Lola Arias: El Año en que nací / The year I was born
@ Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago
220 E. Chicago Ave, Chicago IL
Opening Thursday, January 23rd, from 7:30PM - 9PM
On view through Wednesday, December 31st
El Año en que nací / The year I was born, by Argentinean playwright Lola Arias, started with a concept: artists born under a dictatorship reconstruct their mothers and fathers lives as they once were. With disarming sincerity, eleven performers born the 1970s and early 1980s during Pinochet’s dictatorship in Chile retell their parent’s stories to each other using photographs, letters, cassette tapes, old clothing, anecdotes, and elusive recollections. Each of them remakes scenes from the erased memories of the past to use as portals to understanding an uncertain future: Who were my parents when I was born? What was my country like before I learned to speak? How many versions of past events exist, particularly those that occurred when I was too young to form memories?
Like stunt doubles, the actors don their parents’ clothes and try to represent the lives of those who wore them. Performer by performer, scene by scene, the stories collect and converge until we arrive at critical junctures—the overlapping zones of reality and fiction, the encounter of one generation with another, and the intersection of national history and private stories. Both playful and political, the explorations of El Año en que nací / The year I was born reveal complexity and dark secrets alongside the joy and humor of lives recovered.
The performance is in Spanish with English subtitles.
Running Time: 1 hour 45 minutes
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Tags: Lola Arias, Museum of Contemporary Art
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