Beasts

Beasts
By Juan Radrigan. Melbourne Fringe. La Mama Courthouse. September 19 – 30, 2018

In a small remote village in the Andes highlands in Chile, back in the early seventies, lived three ageing sisters. Hardworking, god fearing and marginalized by their remoteness, land sources were drying up and local people moving on too bigger cites. They eventually find themselves trapped by distance, increased isolation and a faint hunch of a changing political climate.

Beasts, newly translated by Jamie Wilson–Ramirez is playing at La Mama for the Fringe Festival. Written by Juan Radrigan, a prize winning Chilean playwright who created most of his noted works during Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship (1973-1990), Beasts is a factual story based on an investigative newspaper article.

Ramirez has provided us with a rustic and raw interpretation of three women, different in spirit but bound by family tradition, poverty, and land. The three female actors (Natalia Nazir, Alejandra Marin, Samantha Urquijo- Garcia) are bold, strong and perform with heart wrenching honesty.

Time has stood still for the three sisters; they’re unable to comprehend the modern world as they eat their meagre meals, relate stories in candle light from fellow villagers and wonder in ignorant bliss about switching light on from walls (electricity) and people moving in a wooden box (television).

When a flamboyant travelling salesman (Camilo Cortissoz) arrives he has bad news of an oppressive government, yet he convinces them to buy his clothes because it will enrich their spirits, and force them out into the world where they can dress up, find husbands, dance and be merry. There is a stirring of emotion but their hard-bitten reality comes crashing down.

Set and lightning design by The Bridge is a rural inspired kitchen, separated by a white screen projection of a rustic window. The screen also functions as a divider for a nocturnal bedroom interior that provides stark haunting shadows, summoning grief, sadness and looming doom.

Flora Georgiou

Photographer: Sophia Constantine

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