‘The song of the hare’, ask him …

By María de Lourdes Falconi Puig

Curtain opens, one Sui generis… Rather a large curtain of translucent plastic material, like the one used in a sterilization center; or a veil that is drawn back to let us see what is happening in a cold and depersonalized environment, where two characters dressed in white, the doctor and the nurse, hold an apparently trivial dialogue while listening to the radio broadcast of a soccer game. They wait for a call related to their operations, while on a cellophane-wrapped bed, a woman sleeps.

The song of the hare, written by Arístides Vargas, an Argentine playwright living in Ecuador since the 70s, touches on the sordid activity of organ trafficking, making a comparison with small game hunting, where the most vulnerable are easy prey for an abject organization that trades human life : “They are street children and the street belongs to nobody”.

The solid interpretations of the actors Alejandro Fajardo (the Doctor) and Itzel Cuevas (the Nurse), lead us to remove the anecdote from the category of urban legend to face a disbelieving reality. The characters, disconnected from the emotional dimension, are immersed in a mercantilist current devoid of ethical sense or compassion … which can also be read as a hyperbolic image of the daily reality that we live in the different spheres of society these days, where some act as predators, dismembering others to accumulate capital, while others pretend to be asleep for comfort, without asking questions.

The Nurse (played by an actress, here duality) has a glimmer of light… a movement of consciousness, but he washes his hands and the cycle continues.

How did we get to this? Ask the doctor / butcher’s dog … ask her is his name. Desensitized by the practice of his trade, he justifies his behavior by believing in a theory that defends the superiority of man over other species by the use of reason. The Doctor rambles: “The dog seemed to reason …”. No, the dog feels.

The verb ‘feel’ is the absence that is manifested in this work, directed by Sebastián Sánchez Amunátegui. Released for the month of October at Estudio Paulsen.

Artistic file:

Text: Arístides Vargas

Direction: Sebastián Sánchez Amunátegui

Performers: Alejandro Fajardo, Itzel Cuevas, Pamela Sambrano, Michelle Zamudio, Allison Mieles

Production: Alejandro Fajardo / Estudio Paulsen

Space: Paulsen Studio

Format: Theater

Genre: Drama

Duration: 60 minutes