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  • Spring 2010 Theatre Season in Mexico City
  • Timothy G. Compton

Mexico has been abuzz with history in 2010, celebrating the 200th anniversary of its movement for Independence and the 100th anniversary of the start of the Revolution. Not surprisingly, Mexico City's theatre this year features more plays than usual with topics from national history, and some of these plays were among the finest of the season. But Mexico City's theatre scene produced much more than historical theatre. UNAM's theaters housed several of the plays that made the season's biggest theatrical splashes, but other traditional theater spaces as well as smaller venues also produced fine theatre. Total production approximated that of seasons from prior years, and with a similar mix of adult and children's theatre, as well as plays written by Mexicans and those written elsewhere. In short, Mexico City's theatre scene continues to thrive in number, variety, and quality.

Two of the season's most outstanding plays were conceived for younger audiences. Inmolación, written by Enrique Olmos and directed by Alberto Lomnitz, had the greatest pure impact on me as a spectator. It had a run in the Julio Jiménez Rueda theater from November 2009 to April 2010 for public school students as part of Mexico's "Teatro Escolar" program, and then in May started a commercial run in the Galeón theater. It tackled an exceptionally sensitive subject, adolescent suicide. One of its finest elements was that it immersed the audience into the conflicted, overloaded world of adolescents. Spectators on stools in the middle of a 6-sided set had to swivel from side to side to try to take in the worlds of the play's two young characters. Most of the "action" occurred on opposite sides of the set, which I will call sides one and four. Side one represented the personal living space of Jorge Luis, brilliantly played by Fernando Bonilla, a 14-year old growing up in Spain after his family immigrated there from South America. It included his computer desk, bed, and shelves containing some of his personal items. Side [End Page 133]


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Inmolación. Photo: Zachary Bartel

four contained a similar space for Nora, a 13-year old from Puebla played very well by Paulina Treviño. Side two had a bathtub, side three represented a medical facility, with a stand for intravenous treatment, side five had a park bench, and side six a large screen. That screen was just one of 42 that I counted, with the other 41 disbursed among the other five sides of the set, which was designed by Elizabeth Álvarez. The screens projected myriad images which no audience member could entirely process, a reflection of the bewildering world adolescents face, especially given the cyber world which this play expertly included. Screens behind the characters' computers primarily reflected what the characters themselves were seeing and creating on their computer screens, while the others had images from their lives. Jorge Luis took refuge in a blog he had created about dinosaurs, since as an overweight, nerdy immigrant from a broken home, and a victim of bullying at school, his real life was far from satisfying to him. Eventually the satisfaction of his cyber world wore off, and after a wrenching, devastating monologue in which he spewed how much he hated every aspect of his existence, he decided to take his life. Nora sought attention through live online broadcasts of her attempts at suicide to try to reach her single mother and self-centered "friends." Bizarre conversations between the two characters happened in an online chat format as they sat at their computers, but on their screens they were represented by freakish avatars. Clearly, they found little comfort or meaning in "real" life, but their "cyber" existences further muddied the waters, and the play ended [End Page 134] with the pair making preparations to commit suicide. Lomnitz reported that he consulted with several psychologists before staging Inmolación because he did not want it to seem like an invitation to suicide. As a result he added the myriad screens with mostly positive images of...

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