Niña de cera (Maritza Nuñez visit)

This was, by far, the best extracurricular theatre experience of the whole year, mainly because all the other ones were complete pieces of c-r-a-p but also because it came at the perfect time.

A few days before that wednesday Robbie gave us a script, Niña de Cera, a monologue written by Maritza Nuñez and inspired by the life of famous Chilean poet Gabriela Mistral. We were supposed to read it, well, I didn't. The very idea of reading a long monologue that composed an entire play was just painful, but when the day of her visit came i was proved to be wrong.
Gabriela was read by our very own Miss Alicia, the other characters were read by the author herself and the rest by Robbie Ray.

Their voices smoothly read the whole script with very few stumbles, a rather emotional and spot on interpretation from Miss Alicia blended with the marvelous melodic and, what I think to be, one of the best voices since James Earl Jones' (googlealo Robbie) of Maritza Nuñez and the monotone ( as it should be for the reading) voice of Robbie. I am very pleased to say I really enjoyed the play, it was rich with symbolism, character depth and beautiful quotes that fit its perfectly with certain scenes.

After the reading there was a Q&A section, the questions were either related to the play itself or to her experience as an actress-playwright-director. I payed most attention to the answers she gave about playwriting, since that is my task for this year's play, i was very impressed with her answers and the warmth she put into them (it felt like sitting with a friend for coffee) though i do think she went along the edges a bit too much i think they are useful to help us understand what is in them.
One of her answers to a question about playwriting was about the stage annotations, she said she writes what is vital otherwise you limit your actors. I thought that was very useful and i realised that i write too many ones, mainly because i have a very clear image of what i want to happen in a scene i write but, then why have actors? why have actors with ideas? why not just do it myself? and i came to the conclusion that it isn't useful to limit the actors because otherwise, the beauty of theatre that is having different people act out a play in different ways, different interpretations, dissappears therefore making going to the theatre a very boring experience.

In general i thought this was a very useful learning experience that i would love to repeat again with another playwright or actor or director.