Arístides Vargas - Feather and The Tempest

Argentinean Playwright Arístides Vargas

The dramatic genius of playwright Arístides Vargas has a long history that began in Argentina where he was born.  He was raised in Mendoza and studied Theater at Cuyo University.  In 1975, when he was only 20, political turmoil during the de facto government or the Revolución Argentina, forced the young playwright to flee his beloved country and seek exile in Ecuador.  A violent breach between right-wing and left-wing Peronism led to years of instability which culminated with the coup d’état of 1976.  The military government violated many human rights and imposed the “ideological war” doctrine which focused on eliminating the social base and assassinating many students, intellectuals, and labor organizers.  This fact marked Vargas’ dramaturgical work.  

- I grew up in a very unconventional way, I was quite defective with two heads and two memories, which placed me in many places.  I’m a playwright that writes about life’s traumas.    

Omar Padilla & Juliana Thompson in
Feather and The Tempest by Arístedes Vargas
Photo © Leticia Alaniz

Early in his career, he was admired as the poet of the stage.  He has expressed that theater came to him by accident.  One day when he was only 15, he went with a friend to a theater workshop.  He was fascinated by what he saw and decided right then that theater would be his life.  Fully immersed either writing for the stage, acting or directing, he was alerted by a friend that the military was on their way to the theater to arrest intellectuals, which also meant actors and directors.  He managed to escape, but many of his friends were arrested.  He was left with no other choice than to leave the country.  With only five dollars in his pocket, he fled to Ecuador, began to write his Latin-American story and formed a theatrical group called Malayerba.  Today, Malayerba is considered one of the most important and representative theater companies in Latin America.    

Omar Padilla & Jake Bowman in
Feather and The Tempest by Arístides Vargas
Photo © Leticia Alaniz

J.R. Bradford & Karla González in
Feather and The Tempest by Arístides Vargas
Photo © Leticia Alaniz

Aristides Vargas writes about lost childhoods, extraordinary situations, and the relationship of people.  His theater is contemporary and it voices the reality of current generations.  Recurrent themes in his plays are the memory, the need of reconstruction thru memory, the act of exile, migration, and death.  His writing reflects a reality that can only be expressed thru theater, setting the stage for the cures of the diseases that plague dictatorial governments that he's all too familiar with.  

In Feather and The Tempest, Vargas touches the hearts of audiences in a poetic and provocative play that reflects on the societies that the youth of today will inherit.  It begins with a story of a youth named Feather who was born in a hostile world, growing in the streets like a ship adrift, like a feather in the storm, shaken and agitated by the ever-changing harshness of life.  He is marginalized, exposed to all kinds of dangers, forced to sell out, to satisfy hunger without substantiality, to resign, and yet against all storms, choose the self-affirmation and development of their own individuality, struggling to survive and continue, recycling the remnants of the storm.  “Feather” offers a critique of the political, religious and educational institutions proposed by our current societies.  Feather is also a kind of hermaphrodite, a metaphor for the idealist, the subject hopeful that fails to progress, to express, to belong, or be welcomed by a member of society.

Feather is an entity on a white canvas, in other words with no real form, yet it forms itself as a person, depending on what

Grisel Cambiasso in Feather and The Tempest
by Aristídes Vargas
Photo © Leticia Alaniz

happens out in the streets of the real world.  In a way, we all go thru that, we become what life experiences come at us.  Feather speaks of our contemporary times, what we are living now.  It's a debacle of corruption, created by a few yet paid for by many.  It's a play that speaks to the youth of today about how the political, economic and social horrors influence students.

Students are survivors and they learn how to breathe right in the heart of a tempest.. (Text from Feather and The Tempest).  

Teatro Dallas presents Aristides Vargas’ Feather and The Tempest

April 8th thru May 1st

Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm

Sundays at 3pm 

Directed by Cora Cardona 

Starring:

J.R. Bradford, Karla González, Omar Padilla, Ninoshka Martínez, Jake Bowman, Armando Monsivais, Grisel Cambiasso, Izzy Mayfield, Juliana Thompson and Fernando Lara

Tickets & Info:

214-689-6492

www.teatrodallas.org 

Juliana Thompson & Ninoshka Martínez in
Feather and The Tempest by Arístides Vargas
Photo © Leticia Alaniz