THE CHALLENGE OF CREATING A MONSTER

From the huge number of projects that I´m onto, besides the crappy health thing, I think the most powerful is the one I mentioned a few posts ago. SADE, THE DIVINE MARQUIS.

This project started last year while I was working as a stand in director of "12 fragmentos de amor" ("Twelve Fragments of love") a play written and directed by my talented friend Sergio Kohan (One of the most wanted rising stars in the BA Off Theatrical World).

We started working together two years ago, when I was supossed to be his actor in one of his plays and got ill, by then, I became some kind of a freaky consultant who was suggesting things by email about how to stage scenes, lighting effects, costumes, and an endless bla blahs... ending up on the credits as "Creative Designer" yes, it seems we created a new way of working).

Then, while I was living at the REHAB CENTER I had to scape once a week (running away on my wheelchair) to continue with my work.

It was the perfect team, Sergio Kohan and his actors (a fountain of talent themselves) found that I could help them, guide them and create, all together, what it became a magnificent play.

2032
That was "2032" (a postmodern chronicle about a bunch of souls that had survived to The End of the world and, suddenly, came back to life as the "memoirs" of their last minute as human beings). It was fantastic, the audience loved it, the reviews where amazing and our pride was bigger than the Everest.

My position of "Creative Designer" was promoted to "Stunt in Director" on the next play (12 fragmentos de amor/12 fragments of love") where my work (once out of the rehab center) was a lil´bit more serious than the one I had before, due to this time I was dealing straight with the actors, defining staging and giving directions on how to perform the show (a wonderful story written by Sergio Kohan about a laberinth of love stories that got together making everybody in the audience hold their breath, creating a unique atmosphere of desperation, sorrow, happyness and LOVE as the conflictive characters where telling their stories on stage).

12 FRAGMENTOS

The "team" was there... Sergio Kohan... the actors... and me.
It was another hit!

It was during the rehearsalls of this play when Mr.Kohan first told me about The Divine Marquis.... I rolled my eyes and said: "you are crazy, but I´m in". Then he offered me the chance to Direct... AND YOU ALL KNOW HOW DIFFICULT IS TO SAY NO TO ME!

So, he gave me the script, written by Andres Casro Berta, An Uruguayan writter who has given Kohan the rights of the play in Argentina...

The Marquis de Sade, is one of the most amazing characters in history... and I had in my hands a two hours monologue based on his "diaries"....
who really was the all-time feared Marquis?
How to present a character like that to an audience that could have as many diff´rent reactions to it as people in this world?

So... we started working on the plot... cutting it from two hours to a 45 minutes monologue.... what was the marquis we wanted to show?...
Concept?...
are we justifying him or exposing him?...
are we just allowing him to tell us his own story or are we just showing him as a piece of art on a museum?...

The opening night was on January 6th 2006. The reviews loved it.

"There is only one word to describe it: EXCELENT!" they said.

Last week, after a very suscessfull season and touring, we opened in Buenos Aires again, but this time we went for more...

Not only the staging has changed from a regular theater to a dark basement... (yes, now, if you are brave enough to face the Great Marquis de Sade, you have to walk down the stairs of a basement and get into a dark room where the shadows and the cold are the hosts) but also we decided to limit the audience to only 10 seats...

Intimacy.
darkness.
loneliness.
Maybe the same atmosphere the own Marquis was enjoying on his dusty cell at Le Bastille, The prision where he spent most of his days...

Now The Divine Marquis is more than just a play... it´s an experience...

The ads shows the advice "This Show contains violent scenes and darkness, not available for people wasuly impresionable, claustrophobic or suffering Nervous disorders in small crowded rooms".

During the opening night, a woman left the theatre before the actor started to speak, she was crying and trembling....WOW. The ones that stayed, enjoyed a breath.taking performance that blown their minds away.

The reviews were fantastic again...
"you are not able to say if it is a good or a bad play, it´s beyond that.... but you can be sure it´s a play you will NEVER forget" They wrote

WOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW.-