Immersed in theater: plays I have watched this semester

Plays I’ve watched this semester

Lima

“Crónica de una muerte anunciada” Gabriel García Márquez

“Limeñenses”

“Automáticos” de Javier Daulte

Argentina

This Thanksgiving I traveled to Argentina and got the opportunity to watch two powerful, contrasting plays: “Un travía llamado deseo” by Tennesse Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire) and “TOC-TOC”.  I have family in Argentina, so we travel often to Buenos Aires and I’m always excited at the prospect of my theatrical experience in the capital. Buenos Aires is well known not only for their tango and meat, but also for their alluring theater productions. When my father told me that the first play we were going to watch was Williams’ I filled the atmosphere with my enthusiasm – he is my favorite playwright of the moment! I have fallen in love with his majestic plays after reading “A Cat On a Hot Tin Roof” and “The Glass Menagerie”. Each time I have been moved by his ability to craft characters that mirror real human beings and captivate the audience with their charming flaws. His plots are character-driven and in each one I can feel identified with the trait of a character, a moment or a part of a conversation.

            As I sat back in the audience and watched “A Streetcar Named Desire” in Buenos Aires, I felt less lonely. I felt strangely comprehended and identified with the character of Blanche DuBois. Evidently, age and life experience make us two very different individuals. Yet, as I watched some of her expressions and habits, I saw myself. Her dramatic nature, as well as her defiant and powerful soul, hidden under a ‘lady-like’ appearance, reminded me of myself. We even shared the obsession with putting on perfume all the time. I was stunned and moved at the same time. From time to time I felt that I was looking into the mirror of the future and that frightened me. I understood that we were too different for me to wound up being her. Still, seeing her on stage I felt that someone comprehended my weaknesses and “dark side”. When the time came to applaud, I felt a rush of inspiration and emotion – I had truly been moved by Blanche’s story and her resemblance of a real human being. The moment I was applauding the actors is a moment I will never forget, for it made me feel alive and overjoyed. It is an inexplicable feeling and I guess only those who have felt it can understand me. It is a feeling I had gotten before, but being the performer. After many of the performances in “Carmín, the musical”, when the audience was applauding our work, I had experienced this liveliness and thrill, but never before as an audience. I don’t know how to describe it exactly. I think it is a sentiment of reward that comes from the realization that I have impacted an audience through my art. As an audience of “A Streetcar Named Desire” I experienced this sentiment and it altered, once again, my perception about theater.

            This experience, combined with my own experiences on stage, convinced me that actors have the power to trigger emotion through their art and in that way, they can denounce society, reveal the essence of humanity, pass on a story, expose human flaws and influence standpoints. This is the reason why I want to pursue a career in the performing arts: to make others experience and feel through my passion.

           

The second play was rather interesting and amusing to watch. “TOC-TOC” refers to the popular obsessive-compulsive disorder (TOC is the acronym is Spanish and, interestingly the word toc-toc is an onomatopoeia of knocking on a door or someone’s head) that has inspired many exaggerated and cartoon-like characters. From a first glance, the six characters on stage seemed stereotypical, flat characters; yet through the development of the play the audience discovers they are round and human-like character with more to them than their disorder. The play takes place in the waiting room of a psychologist’s office, where six patients, each with a different OCD, are waiting for their turn. The issue originates from the tardiness of the psychologist who never arrives; meanwhile the patients get to know each other and interact while they are “waiting” for the psychologist. I believe that this play was black comedy, because although you laughed your head off, the story of the patients were quiet tragic considering they had to live with limiting disorders.

School

“Fools” by Neil Simon