“It’s a little cooler in here,” Pablo Iglesias says, opening the door to Buenavìa Teatral’s small stage. Pablo is a native of Buenos Aires, and has just collaborated in founding Buenavìa Teatral, an alternative theater in Alto Palermo. His newest work, ‘La Constancia del viento,’ is currently running there (until 28th July). Buenavìa Teatral offers acting and writing classes as well as space for events, and Pablo is a teacher as well as a writer and director. We sat down on the bleachers to talk about his work.

How did you get into playwriting?

I was an actor at first. And it was enjoyable, but it wasn’t quite what I wanted to do. I was restless. And I was watching the other people involved-the director, the writer. So I tried different things and finally, I started writing plays. I showed my work to a lot of people at first-all of my friends, teachers, fellow actors-but then I started writing more for myself, and it became much easier for me to see what I really wanted my work to be.

Can you tell me a little bit about your newer projects?

It’s a melodrama, a tragic love triangle: a wealthy bridegroom, his cruel bride, and the humble housemaid who loves him. And I’m working on another play, a suspenseful drama.

Do you make many changes to the work in progress, during rehearsals or readthroughs?

Yes. I see the initial script as a premature version. It’s an important aspect of theatre, collaboration. When I write, it’s like I’m conveying my soul, a part of myself, like I’m creating something pure, bringing it forth out of my body almost. Then of course you show it to the actors, and they contribute. They bring their emotions and desires and fears to the work, and that does change the whole picture a little bit. The actors do have different ideas about the work, about their characters. So, yes, I make many modifications during the production process.

And, of course, there are a lot of compromises you have to make with the art form itself. If I have an idea that’s really out there, really fantastic-really elaborate, well, I don’t censor myself in the writing process. But then you have to bring all that back to earth-anchor it in the scene. Sometimes the idea is difficult to stage-sometimes it’s impossible. The challenge is to maintain the sense of the idea, the essential spirit.

You’ve also been doing some writing for television. Is that more difficult, adapting your ideas to this other medium?

I don’t know if it’s more difficult-it´s a new format. But it’s not really more complicated. The details are different-there are some visual aspects to writing a screenplay, a few things are more formalised, you have to decide a few more things. And the deadlines are different. You can spend as much time on a play as you like-keep it locked away for years, work on it in secret, tinker at it until it’s perfect-but you can’t do that with television. You have a deadline. People are waiting for you. The independence isn’t there. You have rules, requirements: a comedy, an apartment, four actors, two men and two women. I can write whatever kind of play I want, about whatever kind of situation I want. Television doesn’t usually offer that kind of license.

Theatre is more artisanal. The public completes the experience. It’s not like in the multiplex, where you come and sit back with your bucket of popcorn to stare up at the screen in awe. Each member of the audience can collaborate. They approve the work, they engage with it, or not. They have to buy in. Theatre was invented tens of thousands of years ago. We’ve invented any number of technologies to entertain ourselves — the radio arrived, movies arrived, television and the internet arrived, and people still gather in these little rooms to watch living actors give their speeches. Theatre is a ritual, a tradition.

Can you tell me a little more about your current play?

Well, there are some restrictions to the form. Some basic rules. There’s always a tragic love. There’s always a villain-in this case a villainess. This melodrama is about a marriage between two people from high society backgrounds-society darlings. The bridegroom falls in love with a poor housemaid. His bride is a real harpy. The formula is pretty standard-abuse of coincidence, hackneyed plot developments, secret sibling relationships. An epic in 50 minutes or less. The music is very important, too-there are dramatic sequences to announce the lovers, to announce their love, to introduce the venomous betrayer, to smooth everything out. I really enjoyed working with the actors through all of this. Melodrama requires a lot of careful work with the acting-it’s a delicate business, because the material has such dangerous potential. It’s so exuberantly emotional, so strongly put, that it requires a delicate touch. Too little investment and it’s boring. Too much and it feels ridiculous.

