The token
**** feSt. Memory of Pigeon. Andy Gamboa Company. Performer and creator: Andy Gamboa. Ilighting and sound: Andy Gamboa and Fabio Pérez. Theater and paper figures: Andrea Fernandez. Stage leadership: Sandra Arguedas. Production:: Andy Gamboa. Place: South Wind Theater. Date: Thursday, October 6, 2023. Aphor: Almost complete.
It is curious that the designers of the image of the 2023 festival have resorted, this year, to limbo and the ethereal to frame the Contest programming. I don’t think they imagined that reality would steal their thunder. A city, Seville, that is entering the limbo of inexplicable decisions: a closed Lope de Vega Theater sine the and with a program, paraphrasing Pirandello, in search of theater; an indefinite film festival with an absent director, reduced to five days, without competition films,… But, above all, without establishing explanations as if the inhabitants of this city were minors.
Fortunately, the 2023 edition of the Seville Performing Arts Festival, promoted by the grassroots culture represented by private theaters, opened its doors yesterday with an extensive and varied program that responds to the tireless and inexhaustible energy of a sector, the cultural heritage of the performing arts, which does not falter no matter how much mistreatment they receive.
Two plays, one comedy, Empower by the company Las Raras at the Sala Cero Teatro, which has sold out all its performances and a drama, with overtones of autofiction, Memories of Pigeon at Teatro Viento Sur that we had the satisfaction of seeing yesterday and that heralds an event of enormous quality.
With the room practically full, Andy Gamboa, Costa Rican actor and creatorgreets us as we enter the stalls and engages in a dialogue with the audience that is apparently improvised but which leads them, in a very subtle way, to their mark to begin the show. We are greeted by the presence of a seasoned, hard-working actor, with an intoxicating tenor voice. He warns us that he is not going to ‘translate’ the text, that he wants us to live that Costa Rican Spanish with which it has been created and, it is true, the words flow with an internal music in which, although we do not understand some words, the work gesture and the context means that we do not lose anything of this realistic story that makes Memories of Pigeon in a heartbreaking story full of poetry.
Gamboa tells us about his family, about the death of his little brother who was born a boy and died a mermaid, about his mother, the one who knows everything, about his brothers, about the one who went to the United States and when he returned he did not accept him because He is homosexual, even his other brothers who have made a common front. But the protagonist is the father. A rude, alcoholic man who mistreats his mother. The boy Andy wants his father to be proud of him, he wants to score goals when he plays soccer, although it won’t be easy for him.
The actor Gamboa, at ground level, begins to give life to all these characters. In each moment we see the poor child drowned in the sea, the mother who mourns his death and, above all, the father, that antihero, who suffers the loss blaming others.
Gamboa’s gestural work is superb, the control over his body, the expressiveness of his face, the modulation of his magnificent voice makes the show transcend because we are before a master.
The balances, a true choreography, that he achieves with a ball make his technique a true art that enthralled the audience. They are anonymous characters, full of flaws that have shaped the actor and those he honors from a truth so painful that it makes us shudder.
Misery is not abused. The memories are those of a child, now an actor. There is peace in this story that marked his life
Gamboa has been exploring and researching for 24 years in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Mexico, Cuba… Memory of Pigeonreleased six years ago, is the first work in the trilogy made up of Autopsy of a Mermaid y Lord of Lords.
2023-10-06 12:21:09
#body #actor
