The Necessity of the Absurd

Prometeo proves actions do speak louder than words

Comments (0) By Mia Leonin Thursday, Jun 28 2001

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Prometeo puts the action back into acting

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While Persecución is obviously political, Suandende is gender-based. A woman (Beatriz Montanes) uses her female cunning to escape one tyrannical lover (Honorio Toussaint) and seduce another (Victor Silva). Watching her manipulate two different men in opposite yet equally powerful ways is at times comical and fascinating, reminding us of the surreptitious nature of seduction and escape. In an erotic dance of hide-and-seek, she transforms her body into both a point of flight and a place of refuge. Montanes uses the stage's space luxuriously, and her gestural vocabulary is much more expansive than that of her counterparts, who do a sufficient job but at times risk becoming stereotypes.

No matter how culturally specific a play is, theater must point beyond itself toward the universal, and Prometeo does just that. Leave it to a group of students to take on such difficult texts. They have no Carbonell Award to vie for or season subscriber to lose. Risky theater is too often understood to mean risky content. One glance at a Channel 7 newscast is enough of a reminder that we lost our capacity to be stunned a long time ago. Courageous theater lies in form, not content, and with the abundance of quality directors and actors populating the stages of South Florida, seeing more of them try to meet this challenge would be thrilling.