I have admired the high production quality and artistic aims of Mexican theatre for many years, but I also know that it runs a gamut from inspired revivals and cutting edge experiments to the run-of-the-mill, even to telenovelas. I’ve been to a theatre festival in Santiago, Chile, and New York has its share of visiting Latin American troupes. But nothing that I had heard or read prepared me for theatre in Lima, Peru. I arrived with high hopes and was ready for surprises, but first I had to find the productions.
I was told that the American expatriate community was based in the south east, in the Andean city of Cusco (Cuzco) rather than in Lima, the capitol. Cusco, the historical capital of the Inca Empire, is a jumping off place for visits to Machu Picchu, one of the seven wonders of the world, and the Sacred Valley. Pictures don’t do justice to the majesty and scope of Machu Picchu, which is 8,000 feet above sea level and saddled between two mountains. It was a holy city, built in 1462 but not discovered by the outside world until 1911 so it is well-preserved. Even the three-hour train ride from Cusco to the ruin is impressive. Cusco itself is a charming city of about 350,000 (triple the population of 20 years ago) with breath-taking Spanish cathedrals, plentiful plazas with graceful fountains and impressive landscaping, and a newly renovated Estadio Garcilaso de la Vega, which hosted the 2004 World Cup and is considered one of the best soccer stadiums in South America. But Cusco has no theatre.
Lima is the fifth largest city in Latin America. Founded by the Conquistador Francisco Pizarro, who named it La Ciudad de los Reyes (the City of Kings), it has been the official capital of Peru since 1535. The population today exceeds 8,000,000. It is famous for being the gastronomic capital of the Americas. Lima is a sprawling city (310 square miles) on the Pacific coast with 30 densely populated districts, each headed by its own mayor. I was based in Miraflores, a scenic neighbourhood abundant with private gardens, magnificent parks, beaches, and charming restaurants, which are very inexpensive by European and American standards. The people are friendly, transportation is easy, the crafts are top quality, but I couldn’t find much theatre.
I began my research before I left New York. “Theatres in Lima,” an online source was the most helpful. It boasts that Lima has a vibrant and active theater scene and a wide range of presentations. It lists a dozen or so theatres with contact information and pictures of their facades. I emailed a few and received no response. A Peruvian critic who did answer my email directed me the Luces section in El Comercio, a major newspaper; the events calender of ; and the theatre listings at , the equivalent of Telecharge in New York , where I could book tickets as well. As for my getting a press pass, she herself was still working on that. It “takes lots a passion and paperwork.”
In Lima, I was again told that Teleticket was my best source. The site listed maybe half a dozen “theatre” options, some of them stand up comedy or cabaret. A friendly Peruvian advised me to contact theatres directly and she drew a map, but when I tried to track some down, no one had heard of them. I assume that as in New York some fold quickly. But I was lucky to find three productions perfect for a critic with limited Spanish – two classical revivals (in Spanish) and Caricias (Caresses), a relatively new play by Sergi Belbel, Artistic Director of the Teatro Nacional de Cataluña, Spain.
Obtaining my first ticket -- to Volpone, a 1606 satire by Ben Jonson -- became its own comedy of errors. After the misdirected phone calls, I decided to walk over to the theatre, but I found it closed for the two-hour lunch break. When I showed up that night, the wait-line for tickets was down the block. It was a Monday night! What I learned is that in Lima, Monday is part of the weekend run, and on Monday Teatro Británico offers discounts. The staff compensated for my disappointment with a press seat for Thurs.
It was well worth the wait. The Spanish translation (Mauricio Kartún and Luis Tuesta) is set in 1760, when Lima was a colonial city and the government of Manuel de Amat was plagued by corruption and racial discrimination. Ironically, history books praise Viceroy Amat for his civic munificence. The program notes conclude that the injustices contributed to the (failed) indigenous revolt of Tupac Amaru against Spain in 1780. Few other changes were made in the script. The plot still revolves around a team of confidence men who tap the greed of three upstanding citizens by promising them an inheritance after the “ailing” ringleader’s death. To compete, the citizens bring expensive gifts.
