The play ‘The Platypus’ invites us to have fun and reflect on sexuality in modern times

In this staging there will be sex, a lot of sex, and laughter, a lot too. This is what its actors and the director of this play promise. But the great guest at the tables is the question that many at some point have caressed in the mind without daring to verbalize it or perhaps even give it a second turn in consciousness: What would happen if we open our romantic and sexual relationship to a third party?

This is just a sample of what it raises The platypus, play written by the Mexican playwright Humberto Robles and produced by Paulsen Study, with a stellar cast of artists belonging to that acting house: Raúl Sánchez McMillan, teacher of the Meisner technique; and the graduates Lissette Rezabala, Alfredo Salomón and Adrián Cárdenas (in the address).

The story addresses the love triangle that arises between the wedding couple Paco and Ana and their best friend, David. “They are friends of many years, intellectuals, thirty-somethings … They begin to debate the issue of sexuality from the intellectuality. The work is the journey of these people who feel already established in their sexuality, in certain schemes, but who later learn to release their impulses and experience their fantasies among themselves ”, Cárdenas illustrates.

This plot was released for the first time in the country of its author 20 years ago, at a time when it was still considered very controversial ‘undress’ the themes of infidelity and personal questioning of sexual orientation on stage, adds the director.

Even for the Robles line, whose trajectory stands out rather for the social theater, denouncement, which in fact awarded him the San Ginés de Oro award in 2019 for being the Mexican playwright with the highest international representation in this area.

But the themes of The platypus resist losing their validity, thus showing that human relationships continue to be so indecipherable as the origin of the platypus, an animal species that puzzled 19th century scientists when it was discovered. The title of the work projects this parallel.

It was Sánchez who proposed the assembly of this piece, after enjoying it in Lima, where it comes from. “What I remember the most is the experience I had after seeing it, which made me feel like a spectator, invites us to question our perceptions of sex”, Adds the professor. “It is a plot work, the characters work from an ideological world and argue why they do what they do, that is why the public is going to take these questions”.

He plays David, who has decided to lead a life no strings attached in the loving and sexual. “I feel that he has chosen this type of life because of a great vulnerability … he lives a duality between loving people, but he repels them because alone he feels that they will not hurt him,” explains Sánchez, who has been trained with Peruvian teachers Leonardo Torres Vilar and David Carillo.

The central couple are Ana and Paco in the skin of Lissette Rezabala and Alfredo Salomón.

“Ana finds it difficult to question everything she has learned in her life, she is very methodical in her beliefs. She is convinced that marriage and monogamy are the most important. But then she is encouraged to try situations that she had never experienced, such as unleashing the attraction she feels towards her boyfriend’s best friend, ”explains Rezabala. Ana’s conflict, says the actress, is heavier than the rest, because women are blamed more for infidelity than men in our culture.

According to Solomon, these characters teach us that At the age of 30, one has not finished discovering who he is, although at this age many already believe they know for sure. “I think many people have wondered if monogamy is their thing, and if not, how much we would get hurt if we open our relationships and if we can continue to love someone after being with another,” adds the actor.

As for Paco, she says, “he discovers that his sexuality goes the other way, and that his relationships, too. Paco feels very liberal and that is why he is the one who makes the proposal that both of them can see other people outside of their courtship ”.

The functions of The platypus They will be held at the Paulsen Studio, from November 11 to 20, from Thursday to Saturday. Reservations: 096-018-9636.