CHOKING FIT
Warning: this is a play with a moral.
A simple play.
Its topics are memory, amnesia, language, tradition, apocalypse, the Puna desert,
female thought, Chivilcoy town, the inexorable passing of hours, Bradbury's
world and his 'Fahrenheit 451', the fate of the gaucho. Its symbolism operates
through the most antique mechanism of allegory. The library is a cemetery, the
book is memory, the convent's bells are time. And so on. The syntax is neat and
does not require major instruction: the eleven scenes simply come one after the
other, and the four characters tenderly personify them. I think there are eleven
of them. And quite possibly there are five characters, and not four. But there
are definetely twelve scenes.That I know, because there are as many scenes as
clock chimes, at regular intervals, adding up to twelve, like the months of the
year, like the signs of the zoodiac. There is no technical glossary, nor has
there been abuse of a complex lexicon. There are two or three funny words, that
are explained within the very scenes. Such a thing happens for instance with the
term "mara". There are a few local words, and I would like to warn the
foreign public. The richness of the language of the Argentines knows no
boundaries, and it contains more signs than meanings. So I don't see any major
obstacles, and I think we might immerse ourselves in the world of this piece.
Gently. Like someone who attempts to forget something painful, unspeakable. In a
sad country, where memory is retractile, like an earthworm, and where amnesia is
incapable of healing so many wounds. The fierce amnesia, like the balsam that
will get us away from all this, and that will give things back their true worth.
The amnesia that forces us to think of everything all the time, the active
amnesia that keeps the flesh and the senses well awake. And alert. Here, in the
country of sleepiness.
Rafael Spregelburd