Painting poetry and patriarchy - Chicago Reader HEAD TOPICS
Painting poetry and patriarchy - Chicago Reader
10/22/2022 1:49:00 AM Frida Kahlo and Sor Juana form a bond in a hospital on the eve of Dí a de Los Muertos in Cintas de Seda with Aguijó n
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Two iconic women in Mexican art and literature connect in a mysterious hospital in aguijontheater's Cintas de Seda, part of this year's Destinos festival. kerryreid Frida Kahlo and Sor Juana form a bond in a hospital on the eve of Día de Los Muertos in Cintas de Seda with Aguijón. Cintas de Seda, written by Norge Espinoza Mendoza and directed by Sándor Menéndez, unfolds in a hospital on the eve of Día de los Muertos. The Painter (Aguijón co-artistic director Rosario Vargas) cradles empty bottles of wine in memory of her former happier days and works sporadically on a painting, while The Nun (Claudia Rentería) mediates between the fiery artist and the controlling Doctor (Marcopolo Soto). It’s clear who The Painter represents, even before she launches into a monologue about the death of Leon Trotsky. (Kahlo, who had once been lovers with the exiled Soviet revolutionary, was briefly suspected of being an accomplice to his assassination by Ramón Mercader.) But The Nun’s role is unveiled more slowly and purposefully—appropriate, given that the real Sor Juana’s gifts were hidden from historical consideration for centuries until Octavio Paz and others championed her as a major poet of the Spanish Golden Age and a protofeminist. Read more:
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Cintas de Seda , written by Norge Espinoza Mendoza and directed by Sándor Menéndez, unfolds in a hospital on the eve of Día de los Muertos. (He called the 200 entries “Project Uplift,” and shared them along the way with a few friends, including Smith. The Painter (Aguijón co-artistic director Rosario Vargas) cradles empty bottles of wine in memory of her former happier days and works sporadically on a painting, while The Nun (Claudia Rentería) mediates between the fiery artist and the controlling Doctor (Marcopolo Soto). Or weird er. It’s clear who The Painter represents, even before she launches into a monologue about the death of Leon Trotsky. (Would a paranoid homeowner call the cops?) Often he was on the lakefront trail, officially closed by order of Mayor Lightfoot. (Kahlo, who had once been lovers with the exiled Soviet revolutionary, was briefly suspected of being an accomplice to his assassination by Ramón Mercader. The community space is transformed into Amado and Sam’s thrilling home. ) But The Nun’s role is unveiled more slowly and purposefully—appropriate, given that the real Sor Juana’s gifts were hidden from historical consideration for centuries until Octavio Paz and others championed her as a major poet of the Spanish Golden Age and a protofeminist. His stories are told in an intertwining fashion by five ensemble members of various races and genders, all dressed in identical black athletic pants and gray hoodies.com , $25 reserved, $20 general admission To begin with: why are party boy Emmett and worrywart Gabriel even traveling together? They seem to have nothing in common. The Painter paints The Nun, while The Nun talks about her secret writing. And The Doctor is a man divided—all business and authority when bossing his patient and his employee around, but when seen behind the scrim at the back of the playing area, a pitiable and possibly insane figure. Along the way, as the flowers survive the extremes of Chicago weather, he reminds us (and himself) that they are both delicate and tough. When alone, The Painter pulls out a large red flag with the communist hammer and sickle and drapes herself in it. Something bad that Emmett did but Gabriel feels responsible for. She’s isolated in her illness, but still dreams of revolution. And he tries to understand the events of January 6. The Wizards made me cringe, rage, laugh, and (almost) cry, but its greatest strength was its ability to make me feel safe. The gray-walled, dimly lit hospital itself could be a relic of Mexican colonial times or of Sor Juana’s cloistered home as a nun. Is it a real place? An afterlife purgatory? The story teases out both possibilities. There will be any number of pandemic plays in the years to come, to be sure. Sheriff Edward Johnson (Paul Chakrin) and Deputy Richard Monroe (Kevin Woodrow) spend their days tracking a creature that’s killing residents and livestock, leaving little but skin and bone in its wake. (If you’re expecting an afterlife like Pixar’s Coco , which also featured Kahlo as an exuberant performance artist, you’ll be disappointed.) “There is an epidemic out there,” The Nun tells The Painter. At the end, the ensemble tells us, “We are all leaving rehab and rejoining society,” and it’s a pretty accurate way of summing up how the last couple of years have felt. (The real Sor Juana, forced to give up her writing and sell her books, died of the plague while tending to her fellow sisters in 1695. I didn’t even mention the pregnant daughter-in-law (Anna Roemer) or the babies or her dead husband or the ghosts who haunt Gabriel’s dreams. I was also drawn to the four boys who reminded me of home. ) But the epidemic of authoritarianism and patriarchy is within the walls, too, and as the soliloquies from both women make clear, the cure for that is far from certain, and the disease has lingered for centuries, from both church and state. Vargas and Rentería play their roles with arresting chemistry, like solo dancers learning to mirror each other’s moves. (Mirrors are also an important metaphor in this story. But by setting the story in a moonscape purgatory and filling it with beings whose contours and boundaries are fuzzy at best, he gives himself a widescreen canvas to explore family, faith, and the meaning of community.) Beautiful visuals and poetic language surround and entrance us as the 90-minute show unfolds. Vargas’s Frida describes “hummingbirds like children’s hearts suspended in the air” surrounding the gardens in her famous Casa Azul. The title translates as “silk ribbons,” referring to the luxurious material used to trim clothing, and it’s an apt metaphor for how Mendoza structures the narrative of these women’s lives, in which small details add rich texture. This is a brand-new play and it’s exciting to see such a fresh thing cohere before the eyes. Augusto Yanacopulos’s set (he also collaborated with Aguijón co-artistic director Marcela Muñoz on the effective crepuscular lighting) captures the boxed-in world where these two extraordinary women work out their final resistance (which involves a twist that won’t be revealed here). Live guitar music from Norberto Guerra González, who sits to one side in a monk’s robes, adds a quiet, mournful, reflective air. This isn’t a piece about reclaiming women’s lives from the outside through straightforward biography. It’s about creating an atmosphere where we can feel what it would be like to live those lives—thwarted by illness, sexism, and politics, yet ultimately defiant and unbowed. .