On Now: La Constancia del Viento

La Constancia del Viento is the first show to be produced at Buenavía Estudio, a collaborative theatre space in Palermo. Pablo Iglesias´ work is an homage to melodrama in grand style. It premiered in Buenos Aires in February, and will run until the 28th of July. His wife, Clara Virasoro, is among the cast-she plays the lovelorn girl with a heart of gold-and the other two points of the love triangle are brought to life by their two close friends and collaborators, Marìa Cecilia Miserere and Martin Palladino. Martin plays her paramour, promised-of course-to Maria’s character, the “wicked witch.”

The theatre is a tiny space, and the audience sits on four or five rows of bleachers. As I hunkered down in front of the set, a claustrophobic Victorian parlor in scarlet and black, I wondered what I was about to see. The play had been advertised as a dramatic love story, and I had pictured fluttering handkerchiefs, waxed moustaches, tragic romance. (I was mostly right.) But the tableau onstage was unsettling: a housemaid in sterile white, face contorted in grief, inky trails of mascara staining her cheeks. How were we meant to react? What were we about to see?

La Constancia del viento clocks in at a streamlined 50 minutes, but never feels constricted or overdone. It scales the dizzy heights of passion without a single false step. Martin Palladino described the impulse behind La Constancia del Viento as part of the melodramatic spirit: “More than anything-the decision to write a melodrama was what sparked this. We have always worked together, the four of us. And we decided to create a melodrama together, to collaborate. It attracted us-the extreme emotions, the need to make them credible but at the same time a little bit…overdone, a little bit larger than life. That genre seemed like a very interesting challenge.”

That aim, so carefully distinguished from simple satire, results in a much sharper, more developed final product. The play is intended as a true melodrama: part of the long tradition of telenovelas, fotonovelas, and vintage films that carry doomed lovers into eternity. The four collaborators spent several months combing through different sources of inspiration, ending up with “a season of telenovela scripts in fifty minutes.” The plot points are shopworn cliches, the twists ludicrous and the denouement contorted, but at no point does this work lose its audience.

I was impressed throughout by the agility with which the three actors managed the intense emotional pitch and surreal drama of the work. Despite its debt to older stories, this play is a new incarnation of the genre: it has a modern alacrity, an acrobatic confidence, a supersaturated emotional and aesthetic palette. As Martin Palladino put it, “You can’t paint in pastels. You’re always working. And on a physical level, it’s intense. The gestures, the body language.” Miserere agrees: “The space didn’t allow for any breathing room. We were always up against each other, in each other’s space. Nothing was ever passive. We were always acting.”

Despite the heavy lifting required by the script, none of the acting seemed forced or laboured. Throughout, I was impressed by the sense of joy embodied in the play. As Martin says, “We tried to make a treat for the spectator. A confection. And earlier production notes played into that-we created an atmosphere. Here in the ticket booth, the villainess. And here in the reception area, the housemaid. We kept some of that spirit, with the glasses of wine and the bonbons. We wanted it to be fun. We had fun.” And Ceci adds,“It was a lot of fun playing the lady you love to hate.”