I liked having to respect basic rules. It was an interesting puzzle. The suspense play was the same way. That one was a little bit more complicated-the genre is more complex, more fluid. There’s a crime, usually a murder. How do you unmask the killer? There’s the list of suspects, the clues, the red herrings, the suspicions. The tension builds and builds and is finally resolved.

Your last play, ‘El baile del pollito’, is a much more contemporary, political work. What was its inspiration?

Well, I was listening to the Stones. Their music has always provoked a very strong response in me. I didn’t think too much about what I was writing, what I was trying to do. When I was writing the play, I wasn’t thinking to myself, I’m going to write a trenchant dark comedy about the conflict in the Malvinas and the lasting consequences of imperialism and militarism and Anglo-Argentine relations and the spiraling consequences of violence and blah blah blah. It was just…an idea.

I started with these two men, shut up together, talking about the beach. Then I heard that Prince Harry had visited, that he’d gone to a kiosk to buy chips or something, and I thought about what would happen if he got himself kidnapped by a couple of schmucks, and there I was. I wrote about it in intimate terms; I was writing primarily about these two men, their characters and their feelings. The Stones. The beach was another theme. The ocean surrounding them, the icy weather outside, and the warm Caribbean shores, blue water and warm air. That’s a theme for me, the beach. And, you know, you could look at it in Freudian terms-he wants to return to the womb, the warmth, the wet. But I don’t know, it just comes up.

Anything that surprised you as you were working?

It’s a way of looking at the world. Something natural. More naturally-the strange things that can happen to the characters as you tell the story, the things that can suddenly take place in the story. The sudden, unpredictable nature of violence. The song ended up being very prescient-”Love is just a kiss away, war is just a shot away. It’s all very near, in other words. The music itself is a little violence. It’s a threatening idea, that we’re a moment away from catastrophe.

I was writing about two Argentines-two different Argentines. One of them is an older man, a veteran, a working stiff. The other one is a callow kid, a kid who grew up with some money and comfort, a little soft and stupid, not serious. And then there’s the figure of the young prince, who never actually appears onstage. Captured, hurt, finally dying. The play is about the discussion between them, about this thing they’ve done together. The themes are their personalities. Their reactions. I had a teacher once who told me that a play is like the bonsai of a novel. Everything pared down. And that’s essential for me: you go from the small to the big. Always start small. Never write about the large themes first. Just the little people. Really, it’s a bit of a coping mechanism for me. I don’t have to deal with the big stuff. I can handle the small stuff.

I spent a lot of time looking for my vocation. I was thirty years old before I started writing. I loved the contact with the people, I loved the cooperative aspect of theatre, how you have to have a rapport with the audience in order to really create anything. To make things concrete. It’s a choice they make on behalf of your vision. And I see myself as continuing with this work-writing, teaching.

For me, it’s about having a question you can’t answer. A question maybe nobody can answer. That’s the creative impulse. To contribute something positive in return. It’s a relentless desire.

When I met Marcelo Pitrola as part of our Author Spotlight series last September, he mentioned he was working on a new project: a collaboration with longtime artistic partner Silvia Hilario and actress Emilse Diaz.

‘Diario de incertidumbre’, which premiered on 5th May and is excerpted in an exclusive English translation here, is an eerie tale about a woman caught in a hospital with a mysterious ailment. As she waits for a diagnosis, she re-lives and then re-evaluates her life, falling further and further away from certainty as the double examination progresses.

The play stars Emilse Diaz as the troubled woman at the center of the story, and Silvia Hilario as both doctor and nurse.

I was captivated by the idea of what is essentially a one-woman play: how would such a thing evolve onstage? How would her memories manifest? How would an actress perform under such obscured conditions? How would a stage director use an atmosphere as cold as a hospital ward to convey so many shades of emotion?

I met up with Marcelo, Silvia and Emilise to discuss the work, the collaborative process, and the creative constraints of portraying an entire life in a single clinic room.

How did you get the idea for ‘Diario’?

