“Artists like Discépolo manage to capture the essence of humanity in the experiences of their characters,” says Romina Oslé, author and director of “Intemperie, or the world through flowers”, grotesque created from “Stefano and Mateo” of Armando Discepolo, with performances on Thursdays at 8:30 p.m. at Becket. They perform Augusto Carrazana, Belén Amadío, Florencia Mair, Hernán Maldonado, Julieta Molina, Mariano García, Norma Tripodi and Petra Donn. We talked with Oslé.
Journalist: Why your interest in Discépolo?
Romina Oslé: I have been exploring works with an exacerbated theatricality and sometimes that sign of form is placed over content. So I put together a group that was interested in exploring the grotesque as it emerges in Italy and we ended up arriving at Discépolo. His themes permeate us and he has an exultant theatricality, as well as a wonderful magnifying glass and constructing poetry. He offers us a super playful territory of great beauty. It is political and social, which is limited to its time but which Discépolo turned into poetry. He was an author committed to reality, which is why he generated theatricality and action.
Q: What is this about grotesque characters and the time of the absurd?
RO: Characteristics of the absurd and the grotesque appear because, although they are poets who emerged in the same period around the World War, we began working on the form of the grotesque in the bodies of monstrous characters, half animal, half doll, their edges are erased, a body appears broken by circumstances. In this tragedy, comedy coexists with the puppet and the clown. These bodies mutated into characters who were not in any specific time or place, which becomes a characteristic of the absurd. Relative places and times that expose the absurdity and uncertainty of existence.
Q: What are the themes of the work?
RO: Death, real and symbolic, of bodies and dreams, illusions, desires. Being a family that lives outdoors, poverty, hunger, the desire to get out of there, to fulfill a dream appear. The desire to box to save the family, music as art, the tragedy of existence and the beauty of the small. The themes oscillate between the mundane and the philosophical, between the profane and the divine.
Q: How did you think about this reversal so that the classic would be reinterpreted?
RO: Nothing that ends up happening was foreseen, it arises from the investigation of a poetics that invites a constant game. We found ourselves in a certain territory and the classic work by definition found us and became current. Classics are so because there is something universal that crosses eras. This is a voracious moment with half of Argentina in poverty so that “Intemperie” takes on a magnitude that it did not have two years ago. The differences today have increased significantly.
Q: What question is there about cyclical time?
NO: When we discover that these characters lived outdoors, a characteristic of grotesque characters is that they live in overcrowded conditions, here they end up being crammed into a cart but without a roof. Living outdoors brings a cyclical time in the passing of the seasons of the year. We go from cold to heat, storms, winds, and they repeat themselves. Life moves forward in a nonsensical way.
Q: How did you think about the staging and the artistic areas?
NO: The scenic signs have a powerful presence and create the framework that increases beauty. The cart object or timeless costume appear by decantation, but there are others such as light or sound that are designed to generate constant scenic pictures with beauty in images. There is live music with the musician who plays the violin, keyboard, accordion, discarded materials, and with that music he enhances the work. There is a flood and rain from the sound. All these scenic signs generate a score. Bodies, voices, breathing, gaze and sounds seek to generate a precise framework.
Q: What is it like to do independent theatre?
NO: Difficult and beautiful, it involves sustaining life with other jobs and preserving the collective inherent to independent theatre. Sustaining becomes an uphill struggle and sometimes you get to this activity with the rest of what daily life leaves behind. But at the same time it is beautiful because there is a reason why we keep doing it, this thing that takes us so long, when it happens it is inexplicable.
Q: How are theatre and culture today?
NO: There is no possibility of recovering what is invested and doing something of quality is complicated. The Government creates policies to reduce us, to make it impossible for us to do so. When one reaches venues that have a noose around their necks because of what they have to face at the expense level, it is becoming a case of every man for himself, and we do not have the communion we had before. They attack from all fronts. Public policies are erased, without aid that facilitates doing to the detriment of culture. Everything is relegated to the periphery until it collapses, but we must resist.
Source: Ambito
I am an author and journalist who has worked in the entertainment industry for over a decade. I currently work as a news editor at a major news website, and my focus is on covering the latest trends in entertainment. I also write occasional pieces for other outlets, and have authored two books about the entertainment industry.
