Actuamos tanto que para hacer teatro, tendríamos que dejar de actuar.
Last Friday we went to see a play in Yuyachkani, as usual I was a little bit frightened by the idea, not because i don't like Yuyachkani, but, because i don't like Yuyachkani. The play's name is a pun, it's called Con-cierto Olvido and it is a concert/play that could be interpreted as a celebration of this theatre group, it is somewhat of a compilation of most of their plays and a reflection of their journey as actors presented in a fun, concert form.
The music was bombastic, fantastic and extremely enjoyable. It got the whole audience clapping and tapping their feet (which is very rare for theatre, especially for our theatre group mainly because we are bombarded with boring plays.) to the rythm, even though the music was fantastic, there were some parts that felt a little bit awkward, especially when playing wind instruments mainly because they ran out of air ; this is understandable and i won't hold it against them, it doesn't affect how fantastic they are.
As well as playing musical instruments, the actors are skilled singers, again, they ran out of breath some times but that is to be expected, and, quite frankly they were pretty wonderful. I particularly enjoyed the sing off between the tiny person (i still can't remember her name but she's fantastic for comic relief, she's an oposition, having a very deep voice and such a small body) and the one who played antigone (Robbi sorry, no me se los nombres). Another stand out was the one who sang in quechua and played Ima Sumac in "El Ultimo Ensayo".
Going on with the positive, the comic performances of most were pretty fantastic, the one who put on a mask and spoke about the "Theatre Mountain" was particularly good. She was also good in the technical aspects, her voice changed, she had a mannerism (sticking her tongue out) and her body movements changed and resembled, pardon the strange reference, a very old mickey mouse (from the black and white cartoons), this all came together to a pretty solid example of good character building (something i need to work on myself for the school play, kill me.)
The one that wore a clown nose was also hilarious and it stood out for its colloquial, very blunt and sarcastic (very peruvian might i say) language/humour.
In true Yuyachkani fashion, the text was sometimes hard to understand, but when it was understandable it was entertaining and went from very dramatic (effective as well) to very funny (effective as well). It was mostly drawn from several Yuyachkani plays (mostly social commentaries) that i think you had to see to understand, that is one of the things i wasn't very keen of, if you weren't familiar with yuyachkani plays, you wouldn't have understood anything, that is why this is more of a celebration rather than an invitation for new fans.
Another negative aspect was that, the audience was expected to clap at everything, i mean, somethings were certainly funny or worth the fuzz but that doesn't mean we were going to clap our hands of for every time an actor twirled around the stage while singing a showtune, that's how sometimes, the play fell short, it expected to much from the audience while expecting too little from it as well, they thought we'd laugh and cheer at all the shananegans they did on stage but they didn't realize that instead of being funny they were being stupid.
I blame that on the directing, i think it's the directors job to EDIT, it is extremely important because sometimes it's good to cut things that don't work as well rather than stuffing the play with loads of jokes and monologues that just drag it down.
Despite the few negative aspects this is BY FAR the best play i have seen this year, but that's just it, it's the best because it wasn't actually a play but a pastiche of many different things that combine to form one, at times glorious, at times just plain boring, celebration and interpretation of what theatre and acting is.
So, by the time we left the theatre i was haunted by one and only one question.
How do we know, as directors or actors or playwrights when it's enough? Where does the, even though we say we're not, self centered writer director or playwright end and the audience begins so that we are able to see what will work adn what won't.