Marcelo: Silvia proposed the core image of the story. Afterwards, I began to sort through my own thoughts and questions regarding the different women, selecting here and there in my attempt to construct Diana and her world. I began to write the interior monologue that serves as the linchpin of the play, and the idea of a private diary immediately appeared as the ideal medium.

Silvia: The idea was based on my own experience. I’d had an accident – I was that helpless patient. I wanted to capture that feeling of stasis, of confusion.

Marcelo and I started with the central vision of the woman under diagnosis, and he gave it dramatic form. He invented the mythology of Diana’s life – the ballet teacher, the absent father – and came up with the idea of the acts. It was a very comfortable collaboration and it’s been wonderful to work with him.

Marcelo: Theatre is a collective, collaborative activity. Effective dialogue produces the best work. Silvia is a good friend and she’d already performed as the protagonist in my earlier play, ‘The Peronist Princess’. We’ve always had an excellent rapport, and we have similar ideas about what aspects of theatre are most appealing. I suppose that’s why she approached me with this idea.

And how was it, Emilse, to come into this process as an actress?

Emilse: I have to confess that it was difficult in the beginning, wondering how to convey all of this. The actress is trapped in a single room. She’s always in the bed, but she’s also always moving, changing, transitioning into different states. She’s running back over every minute of her life. It’s exhausting. But in the end, I very much enjoyed the process – the diverse possibilities. It was a game. It was gratifying.

Marcelo, you’ve written many works about women and womanhood – what was it like to develop this specific female protagonist?

Marcelo: I do seem to have more of an interest in female characters than in male ones. That may be because I have questions about the feminine sphere, and I write in order to answer them.

In this work, as well as in ‘The Peronist Princess’, I wasn’t really sure where the process would lead – I just had a series of questions, and they were pushing me to write more and more. That’s basically how it was all conceived.

And as women, how did you two, Emilse and Silvia, develop this female thematic?

Emilse: There is, well, an excess of women!

Silvia: Yes, but there’s an important theme about the relationship between femininity and fertility – what you can make out of yourself. The character of the nurse: she became a mother at 16. She didn’t question it; it wasn’t an existential dilemma. The doctor is another alternative: she has a different attitude. And Diana’s mother, too, represents a different set of obligations – a kind of pressure for Diana to define herself against. And then there’s Diana’s friend, yet another version of womanhood. She’s made different choices too – she has different impulses. Altogether, they form a kind of synthesis.

The synthesis that Diana doesn’t contain within herself?

Emilse: I think she feels profoundly alone. In this place, in the hospital, you feel isolated. Naked.

Can you tell me a little bit more about what it was like to bring this concept to the stage?

Marcelo: I’d say, first of all, it was difficult to convey something as private as a diary in a theatrical medium. It occurred to me that different interlocutors could appear during this internal monologue, to allow it to become more theatrical, more externalized. Piece by piece, the work was transformed into what you could call “mono-dialogues”. The subjectivity – Diana’s universe – came to life.

Emilse: Yes, and for me, the problem was performing such an internal transformation. How do you act that out? I was also working with a character who doesn’t have a sense of herself. She is what other people call her – she speaks a great deal about what they say about her. And of course, as a patient, she is what the doctor and nurse say she is. All of her traits have this feeling of externality – as thought she exists as a reflection. Her role as a performer is in keeping with all of this. She takes on other roles, and speaks lines written by other people.

But for a work about so many “other people”, it’s very restrained, very narrow. For much of the play, Diana is totally alone.

Silvia: Yes, there’s a restraint in the design that places it firmly in liminal territory: it lacks detail. There’s also a projector that serves as a kind of magic lantern. At first, it’s used to project the radiography slides of the patient’s anarchic body, but then it becomes more complicated than that – less strictly medical.

The stage, the physical dimensions of the theatre, crudeness, unadorned blankness – it’s all very much a part of the design. The cramped little bathroom to one side of the hospital bed is a part of the production space, and the blocking incorporates it into the play. The bed is also ambiguous, deceptively simple, un-identified. It can be seen as a multiplicity of beds. Where you dream, where you wake, where you make love, where you die.

