Theater and wine, oh so fine

Saturday, April 28^th, 2012

Having some doubt over the events I’d found online through vuenosairez.com (see entry “Contemporary, experimental Argentine film” for explanation), I was happy that Angela still decided to come out to Vendimia en Boedo with me. It was described as an evening of theater and wine. Once again, right up my alley.

Boedo is known as a cute little tango neighborhood in BA, in addition to having some bares notables. While it was quite a trek (D-E line), it was well worth it. We showed up early and enjoyed a bar notable, Café Margot. Bares notables are the historic cafes in Buenos Aires, some of which were places were famous writers went to hash it out with the pen, others where famous tangueros danced the night away. Some are famous just because they’re historic in and of themselves. Café Margot definitely had the historic feel to it, with lots of authentic looking vintage posters, as well as a dark, wooden interior. I could imagine myself scribbling away some good lines in there.

Then it was time for the theater. We showed up right on time, which is normally about 30 minutes early for Argentina, but we found that we were actually almost late and had to guzzle our wine down before the performance started. That is one thing about time in BA that I had forgotten—theater always starts when it says it does and if you’re late, tough luck.

The first performance was a one woman show where a woman, slightly on the verge of madness, had to defend her territory against the companies that kept threatening it as they took out more and more chunks of the habitat. Blame the wine or the fact that we were in a dark, warm theater, but I started to get a little sleepy. In and out of sleep, my dreams mixed with the play in a very strange way. It was like having an angry Spanish-speaking woman narrate my thoughts. And when I wasn’t dozing off, I was thinking about the fact that all too often we fixate so much on the natural side of our deleterious production habits, we actually forget about the people living in these habitats. Or we assume that because they’re “natives” that they can handle whatever terrain they’re given—as if the world hadn’t already screwed them over enough times on what their “terrain” is.

Then we were ushered back out into the lobby area for another round of wine. I think it was the same wine as before. And considering I thought the main purpose of this festival was the wine I guess I found that strange. But it didn’t take long before the theater portion eclipsed the wine by a long shot.

While I’d learned to not trust the descriptions of any artistic production here, I was somewhat doubtful of the performance to come. All I knew was that it was about 2 foreigners in Buenos Aires and there was a magic ball of light. But something told me this was going to be good. Understatement of the year.

Al Ritmo de Tina

While you have to know Spanish, French or both (as well as be a Porteño or someone living in Buenos Aires) to really get the full effect of Al Ritmo de Tina, essentially the story centers on a Spanish/French duo who decide to come live in BA and the audience delights at their discoveries of how the city is, how one gets around it, the Spanish spoken here as well as the little paradoxes and Porteño-isms of life. It was an excellent representation of what it’s like to be a foreigner here—I would know. I don’t think anyone stopped laughing or smiling through the entire play. Because for everything in BA that’s frustrating, there are many more things that are enchanting and beautiful. An additional theme was that of the allure of the unknown. The “magic ball of light” was representative of the globe and the friends used an artist’s dummy (a wooden art doll) to hop, skip and jump to different countries and when it landed on Argentina, they both felt that mystical feeling one does when they’re thinking of Argentina. It’s the same feeling I got before I decided to come here, too. It’s the chaos and culture of Buenos Aires, but it’s also the solitude and tranquility of Patagonia; the tropical, humid provinces up North and the dry, barren provinces that snuggle the Andes. Pairs of opposites that somehow make sense when you put them together. But that’s what I’ve come to love about Argentina. It is the land of polar opposites, black and white, yet somehow everything is grey. It's definitely something to adjust to, but now that I have, I am completely in love.