In Act II, after the citizens protest to a magistrate, all sorts of ruses are uncovered -- including a uproarious blame-the-woman farce. They are resolved when the magistrate discovers his own claim to the wealth. He informs the no-longer-deceased Volpone , face to face, that he is now official dead. Justice is meted out, and the law proves the worst crook of all.
The play is rich in ironies, satire, low comedy, and classic routines. Director Roberto Ángeles’s production was delicious – clean and crisp and so funny. His hand was subtle and polished, expertly playing up the comedy but remaining true to the satire. To begin: the minimalist set design by Carlos Mesta established clear focus in a cluttered plot. The bed was centre stage, the chest of gold stage right, a door stage left. Mosca (Carlos Carlín), the clever servant, and Volpone (Alberto Isola), his avaricious master, are European-looking; Malqui (Victor Manchego), the young male servant who plays the guitar and sings, is indigenous.
The three con men enact a little ritual before the first of their three dupes arrives. Malqui places a pillow on the floor, the corpulent Volpone kneels, opens his box of gold, and intones a prayer as though he were in church. Mosca and Malqui are his chorus. Hearing a knock at the door, Volpone scurries to bed, paints dark circles under his eyes, dons a white nightcap, practices his cough – and they all laugh, excited by the trick. Throughout the play, they will applaud each other and take bows after (and sometimes during) their performances.
Enter the lawyer (Javier Echevarría), a tall stiff man in red, looking like death warmed over. He carries a silver platter, his bribe to the rich, ailing Volpone. Volpone plays him: asks him to come closer so he can see his face, then coughs all over him just as the hypocritical lawyer is making the sign of the cross to heal him. Exquisite disrespect. Gorgeous comic irony. Next a man old enough to be Volpone’s father enters (Carlos Tuccio), chased by his now disinherited son, the irascible captain (Eduardo Camino), threatening everyone with his sword in his hysteria. The “caballero anciano” must hold an ear trumpet to learn that Volpone is near death, and at the news he smiles. His son is a Jack-in-the-Box, popping into scenes at unexpected moments, unsettling everyone. He returns twice in this scene alone, and each time Volpone has to hustle back to his sick bed -- moving amazingly fast for a heavy, dying man.
The third gull is a handsome young merchant who brings Volpone diamonds and pearls, gifts better suited for his lovely young wife (Mónica Rossi). But Volpone is greedy. He wants the wife also, and soon the foolish merchant is thrusting his reluctant bride -- whom he calls a whore (puta) for standing on the balcony totally wrapped in a shawl -- into Volpone’s lecherous, bedridden arms. There is an outrageous scene, in which Volpone, disguised as a learned doctor, tries to give the wife a physical examination. She pushes him away, runs to her husband, and is tongue-lashed back to the “doctor.” Throughout Volpone and his crew employ the language of business. The victims are called the “clients” and Volpone tallies his “negocios,” the day’s profit.
Just as ruse follows ruse in swift procession, on stage the comic devices are endless. For long speeches, the characters address their remarks directly to us, suddenly violating the fourth wall. Male voices go high with astonishment, try a range of octaves when they are confounded, go low with persuasion -- or not. Nothing is predictable. The laugher is from the surprises! Grimaces, body language, a dozen creative uses of the pause, even hands become eloquence itself. The lawyer’s hands seem to be acting out a secret choreography. In one scene a character raises an index finger and all action stops.
Even the costumes changes (carefully detailed period costumes by María Lucía Carrillo) ) heighten the comedic intensity as they go (subtly) from browns to reds and end with the glitter of a uniform with brass buttons, a peruke and heavy European court make-up (including beauty mark) on the skinny, mincing Viceroy (Leonardo Torres Vilar) who, paradoxically, holds total power with complete assurance.
