Undercurrents Festival of One Act Plays. Blue Box: Erotic Dreams More Than a Desire to Blow Things Up!
Sounds more like titillation than terrorism” stated a Citizen journalist, speaking about Carmen Aguirre’s book Something Fierce, now on the final list of books being considered for the CBC sponsored Canada Reads contest. Of course the book did not show us the slinky beautiful actress, sauntering out on the stage in her jeans, her t-shirt, black hair and long black boots. But the actress is very much there and her monologue takes us away on a revolutionary fantasy that somehow reflects the erotic dreams of a young girl more than the desire to blow up things.
Actually Blue Box is a well written narrative that delves into the fantasy life of the actress. And I found myself charmed by the text more than by the performance which I think the actress might have taken even further.
Aguirre’s own life becomes the experience of a young woman involved in the Chilean resistance against Pinochet, crossing borders into Argentina, escaping the secret police, all the things we heard about after Pinochet came to power in 1973 after Allende was murdered. At that point Chileans began fleeing to Canada and many of them settled in Ottawa, enrolled in literature courses at Carleton University, began publishing books, poetry, even opened a publishing house (Split Quotations) and became close friends of all of us interested in Latin America. Chile’s loss was our gain. They were a wonderful contribution to the literary and artistic community of Canada. Mme Aguirre was obviously very young at that point and stayed in the country to contribute to the Pinochet resistance . I kept trying to locate her activity in all that madness that followed Allende’s death , all those events that touched us so deeply in Ottawa.
The monologue shows the writing talents of the artist. She intertwines the story of her political activity, of her personal life as she moves through the whole continent: Los Angeles, Toronto Mexico and other places, always followed in some way by that fantasmatic figure of a blue eyed perfectly built Chicano with a Mayan mother, a creature conjured by her dead grandmother in a vision that came to her one day. After a troubled youth, a difficult marriage and the experience of much political violence, she gives herself to this vision-man – who really doesn’t love her but who lusts for her in a big way. And that is just what she needs at this point in her life. He appears (in her dreams? in her fantasies? In real life? All is possible) and what results is a vastly erotic mixture of political activism, and really hot sex that would make the most conservative person want to join any movement at all!”!! Images of blood, guts, dripping cunts and big genitalia all come together so that the text becomes a strange mixture of sadomasochism, abjection, porno fantasy, serious political engagement and anything else you might want to throw in.
Obviously, the Irving Greenberg Theatre Centre does not have a license to do the kind of show one would expect from such a text and in any case to make us reflect on the text, the actress had to produce a performance that was much less stimulating than her writing. But to give the actress credit, she did try to create some distance between herself and the hot language by stating things in a most matter of fact almost emotionless way. That was the only way to perform such a monologue – create some critical distance so we could look at it all in a fairly dispassionate way. And that worked.
Somehow though, something was missing. There was something extremely hard and disconcerting in this presence that made me rather uncomfortable and frankly I found I had had enough after one hour. I don’t really have the mind of a voyeur- unfortunately. In any case, this world that amalgamates violence and sex is certainly not far from Stephen King’s images of bloody accidents on the highway and voyeurism where dead bodies provoke orgasms. And actually Blue Box could probably be made into a very exciting movie with Aguirre herself playing the lead role.
This is a performance that would probably attract men more than women, but it certainly makes me want to read her book, Something Fierce. The title of this one woman show is Blue Box.
Blue Box plays at the Undercurrents Festival Feb. 8, 9pm; Feb. 9, 7pm; Feb. 10, 9pm; Feb. 12, 2pm.
Undercurrents Festival 2012: Blue Box
Blue Box
written and performed by Carmen Aguirre
Directed by Brian Quirt
A Nightswimming Theatre production