Posted by Margaret on April 07, 192003 at 02:06:39:
One way to commemorate the dead is to allow them to speak from beyond the grave. In Yuyachkani’s extraordinary production, “Adiós Ayacucho,” a victim of the state-sponsored terrorism in the Ayacucho region emerges from the darkness to narrate the story of his death. He was tortured, dismembered and (in a significant detail) filled with straw then thrown into a common grave. In discussing this play with a friend she recalled a poem of T.S. Eliot’s “ The Hollow Men” which begins:
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass. . . .
The project of Yuyachkani is to hear these whispering voices. The state in its military campaign to destroy Sendero Luminoso virtually obliterated whole communities, killing and “hollowing out” voices of opposition in such a horrific way that often no identifiable trace was left. The State insists that these voices remain quiet and meaningless yet, frustrated and unavenged, the voices cry out to be remembered. What restores dignity to these lives and reassembles the scattered bones, if only metaphorically? Augusto Américo, the actor who played the role of Kallpa, told us after his performance that memory is the umbilical cord for all of Yuyachkani’s productions. In dramatizing the afterlife of Alfonso Kallpa, Yuyachkani has given importance to the life of a single man and also to the lives of many others who were similarly killed and disposed of.
I was especially curious about seeing a Yuyachkani production after translating Teresa Ralli’s essay about her version of Antigone. Her descriptions of Yuyachkani’s working ethos fascinated me; her intense dedication to exploring and reworking and living through this character (who became an obsession for her) pointed to an unusual integrity and clarity as an artist. The creative vision that comes through so clearly in Ralli’s essay were also unmistakeably clear in “Adiós Ayacucho,” a collaborative work by her colleagues Augusto Américo and Ana Correa. As I knew the synopsis in advance, the surprise for me was how imaginatively and ingeniously the staging of this spirit’s journey towards wholeness took place. I will comment on one moment, out of many, that stood out for me. As the play begins, the darkness gradually gives way to light and we become aware of a figure inside an enormous plastic garbage bag. The spirit of Kallpa frees himself from the bag and steps out. With the use of this bag, we in the audience are reminded that the body of Kallpa was in effect treated like garbage. The body bag and garbage bag are one. (His description of his torture and death reaffirm this.) Also the bag serves as a kind of sac or womb out of which the “reborn” Kallpa emerges. And then later on in the play the bag is used in another startling sequence. The character picks up the bag lengthwise and drapes it over his legs while cradling one end in his arms. The folds of the bag assume the shape of a lifeless body or Pieta. The bag is now empty of a body but becomes a body itself. It is a brief moment in the play but underscores the sort of intense work that goes into its making, or how else would the sculptural qualities of the bag have been discovered? (except through trial and error, intuition, happy accidents?)