Teatro Británico, which is attached to the Centro Cultural Británico complex, is an elegant old-style 200 seat house with a narrow wrap-around balcony. It has a long proscenium stage with a red velvet curtain. The audience is mostly young adults, some of them perhaps recent college graduates, and an older generation who look like dedicated theatre-goers.
Throughout Peru theatre is perceived as an activity for the educated and middle-class although the Teleticket booths are housed in two major supermarket chains, Wong and Metro. Ticket prices run from $5-$17 and all productions, as far as I could ascertain, are in Spanish.
Teatro La Plaza iSil is a six-year old state-of-art theatre housed in an attractive three-level shopping mall overlooking the Pacific Ocean. On any night, the mall is crowded with a cross-section of los Limeños. The mall offers something for everyone: expensive restaurants as well as fast food venues, elegant Peruvian stores and a directory filled with American brand-name outlets, and a (crowded) Starbucks. The elegant 219 seat theatre is well-raked (seats and stage) and a plush lounge.
Juan Carlos Fisher, who translated Arthur Miller’s The Crucible (with Rómulo Assereto) and staged it as Las Brujas de Salem (The Witches of Salem), is young, ambitious, and very talented. He stage managed a Spanish version of Miller’s Broken Glass, directed Tracy Lett’s August: Osage County, and hopes fervently not only to direct Martin McDonough’s The Lieutenant of Inishmore but to tempt the playwright to visit Peru and see the production.
He entered the theatre at fifteen -- his mother is a dance producer -- and learned his craft at the Catholic University in Lima. Although some of the dialogue in Las Brujas has been trimmed, the basic plot is unchanged. The play is set in Salem, Massachusetts, 1692, a Puritan theocracy where missing church on Sunday is a crime and witchcraft a capital offense. Several teenager girls, after dancing in the woods at night, have come down with a mysterious ailment. They begin to accuse townspeople of bewitching them and soon more than two dozen men and women are imprisoned. Their testimony is the only evidence.
When Elizabeth Proctor (Norma Martínez) is accused by Abigail, a servant her husband had an affair with, John Proctor (Paul Vega), a rough farmer, fights to free her. He is soon accused himself. At the heart of the play is a question: how far he will go to save his own life? Arthur Miller conceived of the drama to protest the communist witch hunts of the McCarthy House Un-American Committee hearings in the 1950s.
Las Brujas de Salem is one of the most powerful Arthur Miller productions I have seen. There is no clutter -- not in the set design, costumes, performances or directorial vision. In so stripped down a production, the passion, the conflicts, the bewilderment, and the personal choices of the characters have to hold their own. It takes a gifted cast and a director with vision. Fisher patterns the large bare stage with Brechtian precision: blocking becomes story-telling, props are emblems.
In the first scene, when one of the girls seems to have fallen into a mysterious coma, the only prop is her sick bed. An oversized window is suspended on the back wall, creating both a spacious feeling to the set and a visual frame for the action. The bed becomes a Mecca, where all the visitors -- the confused adults and frightened teenagers -- reveal themselves. Into this room of conflicting emotions comes Reverendo John Hale (Rómulo Assereto), his arms filled with books. Everyone is respectful and instantly attentive. He is established as a man of learning and unbiased reason, not just another voice -- and we, along with everyone on stage, trust him.
Proctor and the angry, sexy, brash Abigail (Melania Urbina) create another point as they step away from their groups to talk about how she still wants him and how he is guilt-ridden. He takes his first private stand by departing. Fisher ensures that none of these signal gestures are lost in the whole. Each has its own defined space on the larger stage, and each punctuates the action. When the doctor kneels to Tituba, the servant from Barbados and she begins to name names, everything intensifies. The scene closes very quickly with the girls in wild agitation naming names. The passions of these characters provide the colour, colours that are intensified by the somber palette and minimalism of the sets (Luis Alberto León and Rocío Rodrigo) and by the simple Puritan costumes (lovely with subtle variations by Sitka Semsch).
