happens to be her ex-boyfriend.

Both Maria and Tomas need places to stay, so they are welcomed, warmly by Miguel and Ana, not so warmly by Andrea and Carlos. What could possibly go right?

In fact, the set-up is a disaster, and the entire play is a bedroom farce, with people moving from one apartment to another, in and out of doors, in and out of lives. Director Mario Marcel keeps the action moving swiftly, following the partners' dizzy movements, giving the play a sense of the unbalanced nature of Serrano's world.

The ensemble is extremely talented and well-equipped to make its rapid-fire comedic exchanges sizzle.

Marcel's set includes two modern spare apartments next to each other in a high-rise building in an anonymous city. Each has a door to a connecting hall. There is no wall between the two apartments, and the action often flows from one space into the other, increasing the sense of the unnatural reality onstage.

When the tension within each couple grows too great and all the individuals have offended each other enough, they break into a new pattern, with the women living together in one apartment, boycotting the men who live in another. Both groups are miserable. In the end, the original couples go their own ways.

Although it is very clearly a comedy, "Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas" contains serious comments about love, which, Serrano seems to be saying, simply cannot be predicted, induced, outrun or controlled.

http://washingtonexaminer.com


Washington Post

Teatro de la Luna performs

 ‘Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas (Sex, Shame and Tears)’

Would that all houseguests provided as much entertainment value as Tomas, a character in Mexican playwright Antonio Serrano’s “Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas (Sex, Shame and Tears).”

As amusingly channeled by actor Alex Alburqueque, in Teatro de la Luna’s lively production of Serrano’s comedy, Tomas comes across — initially — as a good-humored clown. Arriving for an extended stay at a friend’s apartment, he proceeds to caper balletically on the bed. He engages in satirical banter while ironing. And, when his friends organize a group meditation session, he sits dutifully in a cross-legged position — but then pulls a mock-solemn face, jabbing the air with splayed fingers, as if he were a demented kung fu warrior. And yet, Tomas turns out to harbor a dark streak of idealism — par for the course in this screwball and cheerfully ribald but rather philosophical piece.

A long-running hit in Mexico City, adapted into a successful Mexican film, “Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas” begins with the ingredients of farce: two discontented married couples who live in adjoining apartments. When Tomas moves in with the introverted writer Carlos (Alfredo Sanchez) and Carlos’s sexually voracious wife, Ana (Yovinca Arredondo Justiniano), things start to get complicated. When a houseguest also lands on the unhappy ménage next door, things get really complicated — and battle is once again joined in the age-old war of the sexes.

For the Teatro de la Luna production, performed in Spanish with English subtitles, director Mario Marcel has devised a simple set: mattresses, chairs, tables and door frames, representing adjoining apartments, with a vista of urban high-rises in the background. The set-up is roomy enough for the characters’ antics — such as Ana’s pole-dance-style shimmying, as she attempts to lure Carlos to bed; or the capering conga line the female characters form as they search for a bottle of tequila. The conga line sequence takes place after the characters, fed up with lust and romance, have turned the apartments into celibate, gender-segregated, quasi-monastic communities—with predictable frustration for all.

Arredondo brings engaging feistiness to the character of Ana, first seen in tight lavender pants and a midriff-exposing top. (Silvana Fierro, Nucky Walder and Rosa Becker designed the costumes and props.) Marcela Ferlito Walder manifests the simmering resentment and long-buried pain inside Andrea, who lives next door to Carlos and Ana. Juan Pablo Vacatello highlights the stuffiness of Miguel, Andrea’s husband, and Liliya Ilnitsky displays aplomb as Maria, a visiting zoologist.

Sanchez emphasizes the brooding awkwardness of Carlos, who muses, at one point, “Nothing we encounter satisfies us. Nothing we encounter is sufficient. It merely lasts for a few moments and then leaves.” (David Bradley translated the script into English for the supertitles.)

Carlos doesn’t have the monopoly on deep thinking in this play: Other characters also speculate about the meaning of life, the nature of intimacy, and the dynamics of the male-female power struggle. If you’re in the market for a thinking person’s sex comedy, “Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas” is certainly an option
Wren is a freelance writer.
Sexo, Pudor y Lagrimas (Sex, Shame and Tears)

by Antonio Serrano. Direction, set and sound design by Mario Marcel; assistant directors, Silvana Fierro and Marisol Flamenco; lighting design, Gary Hauptman; backdrop art, OlivosARTstudio. In Spanish with English surtitles. About two hours. Through March 9 at Gunston Arts Center: Theater Two, 2700 S. Lang St., Arlington. Call 703-548-3092 or visit www.teatrodelaluna.org.

© 2013 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com

 

 

TICKETS

Regular

Students &

Senior Citizens

(60+)

Thursday 8PM &

Saturday 3PM

$30

$25

Friday 8PM &

Saturday 8PM

$35

$30

Shows

Week 1

Thursday 2/14 (8PM)

Friday 2/15 (8PM)

Saturday 2/16 (3PM)

Saturday 2/16 (8PM)

“Luna Night”

Fundraising Night

General Admission $40

Week 2

Thursday 2/21 (8PM)

Saturday 2/23 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)

Saturday 2/23 (3PM)

Saturday 2/23 (8PM)

Week 3

Thursday 2/28 (8PM)

Friday 3/1 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)

Saturday 3/2 (3PM)

Saturday 3/2 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)

Week 4

Thursday 3/7 (8PM)

Friday 3/8 (8PM)

Saturday 3/9 (3PM)

Saturday 3/9 (8PM)

(SOLD OUT)