George Orwell conceived a universe where “war is peace”, “freedom is slavery” and “ignorance is strength”; where the ministries torture in the name of love and lie in the name of the truth. In Salvation, a post -war cabaret, From theater inside Santa Clara, the same inverted logic is breathed. The work is a battlefield in which laughter is a survival strategy.
As in 1984, The show becomes a control tool, but in this case the control is not exercised by the party, but the market, and the constant invitation to ignorance, apathy, selfishness, consumption, superficiality.
The cabaret promises “to live, feel, to be born again”, “bite pieces to chaos”, “suck the blood to hope” and “transcend the night without dying”; But the smile and dance happen between scenes that oscillate between the grotesque and the poetic, the hilarious and the tragic.
The actresses show polyglots and universal, but their expression reveals dissonances. They are broken. They are victims of a facades society, where the “common senses” are efficiently assembled: poverty is will, misery is educational, bombs have protective function. What is seen is not always what it is.
The show focuses its criticism on hypocrisy, the banalization of suffering after the mask of jubilation. The violent stories of the characters rebel against their own alienation, while demanding an act of collective consciousness.
What does it mean to resist when resistance is already part of the system? How much is unworthy to surrender? Rend at who and for what? Where is the salvation for those who were born penalized?
In a world that normalizes tragedies, it excludes from the values imposed by a closed circle of power and forces us or trains to resignation, what is the exit? To the victims of hunger, homophobia, misogyny, racism, war … they have sold them very expensive Ticket to live.
Among the complexity of Cuba to move scenography from one province to another, find lodging and food for actresses and actors, set up a work when medicines for the sick family member and sleep little because there is no electricity for hours; Theater inside proposes the last function of this cabaret cycle at the Art Factory, on Sunday, August 3.
They go up to the scene and break the fourth wall to denounce the falsehood of their roles: “This is a representation, nothing is real here.” And one suspects that they increpate it. They look us in the eye when they dance with the dead, they give us cocktails if we reveal the date of our favorite genocide, and eventually surrender to demand that we do not give up.
Because the real is not the staging, but what it reveals. The real is crying after committing a brutal act to survive. It is the outraged cry of the actors to their characters after submission.
The real is when one perceives that he got carried away by laughter and has not come to change everything, not to settle, to fill the symbols and words with essences; It is that uncomfortable question that the public leads home without answering aloud.
The real thing is that the party continues, that we continue to accept euphemisms: we call “vulnerability” to poverty, we celebrate carnivals without orchestras or lights, and applaud at the end of the act, although it hurts.
In a five -star restaurant in Tel Aviv, the diners ordered the dessert while filming the bombs that fell on Gaza, and although the rumble was heard, no one covered their ears. The show included them, as well as Salvation It includes us all. He participates to the public of the society that personifies.
The ruins become cabaret. The cabaret in anesthesia. And the anesthesia in question: if we close our eyes, we cover our ears, we sew our mouths, do we save ourselves?