The opening scene, and every scene after, is both edge-of-your-seat drama and handsome to the eye. (Pictures are available on Youtube and the theatre’s website.) In the next scene, once again the characters are clearly aligned and the powerful dramatic action flows unimpeded. Proctor sits at the oversized kitchen table off-center left while his very restrained wife bustles around, preparing his supper. They argue quietly. Then, stage right, Hale arrives, bringing news of the accusation against Elizabeth.
The sincerity, even the warmth, of this discussion is replaced when the Puritan elders enter to arrest Elizabeth. Proctor, who has raised his voice to their new serving girl for participating in the witchcraft hearings, takes his first public stand against the pillars of the church when he blocks their access to Elizabeth (and the symbolic table) and shouts. Similar blocking techniques are applied to the courtroom scene, the examination of Elizabeth, the confrontation between the girls and Proctor, and the meeting between Elizabeth and John after months in jail.
With the emotional lucidity of each scene and the clear escalation of the stakes, the drama gains momentum. What we have on stage is less a matter of performance and more the question of human dignity. I’ve always known that this was Arthur Miller’s thesis, but I had not felt it before. I was never so involved. Perhaps this was because I was listening so hard to understand the play in Spanish. For the first time I heard the many repetitions of the words whore (puta) and witch (bruja), the conflicting charges the women hurl at each other. I kept asking myself how I missed this or missed that until the final scene, when I began to wonder if any other director saw what Fisher recognized in the script.
John Proctor confides to Elizabeth that he wants to confess to avoid hanging, and he asks her for guidance. She tells him she wants him alive but will abide by any decision he makes. She is very pregnant, filthy, with sores, but now softer, more caring. He decides to confess. Hale is overjoyed. The aging and condemned Rebecca Nurse is brought into the room to learn from Proctor’s example and save her life by confessing. Proctor signs the note -- then thinks, then tears up the paper. He screams: “Because it is my name . . . How may I live without my name?” Off stage we hear the drum roll, preliminary to the hangings. And on stage we are left with a simple mise-en-scène: Proctor, center stage, with Rebecca Nurse, a mother of sorrows, behind him. “Let you fear nothing,” she says. “Another judgment waits us all!” And then Parrish and Hale, not understanding as I hadn’t before, beg Elizabeth to try persuading him again. But the passion has been played out. It has moved from the human plane -- not to nobility, not to pride -- but to the spiritual.Las Brujas de Salem is a tragedy about the common man. The drama has transcended its genesis -- at least in this rare and beautiful production.
Miguel Iza, another talented young director, was trained in Peru but looks to Europe for inspiration. He has been working in the theatre for 15 years, six of them spent in France. He directed Caricias, a play by Sergi Belbel which had been made into the 1998 Spanish film Carícies, directed by Ventura Pons. The human comedy, the shock value of the scenes, and the contemporary feel appealed to him.
The play has 10 interwoven scenes with two characters each, much like Schnitzler’s La Ronde. The dominant actor from each scene becomes the secondary character in the next although the characters do not necessarily repeat. Each scene explores human longing and perversity, from physical abuse and incest to friendship and a search for someone to listen.
The stage of Teatro de la Alianza Francesa, which is affiliated with the language and cultural center, is large and deep. The theatre itself looks like it might double as a lecture hall. Iza used a series of free-standing flats to create a fluid set design while projections and sound design set the specific scenes (the subway scene, for example). He moved the action around the stage so that the action seemed to unfold in various locations in Lima.
