Arrabal: New American Repertory Theater show explores legacy of Argentina's brutal military regime
John Weidman never imagined that his knowledge of modern Japan would prep him for Broadway.
Even with his broad background as a noted television and theater writer, Weidman's “Arrabal” - onstage at the A.R.T. through June 18 - brings its own challenges, including deeply serious source material.
The musical follows a woman’s search for information about her father, one of the thousands of “the disappeared” who were abducted by death squads in Argentina during the 1976-83 military dictatorship. Up to 30,000 disappeared; many were tortured, and others were never seen again.
“I got the call for ‘Arrabal’ because I was the guy who had written the book for ‘Contact,’” said Weidman, acknowledging the plays’ similar storytelling-through-movement design. “There’s a very short list of people who have done that — I am not even sure there is anybody else on it.”
In “Arrabal” - an Argentine term referring to working-class neighborhoods, which suffered the brunt of the Dirty War - almost every element of the story is generated by the movement onstage, with the exception of an occasional video or projection.
Fortunately, Weidman can rely on the show’s dancers, a talented team from Buenos Aires steeped in the tango tradition, as well as the five-member band Orquestra Bajofonderos, led by Academy Award-winning composer Gustavo Santaolalla.
Blending tango, milonga, rock, hip-hop, electronic music, jazz, and classical into a unique sound, Santaolalla's score “sounded like nothing I’d ever heard before,” according to Weidman. “It sounded inherently theatrical.”
“My job was to try to be sensitive to what their story was,” said Weidman, who struggled with the historical brutality he encountered while researching the project. Still, the suffering, he acknowledges, is central to the show’s story line.
“It seemed to me that if we were going to touch this material, deal with it at all, there was an obligation, in a stylized way, to be direct about the events within which this girl’s story takes place.”
“Not to put some version of torture on stage — you couldn’t do that.”
At: http://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/05/arrabal-explores-legacy-of-argentinas-brutal-military-regime/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=05.18.2017.b+%281%29
‘Arrabal’ writer John Weidman: “My job was to try to be sensitive - to be direct about the events.”
