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Villa + Discurso

Play Information

Original Title	Villa + Discurso
English Title	Villa + Discurso
Director	Guillermo Calderón
Country
Year	2011
Lenght	110 min

Cast

Francisca Lewin, Macarena Zamudio, Carla Romero

Datasheet

AUTOR DE LA OBRA: Guillermo Calderón
COMPAÑÍA: Teatro Playa
DIRECTOR DE LA OBRA: Guillermo Calderón
DISEÑO INTEGRAL: María Fernanda Videla
PRODUCCIÓN: María Paz González
COPRODUCCIÓN: Fundación Festival Internacional Teatro a Mil

Description

Villa + Discurso are two plays performed in the same program by three actresses who interpret all of the roles in both pieces. In Villa three women evaluate different options about what to do with Villa Grimaldi, a torture and extermination center active during Pinochet’s dictatorship. During the course of 70 minutes, the characters, all named Alejandra, sit around a desk, debating some of the major questions that confront human rights organizations concerning the present and future uses of those spaces linked to state violence. How to account for the horror of the past without diminishing the subject through its representation as a theme park or an apolitical contemporary art museum? With very modest staging elements utilized in an extremely potent way, the play is a reflection from a symbolic field, theater, of the weight of signs and the responsibilities experienced by those who have the task of deciding how to elaborate the past. Despite the seriousness of the topic, the actresses turn a complex discussion of ideas and positions in regard to violence and grief into an effective embodied performance. After a brief intermission, the program continues with Discurso, a play developed by Calderón in 2009 in a playwrights’ residency at the Royal Court Theatre of London. In this staging, three actresses perform the role of former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet (2006-2010), in an imaginary farewell speech from her presidential post. “Out of character,” as if “someone is putting words in my mouth”, Bachelet is no longer reserved and elegant. Recalling her past as a Leftist and her good intentions as president, she addresses the contradictions of a socialist in the government’s palace who has been “elected to administer the neoliberal program”. Calderon’s play conveys the crudely honest words that we would all like to hear from an outgoing president. The play also offers a Bachelet that is a spokesperson for the Latin American dreams and frustrations that emerge when the hopes for social equity must confront the reality of the imposed neoliberal program.