To be human. For me, theater
reminds me of what it means to be human. Carefully cultivated theater draws out
and highlights the gloriously human in life. Such theater I experienced Friday
night at the Miami Dade County Auditorium. As part of the 33rd International
Hispanic Theatre Festival of Miami, I witnessed a remarkable play, Wenses y Lala, from the group “TresTristes Tigres”, written and directed by Adrián Vázquez (as Wenses), with Teté
Espinoza as Lala. This was the first time the play breathed air outside of
Mexico, and Miamians are in for a real treat. If you are in Miami for the weekend
and would like to spend money on something meaningful, worthwhile, and
ultimately human, I suggest you consider seeing this beautiful piece of
theater. In what follows, I would like to remark on some of the aspects of the
play that I found simply captivating and well executed, both in terms of content
of the play and the form in which it was realized.
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| Wenses y Lala. Photo credit: Cartelera de Teatro |
First and foremost,
Wenses y Lala is a story of love. A
love between two persons that continues beyond the grave. As such, we as the
audience are participating in their reminiscing about their life together. As
we walked into the theater we were met by both characters sitting on a brown,
wooden bench, mute but observant. Little by little they began to open up to us
about who they were and what to expect as they began to unfold their lives for
our observance. The beauty of this first encounter was that we began to see
little idiosyncrasies that defined each of the characters. For example, Lala
loves to talk and make jokes. She is expressive with her gestures and still in love
with her Wenses. He, on the other hand, finds it very difficult to speak in
public to those he does not know. He stutters, avoids eye contact, and relies
on Lala to control the conversation. Immediately, the fourth wall is shattered
as the lights go up and Lala asks for volunteers to introduce themselves. She
engaged with the public and asked questions, cracked jokes, and found a way to
make a connection between themselves as a couple and the characteristics of the
audience members. Once finished, Wenses felt a little more comfortable opening up,
and the stutter, while still there, began to subside. The lights then faded on
the audience, and the couple continued their storytelling. I would venture that
we as an audience felt more connected to these two characters because of this initial
experience. This connection between actor and audience, I feel, was vital for the
play’s ultimately successful realization because Wenses and Lala were no more mere
characters on a stage, but people with real lives who wished to interact and
form a bond with us as an audience. As the saying goes: “People don’t care how
much you know until they know how much you care”.
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| Adrián Vázques. Photo Credit: Cartelera de Teatro |
This is a
story that weaves together two distinct periods of time: the immediate present,
as deceased persons engaging with the audience and reminiscing on times foregone;
as well as brief moments in which the characters reenact specific moments of
the past they are narrating. Let me give you an example. At one point in the
show, as Wenses and Lala describe their evolving relationship from innocent
children cum lovers, we reach a point in their story when their physical intimacy
blossoms. As they both recount their version of this event (Lala probing Wenses
to see how much he remembers), you see each of the characters lost in their
emotions. Lala, for one, with closed eyes and lips somewhat pursed, reimagines the
feelings of her “first time”, while Wenses, the shy one of the couple, acknowledges
with a head nod this special moment as it is being recounted by Lala. The
storytelling here transports us into the past, and Lala’s corporeal and sensual
probing reminds us that the story being told actually occurred because she can
recall her emotions and feelings.
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| Teté Espinoza. Photo Credit: Cartelera de Teatro |
Here’s
another example. Toward the end of the show, Lala recounts the day she died and
how Wenses, who sang once and refused to sing again, actually sang at her
funeral. At that moment, Wenses, the reticent of the two, bursts up and out of
the bench and begins to express himself in song, lamenting the death of his
beloved companion. His character’s arch probably hit its climax at this point,
from the beginning of the play when he could barely speak to finally releasing
his emotions and becoming vulnerable in front of not only those at his wife’s funeral,
but us as an active audience. It was breathtaking.