Emilse: In the context of childhood, the bed becomes a place of ‘play’. But then, it’s a sickbed, too: immobility, pain and sickness.

How was sickness given meaning in the play?

Marcelo: Diana’s character is in the clinic because she had an accident. She’s desperate, in extremis. But then, during this period of enforced stillness, she starts thinking about her childhood, her career, her art. She’s been many different kinds of artist: a ballerina, an actress, a choreographer. And now she’s suffering from this disorder. She’s trying to control her body but soon she starts trying to control her life: to regulate her past, define it and all of its components, keep it from destroying her. When she enters the past, it’s as though she enters another space – a kind of limbo.

Silvia: And as she endeavors to find herself, to undertake this journey, she’s interrupted by the nurse and the doctor. The nurse’s realm is quotidian: she’s trying to impose a rhythm, a routine, something more normal than the emerging consciousness of the intractable patient. Meanwhile, the doctor uses scientific discourse, trying to translate all of these feelings and impulses into symptoms. In this way, the three women have little connection with each other.

They seem to be total opposites. Yet the doctor and nurse are both portrayed by the same actress. Why?

Silvia: Well, for one, because of the clear overlap in the roles. They both represent realism. The nurse is pragmatic, bodily. The doctor maintains distance. She is prone to discussing everything in medical terms of either a sickness or a cure. She has an answer for everything, as it were.

Emilse: These three women are all looking for the truth. The doctor is obsessed with concrete, specific objectives – because the alternative is too alarming. The nurse also represents certainty and uncomplicated things. This play is all about complication. The three women aren’t really antagonistic. They’re like facets of one another.

And what becomes of Diana’s relationship to herself, and to the doctor and nurse, at the end of the play?

Silvia: She never solves the problem. She only asks more and more questions. We decided that the material led us there, and that there’s no way to tie things up neatly. She exchanges the firm ground of a decision for ambiguity.

Emilse: We don’t know what she’ll do, but the sensation at the end is that after all of this, this great production, this investigation…she’s finally ready to ask these questions honestly. Who am I? What am I? We don’t get to find out.

A splash of water in the dark establishes the first primitive connection, starting the energy flowing through spectators’ spines like electricity.

Staged at Centro Cultural Recoleta, Pinchón Baldinu’s ‘Hombre Vertiente’ is not just one of the best water shows ever produced, it is a highly enigmatic and captivating journey into the human mind, metaphorically presented to an astonished audience through the performance of tribal acrobatics and the pumping beat of electronic music.

Borne from the imagination of Argentine director Pinchón Baldinu, the show comes from one of the most internationally acclaimed choreographers the country has seen. Baldinu’s 1995 hit Villa Villa was seen by more than three million people around the world and, in 2004, he was summoned by Disney’s studio to become an artistic director of Tarzan’s in-air choreographies.

A few months earlier he had founded the Ojala Theatre Company in Argentina, and it was through this company that he first presented ‘Hombre Vertiente’ at the 2008 Zaragoza Expo.

In the beginning, the show was simply an acrobatic display themed around water, but its success was so enormous that, despite a relatively short run-time of only 20 minutes, more than a million people queued to see the spectacle in the 93 consecutive days of showings that followed. Yet, Baldinu knew that more could be done and that the show had enormous potential. By the time the show debuted in Buenos Aires’ theatres in 2011, it had developed into a mature and well-rounded work of art.

“I thought we had to abandon the theme of water and focus on the story of a particular man […] by showing us his existence, with all its contradictions, its ghosts, its demons and accomplishments,” Baldinu told press before the play’s debut last September.

One man, one goal, one mission.

  Soaked in the dark, wondering exactly what is about to take place in the high-ceilinged theatre hall, we are told that we are about to witness the story of the Aguador(the Waterman, performed by Leo Kreimer) – “but the name is not important,” the voiceover states, imposingly.

‘Hombre Vertiente’ is the tale of a character who struggles to discover himself and travels through the amazing worlds created by his own mind, in which each performance of mid-air acrobatics reflects the devious twists of his tormented mind.

