Mexico City's Spring 2008 Theatre Season

FALL 2008 107 Mexico City’s Spring 2008 Theatre Season Timothy G. Compton The best of Mexico City’s spring 2008 theatre season featured some old and some new. The new included a slick new theatre space, Teatro El Milagro, on the second floor of the building associated with the El Milagro publishing house which has published numerous important anthologies of contemporary Mexican theatre. New leaders occupy a number of key positions in Mexico City’s theatre world as a result of the inevitable shuffle in the wake of naming a new rector at UNAM (Enrique Singer has replaced Mónica Raya as UNAM’s Director de Teatro, Mario Espinoza has replaced Antonio Crestani as Director of UNAM’s Centro Universitario de Teatro acting school, and Crestani has replaced Luis Mario Moncada as director of the Centro Cultural Helénico). Fine new plays by young playwrights premiered, but plays by some of Mexico’s most venerable playwrights had excellent performances as well. Consider this lineup of classic Mexican playwrights: Rodolfo Usigli, Elena Garro, Luisa Josefina Hernández, and Emilio Carballido . Mexico City once again had plenty to choose from this season, with 102 plays for adults (of which about 70 were by Mexicans) and 23 for children (about 15 by Mexicans!) advertised in the May 8-14 issue of Tiempo libre alone. Others happened without advertising in Tiempo libre, or happened during other weeks of the season. As always, one of the biggest challenges for theatre spectators in Mexico City is having to miss some of the plays they really want to see due to the sheer abundance of plays. For me, the most memorable play of the season was Derviche, written by Ximena Escalante and directed by Carlos Corona with an unforgettable set designed by Jorge Ballina. Spectators were prepared to be transported to the Middle East by the play’s subtitle, Cuentos sufis para incomodar a los convencionales, Middle Eastern music, and geometrical motifs on the handbill and the floor of the stage. The stage floor was composed of a 4 x 7 grid of 108 LATIN AMERICAN THEATRE REVIEW interlocking, alternating designs – one a sixteen-sided star with eight points and the other a sort of blocked X. Each of the 28 sections was outlined with a light-toned wood, while inside the outline, in darker wood, the designs were repeated with geometrical precision, each one smaller than the previous. They made for a beautiful stage. Above it hung 40 light bulbs in metallic holders, arranged in a 5 x 8 grid so that each hung exactly over a corner of one of the stage floor sections. Derviche included numerous elements which were outstanding, but the theatrical effects achieved by lowering different combinations of those forty lights to varying heights was sensational, and unlike any play I have ever seen. Lowering four lights to the floor, to cite the simplest of examples, created an elevator or a jail cell. Other sites created by lowering lights to various levels included vendor shops, a rickshaw, a palace, a garden, a press briefing room, and a ship. In some cases the lights were fastened to the floor or each other, on high sea the lights swayed just above the floor to suggest waves, and in the case of a press room, the actors used some of the lights as microphones. The ropes controlling the height of the lights were visible at the sides of the stage, and at times the configurations were so complex that the actors helped to create the various spaces. The magic of those forty lights with their cables in instantly transporting actors Derviche. Photo: Christopher Wells FALL 2008 109 and spectators alike to myriad exotic locales was recognized at the end of the play, as the two technicians took bows along with the five actors, each one, appropriately, within one of the sevan lanes created by lowered lights. The plot itself was a set of four framed tales. In the outer frame, a girl in Mexico City, where everyone wore drab, dark clothes, was in the middle of a family break up. She escaped to a more appealing reality by reading a book of tales called...