Which brings
me to one of the most remarkable aspects of this play: the acting. I am almost
always blown away by the amazing theater produced in Mexico City, and tonight I
was definitely not disappointed. Theater does not necessarily need a large set
or fancy lighting schemes to bring out the human in all of us. Theater simply
needs a body or two sitting on a bench and captivating an audience by gestures
and words. And that is exactly what occurred tonight. The eyes, the hands, the
little idiosyncrasies of each of the characters, the songs, the playful way in
which Lala teased and egged on Wenses and Wenses reverted to his defense
mechanisms, all of these elements felt real. It was, in a word, human. I might
add that Teté and Adrián have been acting in this play off and on since its debut
in 2014, so there has to be some chemistry after four years together. Both
Wenses and Lala have well crafted characters on stage and I am very appreciative
and aware of the hard work that goes into crafting such unique relationships on
the stage.
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| Wenses y Lala. Photo Credit: Centro Cultural Español |
Finally, I
would like to mention the form of the play in terms of its story telling. There
is something to be said about the way a piece of drama utilizes storytelling as
a tool for driving plot and action in the present world of the play. However, this
technique was not taught to me during my playwrighting class, for example. The
emphasis in playwrighting within modern Western dramatic traditions has usually
focused on the dialogue between two persons in a time in which they are
portrayed to be living. Much of the realist and absurdist drama of the
twentieth century tend to remain in one time period with an immediate and
mutual present for all characters involved. In a sense, the neoclassical tradition
of the unities of time, space, and plot dominate most theater today, with few (notable)
exceptions. In television much of this technique is used with flashbacks, such
as in the series Lost when viewers
are transported into the past of a character’s life in order to understand the
present action and the driving forces behind each of the characters. In this
way, storytelling provides clear impetus for understanding the present.
But in this
play the present action is not dependent upon previous memories. Rather, the
memories build up the story in order to create finely polished characters with
whom the audience falls in love. We do follow a trajectory of their lives as
the play advances, but the present action are two people sitting on a bench
retelling important episodes in their lives. We share memories with them as
they recall their most harrowing and joyful experiences together. By the end of
the play, we have invested so much time and emotion into their lives that they
have become dear friends to us and it is hard to say goodbye. In this way, the
play’s action is more about establishing close relationships rather than
strictly following a chronological plot. It is more an awareness of what it
means to be human, without explicit didactic purposes or an activist theme for social
or political change. For me, it was like opening up a window into the human
experience and remembering what it means to have a meaningful conversation, to
develop lasting relationships, and to persist in love despite the challenges I
face.
Is this the new
direction of theater today? I at least realize that in Mexico this is becoming
a popular trend, with critics and fans alike. During the discussion after the
show I asked Adrián about his choice in writing Wenses y Lala in the form of narrating stories, a genre often referred
to in post-dramatic theory as “narraturgia” (narrativa + dramaturgia). He
replied that the theater he writes seeks to find “el poder de la palabra” (the
power of the word) and to “transmitir un sentimiento” (transmit a feeling). He
does not like to use the term “narraturgia” because he views his theater as just
that, theater: “lo nuestro es teatro”. Thus, he feels that categorizing his
theater into a subsection like “narraturgia” does not give justice to what he
is attempting to do: write theater that is engaging. Adrián is colleagues with Alejandro Ricaño
(think El amor de las luciérnagas or Más pequeños que el Guggenheim, for
example). Ricaño also writes theater in this style and has found a lot
of success. Since the beginning of the 21st century Mexican playwrights
have begun to write theater by telling stories in them (think of the 2006 edition of Paso de Gato). One of the audience members felt that the storytelling allowed us as
an audience to glimpse what it means to be Mexican, but a self-identified
Mexican felt that the story was rather universal in its scope. I agree with both.
I found the play’s recourse to violence one of the tropes often used in Mexican
theater, but the idea of lasting relationships and difficult marriages is indeed
universal.
For those in
the Miami area this weekend, I highly recommend this play. For more
information, visit teatroavante.com or visit miamidadecountyauditorium.org.
