Guanajuato.—The limits of Red Phone, a work by the Vancouver theater company, Boca del Lupo, are difficult to mark. Halfway between the installation and the play, the piece will remain in Plaza Allende on the esplanade of the Cervantes Theater in Guanajuato, until October 21, from 12:00 to 18:00, as part of the 51st International Festival Cervantine.
“The company has a foundation in theater and performances and relies heavily on technology. Red Phone is something intermediate between technology, performance and theater; which we wanted to represent well with this piece,” explains Jay Dodge, artistic producer of the company since 2001 and designer of the piece designed by the director, Sherry J Yoon.
Two red booths, separated three meters apart and connected by an electrical circuit, reproduce, inside, a teleprompter that guides the participant to recreate a theatrical dialogue, a specific scene, in complicity with someone from the audience: “The experience of the audience is actually something intimate between two people. The audience sees, in the distance, the experience of two people representing this installation. The power of the piece is that it allows the participant to let go of their inhibitions and embody the work of the author”.
The author, in turn, transmits through the installation these own situations to the public, “to the participant, and makes them put themselves in their shoes, pretend to be someone else and understand a new point of view. This is what artists do and it is a type of experience that the participant can have.”
In other words, Red Phone stops polarizing the aspects that divide the audience from the artist and seeks to unite them, Dodge explains. That is why the limits of the work cannot be defined, and he emphasizes that “the participant and the audience are one and the same. Therein lies the power and strength of this work,” she adds.
In the productions that have taken place in Canada and certain countries in Latin America and Europe, sometimes people leave the play laughing or crying: on other occasions, they even hug the person who is in the other booth: “There was an occasion in which two people who left the cabin began a romance. They are different perspectives of what the usual audience expects from an installation or a play. It is an exercise to leave individual perspectives and enter others that are not their own.” The curious encounter, she says, happened in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
“The two participants went to talk after the piece and seemed in love. It was something with a romantic tinge that is not always seen in an artistic installation. It is not the point of the piece, but it is an anecdote of what Red Phone , a work that does not need actors, can trigger”.
The written conversations belong to scenes by Canadian and Latin American authors. The catalog of what the teleprompter selects, randomly, is around 30 writers. One of this is, for example, the Mexican Valeria Loera, winner of the Gerardo Mancebo del Castillo 2020 National Young Playwriting Award for ¡Violencia!, which in the coming weeks will be revived by the National Theater Company (CNT)” with Daniel Giménez Cacho in the cast.
“These works, the conversations that are presented on the telempronter, are commissions from the places where we have presented Red Phone.” The other writer who participates in the work, Dodge details, is Conchi León, winner of the Héctor Herrera “Cholo” medal in 2018 and nominated in 2019 as best supporting actress for the Metropolitan Awards and the 2019 Cartelera Theater Awards, for her interpretation of Doña Corpus in The Donor of Souls.
In the case of English-language authors, special translations of them were made. It must be emphasized that the participants perform the performance and are not heard by anyone else. Only them and the operator who runs the cabin: “Many may have similar experiences. But it will never be the same. Each one is different. It is common to see people who leave crying. When participating in the experience they do not have time to process it. They just continue the script. After being in the booth, there is a space in which the participants can connect and reflect on what they experienced.”
The sound of the telephone and the indication to answer the call, from a small screen, are the start of the piece, which seeks ways to return human contact to art.
It is enough to exemplify one of the dozens of dialogues and short stories that are reproduced: the call from a couple who separated many years ago. She wants to know how her grandchildren are doing and offers a couple of essential life tips. The other participant must be sullen, cold and distant until he understands that it is not a regular call and that it is not due to drama and manipulation, but that his ex-partner has just suffered an accident and has decided to share his last minutes of life with him. Until the interlocutor, who is about to die, stops responding and the teleprompter orders the piece to end.
The technological device was in charge of Carey Dodge. Free entrance.
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2023-10-16 07:09:30
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