El Pasado Es Un Animal Grotesco: reinforcing the malaise of our times
According to playwright/director Mariano Pensotti: “we are what we narrate, the identity is as a narrative construct, life becomes fiction.”
Well fair enough, yes, our stories become our reality. I agree…So then?
I was told that:
“It’s 1999 in Buenos Aires. Mario, Laura, Pablo, and Vicky are in their mid-twenties and ready for careers, love, and adulthood. One man wants to be an independent filmmaker but for now he works as an actor in pathetic beer commercials; a woman steals her father’s savings to go to Paris to live the bohemian life of Nouvelle Vague films and ends up working in a thematic park that reproduces the life of Christ; a girl discovers that her father has a parallel family in the countryside and becomes obsessed with them; a student and amateur writer receives a box with a severed hand inside that changes his life.” (http://marianopensotti.com/elpasadoeng.html)
The players narrated and acted out 10 years worth of vignettes from their lives, from a rotating stage. Yes, that’s right boys and girls, the advance of time never stops and we are but actors on the revolving stage of life. Apparently the world did exist outside of their personal dramas, as some of the vignettes contained the occasional reference to the socio-economic changes of those ten years (911, Israel/Palestine, economic collapse in Argentina).
According to Pensotti “between the ages of 25-35, one stops being who one thinks one is to become the person one is”; According to Plays International: “[Pensotti creates] a compelling portrait of the self-obsession of his own generation.”
The only reason I was compelled to stay until the end (unlike the two couples who left) was that I had this review to write. I found the piece narcissistic in the extreme and the device of rotating stage facile.
“The Past is a Grotesque Animal” is the title of a song by the band Of Montreal. Pensotti listened to the song a lot while writing the play. Lyrics include:
“things could be different but they’re not. the mousy girl screams violence she gets hysterical …[..] it’s my favorite scene the cruelty so predictable..”. “we want our film to be beautiful not realistic” “none of our secrets are physical” “The snow that fell yesterday got melted by the sun why did it bother”. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2p9fDJsHNo)
Something that is grotesque is “characterized by ludicrous or incongruous distortion, as of appearance or manner.” (ahdictionary.com/)
My life too is full of grotesque banalities. So what? Our times are also exciting and real - urgent in their imperative to occupy, change, and celebrate the unique and ephemeral feel, tone and hue of our lives …so, if Pensotti had a budget, did he have to spend it writing masturbatorily with a severed hand, reinforcing the malaise of our times? What’s the point? What did he feel?