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The Infinite Uterus
Put issues of cloning, birth, and exile into a
womb and call it way-out theater
BY MIA LEONIN
The Design District's striking
yet desolate Buena Vista building is the perfect
site for Cuban director and playwright Victor
Varela's first Miami-based creation, Nonato
en Utero, a disturbing piece of Spanish-language
theater that explores cloning, immigration,
and the regeneration and destruction that make
up the birth process.
A sterile woman (Barbara Maria Barrientos),
who has been implanted with a genetically manipulated
embryo, falls asleep in a delivery room. In
a voyage to her subconscious we find ourselves
in a live organism, a large uterus if you will,
inhabited by genetically altered embryos (Jesus
Perez and Gerardo Maidana) who will never be
born, and a fetus (Jorge Palmer) named Nonato
(or unborn), characterizing "creation"
in a sterile womb without blood, placenta, or
umbilical cord. The sinister Morbo (Reinaldo
Gonzalez Guedes) appears to wield the power
as he offers Nonato the possibility to be born.
Consequently Nonato becomes a symbol of hope
for the embryos -- if he can be born, so can
they. But then he announces his birth is impossible
because he has apoptosis, a degeneration of
cells. The embryos revolt and look to blame
various political systems (namely communism
and capitalism). They attempt to destroy the
uterus, but Nonato recovers and is eventually
born. Trained by Varela at Academia Teatro Obstaculo,
these actors deliver startling, dynamic performances.
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Nonato en Utero is disturbing theater not only because
of the complex ethical issues it raises about cloning,
but also because of the disconcerting picture it paints
of humanity. Still it miraculously manages to make
science human while simultaneously sifting human realities
through a sieve of formula and theory. At one point
the pregnant woman assumes the brisk, matter-of-fact
tone of a scientist and explains the cloning process
while pointing to maps of Cuba, Argentina, and Miami
drawn on the naked torso of a mannequin. This reference
to the playwright's double exile from Cuba to Argentina
and finally Miami cleverly extends the play's metaphor
from the artificial birth of cloning to the imposed
rebirth of immigration.
Varela's set design is appropriately institutional
as large plastic tubes wind around the room, inflating
and collapsing menacingly. Stark white, asexual baby
dolls of various sizes sit in corners, hang on the
walls, and fill shopping carts. Alfredo Triff's haunting
violin and a frenetic, electronic diatribe later add
a palpable dimension to the already bleak setting.
Nonato en Utero paints a frightening picture of the
"industry of the 21st Century" -- but is
it cloning or immigration? Either way, the play exposes
us to the human traffic of being born, unborn, and
reborn in new surroundings. In Varela's theater, the
uterus is infinite. It is both womb and petri dish,
experience and experiment. The uterus is the impenetrable
island of the playwright's birth as well as the fecund
ocean that envelops it. Varela's iconoclastic Teatro
Obstaculo is probably as far from commercial as any
theater group in Miami (Spanish- or English-speaking).
It's about taking risks and creating obstacles that
perhaps only art can overcome.
Nonato en Utero
Details: Written and directed by Victor Varela, with
Barbara Maria Barrientos, Jorge Palmer, Jesus Perez,
Gerardo Maidana, and Reinaldo Gonzalez Guedes. Performances
Fridays and Saturdays at 9:00 p.m. through December
20; Call 305-710-4569
Where: Teatro Obstaculo, 180 NE 39th St, Buena Vista
Bldg, Suite 223, Miami
Fuente:
New Times
Noviembre - 2003
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