Novedad de la patria
NOVEDAD DE LA PATRIA is built around a borderline situation: five man and three women wait for the next train, cut off from each other, each in their own cell. There is no attempt at realism in this alienated universe filled with signs and symbols. The characters are just as marginal. The whore, the priest, the young man from a good family, the old maid, are all nameless apart from the social position or role they represent, stereotyped facets of the reality of Mexico at the turn of the century.
The dramatic action lies in the conflicts between carnal seduction and purity, bourgeoisie and proletariat, resignation and the hope for change embodied in the train, symbol of the Mexican revolution. The studied aestheticism of the staging, the omnipresent unusual sound effects and the sequential structure borrowed from film turn Ramon Lopez Velarde’s poem into a moving and refined experimental production.
Based on La Suave Patria, an epic poem by Ramon Lopez Velarde
Directed by Luis de Tavira
A production of the Teatro Taller Epico, of the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM).
