The Spring 2011 Theatre Season in Mexico City

Mexico City’s Spring 2011 theatre season featured some truly outstanding plays, several festivals, an abundance of offerings, an astonishing variety, and even a play performed by inmates from a local penitentiary. With roughly 150 plays advertised during any given week (except Holy Week, when most theatres close), spectators could choose from a wide variety of offerings of varying quality, methods, and topics.

Two of the season’s finest plays were directed by Alberto Lomnitz. Daniel Serrano wrote Roma al final de la vía and Julieta Ortiz and Norma Angélica performed it at Teatro Casa de la Paz. The pair of actresses delivered an acting tour de force, starting the play as a pair of seven-year olds and morphing five times in age, ending the play as 80-year olds. Ortiz and Angélica portrayed each age distinctly and beautifully, never leaving the stage, which was occupied only by a pair of cubes, a rectangular “bench,” and two coat trees with props to aid in the transformations. Watching them between scenes was like watching them age, as they changed key elements of their clothing, their hair from pigtails to ponytails to buns, their postures, and the pace at which they did things. At the start of each of the first five scenes the two got up onto the “bench,” walked across it, and then followed a meandering route on the stage eventually leading through the pair of cubes, at which point “railroad tracks” would appear (through illumination) at the front of the stage. These opening sequences for each scene were brilliant theatre, drawing the audience into the characters’ world without ever revealing where they were, except near train tracks. In powerful images those initial moments spoke volumes about changes in the women: as a very young child and then young woman, vibrant, hyperactive Emilia (played by Ortiz) jumped up onto the “bench” (which was only really a bench in the final scene, but was whatever the audience supposed it was—in my case I imagined it to be a log over a small stream), then helped her overweight, awkward friend across and then off after jumping high into the air. By age 60, the characters were still a contrast to each other, but ironically, Evangelina was now the stronger of the two, as Emilia was bent by time, used a cane, had a hard time moving and required considerable help. At each stage of their lives the train entered into their thinking and conversation, as they fantasized about getting onto it and travelling to Rome, symbol of a glamorous distant place. Brilliant lighting represented the train, with moving, alternating rectangles of light projected onto the actresses, to which they reacted with great enthusiasm. Emilia in particular yearned to leave, and in fact got on the train at the end of the fourth scene, at about age 40. Even though the audience later learned that the train crashed within half an hour, thwarting Emilia’s goofy plans, the moment of getting on provided one of the play’s most memorable moments, as Evangelina excitedly cheered her friend’s accomplishment, then sat down and wept as she realized that her friend had gone. Each of the six moments allowed the characters to talk about changes in their lives; as they aged Emilia became decrepit not only physically but psychologically, developing bitterness over her family life and circumstances, while Evangelina seemed well-adjusted to her life and the town in which they lived. Eventually, at age 80, they sat on the bench and conversed, completely covered except their faces, and the play ended with what I took to be Emilia’s death, as she stood up from her aged body and danced like a butterfly across the stage. This play explored beautifully issues of friendship, dreams, frustrations, aging, and women’s roles. It took spectators through a broad range of emotions, with moments of laughter, moments of joy, moments of sadness, and moments of tenderness. I noticed many audience members moved to tears at the performance I witnessed. The actresses have formed a group called Escape...