The show does not become a speculative guesswork surrounding the miserable condition of the human soul, though. Words stop right after the curtain falls, and from that moment on it remains the job of the music and the gymnastic bodies to do all the talking.

Throughout five different metaphorical sets, the Aguadorfights in mid-air with the beastly creations haunting his imagination. In one highly spectacular scene, he confronts his own alter egos where, in a 7-minute-long battle, performers explode 18,000 liters of water while flying around the stage. In another he travels through the three-dimensional desert of his soul, eventually becoming absorbed by it and finally, assists the struggle of female acrobats trapped in the gigantic silky convolutions of his brain.

The end of the show, which finishes with a great deal of dancing and the appearance of an enormous inflatable dragon, leaves the audience captivated by the primitive energy of the performance.

Watching the soaked audience swaying and screaming with enthusiasm makes you think that the fourth wall has probably never been that broken in a theatre show before. The aboriginal beat of Gaby Kerpel’s electronic soundtrack fuses the mood of the crowd with the show, working as amplifier for those basic feelings like euphoria, tranquility, hope and fear felt by the Aguador along his journey.

A surge of disappointment sweeps the audience when the lights turn on after only one hour and the tribal connection breaks up at the highest point of the emotional climax. But the sudden cut to the celebrations is understandable. “The show is highly demanding in terms of physical energy,” explains Leo Kreimer, the 40 year old star of the show. “We can’t physically last for more than one hour, we have to push our bodies to their limits.

“This show has a different characteristics from any other show,” he continues. “The storyline wants to show people something, yet it’s not really clear what this something is. We want to keep it this way, so every one who sees it can make up his own narrative, looking for himself into all of the metaphorical scenarios we present in the show.”

Given the success ‘Hombre Vertiente’ has encountered so far, the production company have confirmed that the show will continue to be staged at the same venue, Centro Cultural Recoleta, until next June.

The following is an excerpt from Ian Barnett’s official English translation of Marcelo Pitrola’s first original play, the prize-winning ‘The Peronist Princess’.

Characters
Victoria: A forceful, severely beautiful woman of around 35.
Rafael Martinoti: A bald, cheerful, slightly tanned provincial Deputy of around 45.
Tití: Deputy MARTINOTI’s hulking, moon-faced, beady-eyed bodyguard of about 60.

1. In the Toilets with Tití

A dimly lit, long disused toilet. The floor is polished concrete or tiles. There is a smell of damp and urine. The smell of urine becomes faintly nauseating in the intense heat. The air is close and thick. At times the distant reverberations of a dinner can faintly be heard: voices, laughter, the remote clink of cutlery. TITÍ comes in, leans against the closed door and watches VICTORIA cleaning herself up, combing her hair and fixing her makeup. She is still rather flustered and shaken after being beaten up a few blocks from the Party Offices. She is wearing a light blue gown with plunging neckline, revealing an ample portion of bosom. Her feet hurt. She takes off her shoes and stands there barefoot. Her nose has been bleeding profusely. She dabs at some spots of blood on her dress with some damp toilet paper.

VICTORIA: What are you dumping me in here for?

TITÍ: You’re staying here till it’s finished.

VICTORIA: Tell Raf to get in here right away. Come on, Tití. Please. Don’t make me waste time; they must have started eating by now. I’m really hungry.

TITÍ: You can’t. The wives are there.

VICTORIA: (Trying to staunch the flow of blood by tilting her head back.) Tell him I won’t say anything, I’ll be good, like the little French Mademoiselle I am.

TITÍ: No.

VICTORIA: Bitches. My mouth hurts. (She inspects her mouth and teeth in the mirror, still holding the toilet paper to her nose.)

TITÍ: You’re pouring with blood, baby.

VICTORIA: They kicked me in the nose.

TITÍ: Who did?

VICTORIA: Some local girls from the shanties. I know them. I’ll show them. Your little old boss lady sent them, the fucking bitch. And don’t call me baby.

