So the play we went to see.
At the theater that is on a bridge.
Was....
good.
(To skip to the actual review go to the ~~~~~~~)
For starters, we got there early and we were able to sit down at a little cafe that is inside the space. I saw a chocolate....thing, in a jar and I was like, "Un, Por favor."
And I pointed.
The cashier spoke English and reminded me that it's Una in Spanish, and that she speaks english so I don't have to worry.
Hooray! She then proceeded to ply us with all the art brochures in the venue and I mean.... All... of them. We got a dance magazine, the season pamphlet, a map of the metro and every art space within walking distance of each stop (it was nuts!) and then a second map of the closer surrounding area and every art gallery, mural, theater and mural within...I think about a 30 min walk?
All free!
I was a little dumbfounded, but also very...I don't know. It felt good in the sense that she wanted to show all the art that Santiago had to offer and that she knew we were the Artistic type and we would enjoy it. She said one of the brochures was the very last one!
And as nice as it was that she wanted to give these to us, we left most of them behind. We've only got one more day in Santiago, and that's the day we fly out so....I didn't want to prevent someone who was sticking around from finding out about these places so we...we left them! I took the map of the surrounding area and the season pamphlet just cause I'd feel bad if we left everything.
But while I sipped on tea and we ate the chocolate ball things (they turned out to be coconut dipped in chocolate and Katelyn got one too) we looked at the maps and the brochures and the upcoming season.
And frankly now we know what we're doing on our last day before we have to head to the airport.
Quick sidebar and to give credit where credit is due: Katelyn was the one who said that, "She probably recognizes us at their kind of people: Artsy."
So after the tea and chocolate and brochures, we sat in our seats and watched this play.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Lucecitas en el Cielo
Lights in the Sky
The blackbox held probably about 45-50 people and had a simple set of and L-Shaped wall papered in a vintage design. The short part of the L had a red door, while the long part had a table with a phone, and plant, a chair, a second table with a record player, and a whiskey bottle. The wall also had a painting of a woman from the waist up in a dark gown looking towards the viewer.
There was another table, chair and rug on the set.
The sparse furnishings ended up being well-highlighted both literally and figuratively and the actors also had some unique looks.
Sharp angles of light cut across their faces in warm tones, and yet there were moments where red and green lights clashed and almost made the entire set jump out like a classic 3-D movie. The ones where red and blue lines made it pop out.
The cast was minimal, only 4 people. There was the main woman, an old woman, a man, and another woman who I thought was a memory of the main woman.
The synopsis of the play that I looked up online said that it was about a reporter who was trying to get a woman who claimed she had been abducted by aliens, to admit that she had been kidnapped in the 70s during Pinochet's regime-which because of my failings in history (or maybe the education system failed me??) -I think was a dictatorship in Chile during the 70s and 80s. I looked up that bit after the play, and apparently it was a thing??? There's a memorial in La Serena of "The Disappeared." About 60 individuals who were political or press who went missing during the same time.
So there was actual history to this play.
It's totally fictional though.
So that's what I had a vague idea of, and my limited Spanish could not dispute it.
The Cast/ how they impacted the story from my guesses:
the guy I mentioned in the play....I think he was like her partner? Like he told the journalist "Hey, I heard about this woman and yet here's evidence that there's more to the crackpot theory of aliens and you might be able to prove it was the government."And the third woman was dressed exactly like the main woman but for most of the play, she operated a slide projector (yeah) that displayed various news clippings, government documents, etc etc.
Oh yeah. The wall turned out to not be completely solid. When a light was shown through the back, it projected through the vintage wallpaper so we could see stuff from the audience. It was super neat.
The third woman was flashback journalist discovering shit, man was telling her about a hunch?? and old woman was *The Story*.
Which speaking of, here's some spoilers. Not big ones though. Those will come later.
The main woman yelled at the old woman, the old woman pretended to not know what the journalist was talking about, and the one time you thought she was about to be like, "Yes! I said aliens because it made the nightmares of the dictatorship more bearable!" or "yes! I said aliens because the dictatorship threatened me if word of it got out".
But then the old woman doubled down and was just "IT WAS ALIENS."
Except.
In Spanish.
With that revelation, at the end, everything was thrown into total disarray.
For us.
***Spoilers****
***** For real I'm spilling all the beans.*****
**Warned ya.**
Turns out the aliens were real, the man was the old woman's son who had disappeared for 6 years? and also I think I understood that his dad was an alien??? and the third woman became an alien clone of the journalist and was pregnant with a bio-luminescent belly that was translucent and you could SEE the fetus.
It was crazy. The old woman kidnapped the main woman, locked her up in what looked like a operating room with computers, and then the son and new clone were about to just step into her life and have this weird alien baby.
And I think the Journalist already had a family and was like...???? I think my husband is gonna know! But I don't know.
The clone had a very impassioned speech I didn't understand a word of, but I was still impressed.
I was impressed overall. The lighting was great, I was intrigued the entire time, and there was also some great sound design. There were several instances where a steady bass rose to such heights that it ramped up tension without being overbearing.
And I loved watching the projector on the back wall.
Super neat.
Overall a good show--
I just wish I had understood it.