The irony of the title Caresses is apparent from the first scene. A man and woman are on a sofa. They fight. You insulted me, she says, her head on his lap. He tells her to shut and hits her. She asks him what he wants to eat as though nothing had happened. The scene is particularly troubling because Peru has mounted a far-reaching campaign against domestic violence. You hear radio spot, see ads, even read slogans painted on buildings in villages to end the violence. Close to 70 percent of all the women killed in Peru died at the hands of their male companions. In Peru they have coined the word “femicide,” but the rate is high in all of Latin America.
He hits her again. There is no dessert, she tells him. Let’s go to the kitchen. When he rises from the couch, she kicks him. The first blow is dramatic, but as she continues to beat and kick him, warning him not to forget, her actions become as unsettling as his. As the scene closes, she asks him again what he would like to eat -- like a good wife.
The next scene between a mother and daughter is also a power play. They meet on a park bench. The older woman reads to the younger, who tells her to shut up; she is going to leave. When the old woman says she is so alone, the girl becomes more abusive. So the mother changes tactic and denies her daughter (I’m not your mother), which surprisingly wounds the girl. She stands, anguish on her face, and the mother, having the upper hand, says, “Call me.”Belbel calls his dramatic philosophy “the theatre of pain,” and some critics have compared his “frugal, repetitive” technique to Beckett’s.
The most disquieting scenes are of incest (a boy seducing his father at bath time, for example), homosexuality, and violence. But some scenes are very touching. Two older women meet at a café and one begins a lament for her youth. She talks about dancing with all the boys, remembering one with warm hands and tangoing with another. Her friend said she always danced alone, away from people. “You get used to being this way,” the first one says, then asks her friend to dance. At first she declines, but persuaded they dance -- badly as the colors behind them change. Then they kiss. They are lovers. “I’m not afraid. I’m used to this,” one says.
The funniest scene is set in the subway. Barely visible at the back of the stage two lovers copulate, then move to a bench to wait for the train. She suggests they split up, and he replies that there is something he must tell her. She has a bad smell. She doesn’t wash enough. She probably has an infection. When he leaves her, he immediately bathes. He will have to forget her although their three months together were amazing. But he can’t take the smell. He goes on and on, talking over her when she tries to interject. He laughs. Astonished, she moves to sit in his lap. He shoves her away. “I hate you,” she shouts, sits opposite him, and opens her legs to tempt him. We are left to wonder if she does smell, if this is his revenge for her saying they should break up, or if this is just more foreplay.
The most riveting and affecting scene takes place in front of a dumpster. An elegant older woman -- picture a frail Queen Elizabeth II -- tries to hold a conversation with a grungy bum -- a King Lear in rags -- who is scrounging for food. To his delight, he finds a can of sardines, “sardinita bonita”, and offers to share them. He’s not interested in conversation. When she advises him not to eat them, he screams out of control, then squats to eat. She places herself on the ground right next to him and freaks him out. You’re an old woman, he tells her. He waves his wedding ring in her face. I’m married. My wife is dead. The dialogue is very funny and very bizarre. The woman replies that it was a long time ago. My wife, he says, had a boyfriend, my brother. She left me. I’m hungry, she tells him. He finds more food in the bin and she accepts what is offered. Don’t you want to go home with me? she asks. He curses and laughs; she exits. We understand her loneliness early in the scene but only slowly do we realize that he is her husband.
The actors brought us beautifully realized portrayals of complex characters. Throughout Iza’s direction was expert and his cast, uniformly engaging. I was lucky to catch three superlative productions. Attention was paid to every detail, and Lima has a lot of talent, from scenographers to performers. A great deal was done with so little -- whether it was design on a shoe-string or a deliberate paring down.
Peru is experiencing a period of growth, especially in new construction and new schools (mostly for computers and foreign languages), which is evident everywhere. In 2004 half the country was poor. Today that figure is closed to 35% thanks to its foreign trade. For several years the country had the highest growth rate in Latin America. One can only hope that the theatre will develop with the economy. By establishing professional theatres within cultural and educational venues, thus creating an audience, the country is off to a promising start. .