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.”
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Wish I had been there. 
Quite a timely production, given that the current right-wing president is busy trying to marginalize the Dirty War and free the 700+ officers presently in jail for their role.
Once elections are out of the way, Macri is said to be planning a sharp turn to the right not only on economic policy (i.e. renewed austerity, more tax cuts for landowners, sharp devaluation); but also on human rights.
On the agenda for 2018 are said to be amnesty for all indicted Dirty War perps not yet convicted, transfer to house arrest for all those who have (many will escape), investigations of all remaining survivors for "possible terrorist activities" in the '70s, and even a rewriting of all school history textbooks to reflect their "lesser of two evils" dogma as far as the Dirty War.
This, in fact, is already the case in some private and parochial schools - particularly those run by the Opus Dei.
Macri's Human Rights Secretary, Claudio Avruj, even suggested to outgoing Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow, during her visit to Buenos Aires last month, that they intend to grant Dirty War convicts the infamous '2-for-1' benefit that would effectively rescind their remaining prison sentences.
As Avruj told Minow, referring to those who oppose the benefit, "these people do not understand institutions and democracy, nor do they respect the separation of powers."
I'm grateful Dean Minow spoke out about this, or we would have never found out.
Human Rights Secretary Claudio Avruj (left) holds forth with among others his Opus Dei, pro-Dirty War amnesty legal adviser Alfredo Vítolo (red tie) and Harvard Law School Dean Martha Minow - who was having none of it.
