Latin America
Related: About this forumArrabal: 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 womans 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. Theres 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 shows 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 Id 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 shows 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 girls story takes place.
Not to put some version of torture on stage you couldnt 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.
chelsea0011
(10,115 posts)sandensea
(22,846 posts)While this was certainly not the first time the subject of the Dirty War was put on the stage (the first was during the famed Argentine Open Theater series in Buenos Aires in 1981 - which resulted in the theater being bombed), I believe it's the first time in the U.S.
Right-wing dictators are not fond of artists, as Trump knows.
chelsea0011
(10,115 posts)they would give you a tango lesson. There is very little dialog. Most of the story is told through dance and song. And is told from the perspective of the daughter of a disappeared father and the people around a club where the father was abducted. And they in a profound way (much like Roger Waters die with The Wall and soldiers) by introducing the faces of missing on the backdrop. The mothers who carried their pictures around their necks demanding the government tell them what happened to all of them walk around the stage. It was very powerful. Checked in at 1.5 hrs. One act and I hope they keep it like that. The dancers were great.
sandensea
(22,846 posts)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.
Judi Lynn
(162,318 posts)through his work. So many US citizens have been completely unaware of everything which has happened south of the border in this hemisphere, with only propaganda to inform them. Steady poisonous diet of lies.
Sooner or later the truth DOES come out, doesn't it?
Best wishes to all concerned.
sandensea
(22,846 posts)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.
Judi Lynn
(162,318 posts)Clearly they've been plotting and scheming every year since the "end" of the dictatorship. Things are happening far too fast without
"the plan." All they lacked was getting their tyrant, updated for the 2000's in place, and they were off to the races.
The part about opening investigations of the survivors of their first occupation of the country was a hideous shock.
They are going to be overruled by humanity, in time. They are outnumbered, and in the end, good will win over evil.
Hope their attempt this time to gain total control of everyone in the country is going to evaporate far faster, do less damage to the human race.
Thanks so much for this revelation of real news. We surely need to know.