TITÍ: Not the Señora.

VICTORIA: (She has staunched the blood and is cleaning herself up.) The Señora… She thinks she’s Elizabeth Taylor. Good God. The Señora. Just because she’s had four children with him, she thinks it gives her more of a right, the bloody bitch. Those fat dykes I’d… (Pause.) I’m walking out of here and having dinner with everyone, like a princess… (Pause.) I’m a true Peronist and have been from the cradle. Perón gave my cradle to my grandfather. I’ve got every right to be at that dinner. I’m the heiress to a Peronist dynasty.

TITÍ: A Peronist dynasty?

VICTORIA: I’ve got a lot more about me than those old phonies. A lot more about me. Let me out.

TITÍ: What dynasty?

VICTORIA: My Mummy, my Mummy, Lidia, was Labour Queen. Labour Queen, one 1st May in ‘52. (Pause.) When I’ve finished cleaning myself up, I’m going to sit down at that table and have dinner. Me, Victoria. I won’t do anything naughty, no scenes.

TITÍ: You’re not going anywhere. I’ve got the key.

VICTORIA: What if one of the old slags comes in for a shit? What if one of them wants to cover up her wrinkles and mop the sweat that’s making her makeup run?

TITÍ: Don’t worry, Vicky. The ladies is upstairs.

VICTORIA: The ladies. They’re all such tightasses. Their husbands get serviced when they’re out of the house. Besides, they’re all antiperonist gorillas. And don’t call me Vicky.

TITÍ: They’re not gorillas.

VICTORIA: No one knows this town the way I do. They don’t even know Buenos Aires the way I do. On Saturdays they go and doze their way through an opera in a box at the Colón and stuff their faces in a posh restaurant in Recoleta, and they claim they know Buenos Aires. They’re provincial sluts and antiperonist gorillas. Do you honestly think any of them are real Peronists? Well? Do you really think so?

TITÍ: None of my business.

VICTORIA: All your good for is pulling nasty faces and being scary. And picking the kids up from school. I bet you take ‘The Señora’ to get her hair done too.

TITÍ: Vicky.

VICTORIA: You want to bang the coiffeur but you can’t. So, while you’re waiting to take ‘The Señora’ to the gym in the afternoons, you have a siesta in the maid’s room and get your cock sucked.

TITÍ: Vicky.

VICTORIA: Poor girl. She never gets real sex because you’re afraid of getting caught. It’s always easier to hide a blowjob.

TITÍ: Vicky.

VICTORIA: You take ‘The Señora’ to play canasta with the old slags too. Don’t call me Vicky.

TITÍ: They play at the Señora’s house.

VICTORIA: Have you given ‘The Señora’ one yet, Tití? (Silence.) Impossible. You can’t. You haven’t got the balls. (Pause.) Let me out. Please, pretty please, Tití.

TITÍ: Shut up.

VICTORIA: Do you expect me to spend the night stuck in these grubby toilets and not make a peep about it?

TITÍ: Yes.

VICTORIA: This is my big night. Lights! Fanfare! Drums and cymbals, Peronist drums.

TITÍ: No, no drums tonight. No more drums, baby.

VICTORIA: Don’t call me baby. Look at the dress I’ve put on. It’s satin, ever so soft. (Pause.) Don’t I look marvellous?

TITÍ: I’m going to have something to eat. I’m a slow eater, so I’ll be a while. I like to chew my food properly. You just relax, Vicky. I’ll lock the door. If you’re a good girl, I’ll bring you a doggy bag. If you’re not, I won’t bring you anything and I’ll leave you here all night.

VICTORIA: Wait, come on. Let me out, please. What do you want? I’ll give you something if you let me go. (She comes closer and leans on him.)

TITÍ: No, Vicky, don’t.
(TITÍ goes out and locks the door.)

VICTORIA: Lackey. And don’t call me Vicky.
(Pause. She goes on cleaning herself and putting on her makeup. When she’s finished, she sits down with her back to the mirror. Her dress still has spots of blood on it.)