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Judi Lynn

(160,217 posts)
Mon Apr 22, 2013, 05:23 AM Apr 2013

Playwright drags Chile's conscience into the spotlight

Playwright drags Chile's conscience into the spotlight

Guillermo Calderón, alarmed as much by his country's current neo-liberalism as its hyper-repressive past, lets his characters vent for him in 'Villa + Discurso.'

By Reed Johnson, Los Angeles Times
April 20, 2013, 9:00 a.m.

The stage lights rise, and Michelle Bachelet — former political prisoner, torture victim and socialist president of Chile from 2006 to 2010 — braces herself to deliver a dramatic farewell speech. "Pardon me if I offend the fascists," she tells her audience in Spanish, "or if I offend those that want a happy ending. But I prefer bittersweet endings."

In the compromise-seeking world of contemporary Chilean politics, such a declaration might be tantamount to career suicide. But when Bachelet's fiery language is spoken by three young women in Guillermo Calderón's play "Discurso," the actors tell us, "it's as if someone were putting words in my mouth. It's as if an opportunist were taking advantage of my body."

That opportunistic someone is Calderón, Chile's most acclaimed playwright-director of the last two decades. During that turbulent period, Chile has transitioned from the dictatorial reign of Gen. Augusto Pinochet to a neo-liberal democracy in which human rights abuses and press restrictions are way down, but income inequality and youth unrest are way up.

These political tensions and contradictions regularly seep into Calderón's works like "Discurso," which will be performed in Spanish with English subtitles April 25-28 at REDCAT, along with a companion piece, "Villa." In "Discurso," Bachelet's dialogue is fictitious, expressing in alternately prosaic and poetic language what Calderón wishes Chile's first female president had said while in office.

More:
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/arts/culture/la-et-cm-guillermo-calderon-chile-discurso-20130421,0,6073566.story

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