‘Sietes piedras en el living’ (Seven Stones in the Room) @ Todo Sababa
Photo by Jose Kattan
—Teresa Marrero
Siete piedras en el living/Seven Stones in the Room, a one-person Spanish language tour de force performed by Sorany Gutiérrez—and written and directed by Colombian visiting artist Diego Fernando Montoya—is a piece that will remain etched in one´s visual and emotional memory. The performances took place in Old East Dallas, in Todo Sababa’s intimate basement-like space, where the seating capacity is about 20. The chairs are folding wood and not comfortable. The space is dark and hot, there are no windows or fans to let in air, and the floor is covered with earth. Yes, dirt.
Dark, rich earth.
The audience enters and Gutiérrez is already seated to one side, but close to us. She is looking up into an overhead lamp that illuminates her gaunt face, wearing a dull green wrap dress, her hair in a tight low bun. And her feet? Well, they are buried in a pile of the dirt.
An old-fashioned landline phone sits on a small table off to the other side, with a tape recorder. There is a small, square suitcase, the kind that used to be leather and fashionable in the 1980´s. In fact, all of the artifacts onstage hark back to that decade—which was, for Colombia, one of the most violent in its already violent history.
There are doors and glass window panes towards the back and sides of the room. They lead to nowhere. They are white and later serve as a screen for projections.
Right away we are called upon to take off our shoes and feel the dirt if we are so inclined. This is going to be an immersive experience (but not a participatory one). The audience will not be encouraged to relax or escape, but rather to suspend all prejudgments of what a theatrical experience should be and let go of expectations.
We are in a laboratory.
The experiment goes in multiple directions: the playwright experiments with the suggestive possibilities of poetic language, and the actor and director with non-directly realistic corporeal movements. Projected images of the father, mother and sister and their stories add another layer of meaning; soundscapes sometimes jolt us and other times lull us, until we begin to feel that something dangerous and dark is afoot.
Like the skin of an onion, Siete piedras reveals layers of memories that may or may not be the actor´s, that may or may not be true, but that feel so real in their emotional clarity as to understand that they are grounded in trauma. Not just any trauma, but the trauma of rape and father-daughter incest.
The outward-looking images of the parents, played in projections made in Colombia, with veteran actors Gabriel Uribe and Olga Lucía Ruíz, are a chilling parody of the political trope of a
Father/Mother of the nation: her waving, gloved hands, his garlanded suit, stilted smiles meant to hide nasty secrets. Every family has its secrets. Some are dirtier than others.
Gutiérrez does a remarkable job as a distanced protagonist. Her line delivery borders on the chilly, yet it remains engaging. Her character is, after all, already dead (as is everyone in this piece, thus the appropriate dirt-laden and claustrophobic physical environment of the performance space). This one- hour monologue takes no hostages. It demands full presence from the actor, and Gutiérrez delivers. After seeing her in many roles with Teatro Dallas and Cara Mía Theatre, and knowing her work as a director, she continues to demonstrate a dedication to her craft that prompts her to take on bigger and larger risks. And this is—by far—her riskiest role.
For me, the character’s most chilling lines are those related to her father´s ‘explosion’ into her and its aftermath: she gives birth to a daughter who is also her sister (and who dies shortly after birth). The sister is a fetus projected onto the screen (played by Jaqueline Cárdenas, also from Colombia).
The house burns down. Was it her mother, a woman continually attempting suicide? Was it our protagonist in her deepest rage? The screen shows us the smoldering, charred image of a naked man (Uribe onscreen as the father) whose exposed male member appears to be doing the talking for him. Reminiscent of Spanish-Mexican film artist Luis Buñuel´s surrealistic images from Un chien Andalou (Andalusian Dog, 1929), the reality of Siete piedras serves as a starting point to go deeper into the psyche’s abstractions. However, the piece is not for the faint of heart. For anyone who has endured similar family dynamics, this could be a painful trigger.
The audience rewarded her with a long and fervent ovation. The piece will be traveling to Cali, Colombia to be performed in the director´s home venue of Pasionaria Laboratorio Escénico, a space dedicated to the exploration of theater as an experiential event. This is a co-production between Pasionaria and the Arts Activate program of the City of Dallas Office of Arts and Culture (rehearsal and performance space courtesy of Toda Sababa´s Aaron Zilbermann and associates).
Teresa Marrero is Professor of Latin American and Latiné Theater in the Spanish Department at the University of North Texas. She reviews dance and theater.
WHEN: September 6-9, 2023
WHERE: At art cafe/bookstore (and more) Todo Sababa, 4308 Gaston Avenue, Dallas
