An Argentine Theatrical Experience
So, to finish off my last weekend in Argentina (WHAT) I went to see a real Argentine play, a phrase which here means "not Shakespeare in translation." Now, I had been duly warned by my cousins that Argentine plays are "muy argentina," but I heartily mistrusted this advisement, because it had seemed to me like it shouldn't matter what language someone is speaking, the general gist of things will come across if it's well-acted enough, even if the details don't ring through loud and clear. In retrospect, I have no idea where I got that idea from, having never seen a play in language I don't speak.
I went with some friends to see a play called "Ala de Criados," which has won a bunch of superlative prizes here, so I figured, it must be worth seeing, and even if all the words don't come across, I'll enjoy it. It's about the Semana Trágica, which happened in Argentina in 1919, which-- according to my dutiful Wiki-ing-- dealt with a lot of anti-Semitic tensions and also confrontations between police and striking workers, and a lot of people died.
It was well-blocked enough, I didn't have any complaints; the costumes were well-done, I suppose, not to my taste but they were period, so okay. I didn't have any complaints about the lighting or the set, either.
What I did notice, however, was that it was very Argentine-- in that there was no subtlety to it whatsoever. In that there was no nuance in any of the performances, in that there was no single moment in the space of two and a half hours when I did not feel as though my eardrums were being assaulted with actors yelling at the top of their voices, or screeching in falsetto, or punching each word of their lines until they were excessively staccato, or waving around guns and shooting them off at random, in a theater far too small to contain the sound of it. I'm not suggesting a gunshot shouldn't be a painful sound, just that this production was entirely composed of painful sounds. (And people spitting, which is particularly repulsive to me; and people grabbing their crotches, which is just crass and classless.) The way I approach theatre is heavily auditory, in that I build performances from the voice up, and so I often judge performances from the voice up. If I could have muted the whole thing, it would have been a brilliant production (in which I had next to no idea what was going on). However, a mute button was not available to me, and my ears are still ringing, quite painfully too.
I went with some friends to see a play called "Ala de Criados," which has won a bunch of superlative prizes here, so I figured, it must be worth seeing, and even if all the words don't come across, I'll enjoy it. It's about the Semana Trágica, which happened in Argentina in 1919, which-- according to my dutiful Wiki-ing-- dealt with a lot of anti-Semitic tensions and also confrontations between police and striking workers, and a lot of people died.
It was well-blocked enough, I didn't have any complaints; the costumes were well-done, I suppose, not to my taste but they were period, so okay. I didn't have any complaints about the lighting or the set, either.
What I did notice, however, was that it was very Argentine-- in that there was no subtlety to it whatsoever. In that there was no nuance in any of the performances, in that there was no single moment in the space of two and a half hours when I did not feel as though my eardrums were being assaulted with actors yelling at the top of their voices, or screeching in falsetto, or punching each word of their lines until they were excessively staccato, or waving around guns and shooting them off at random, in a theater far too small to contain the sound of it. I'm not suggesting a gunshot shouldn't be a painful sound, just that this production was entirely composed of painful sounds. (And people spitting, which is particularly repulsive to me; and people grabbing their crotches, which is just crass and classless.) The way I approach theatre is heavily auditory, in that I build performances from the voice up, and so I often judge performances from the voice up. If I could have muted the whole thing, it would have been a brilliant production (in which I had next to no idea what was going on). However, a mute button was not available to me, and my ears are still ringing, quite painfully too.