La Jornada: Director José Luis Cruz proposes embracing “the imperfection of theater”

In a world that obsessively pursues technological perfection and digital immediacy, playwright José Luis Cruz proposes an act of scenic rebellion: embracing “the imperfection of theater” as a mirror of human nature.

Under that premise, the stage director presents from today until August 5 the series Homage to Beckett, at the La Gruta Forum of the Hellenic Cultural Center (1500 Revolución Avenue, Guadalupe Inn neighborhood).

The program consists of two works by the Irish playwright and another inspired by his work, from which we seek to demonstrate the validity of his thought, which, according to the cultural promoter, far from having remained stagnant in the absurdities of the post-war, dialogues with the anxieties and contradictions of the 21st century.

“Theatre is imperfect. It cannot be perfect. Whoever tries to make a perfect theater is lost, because the fascination of theater, as in painting or literature, is that there must be imperfections, because the human being is imperfect.”

Cruz takes up the spirit of Samuel Beckett (1906-1989) to explore “the confusion of the text, its openness to various edges,” a feature that makes each dialogue contain multiple interpretations.

This vision, he explains in an interview, moves away from rigidity to delve into the “grotesque” and the “acting game”, where the actors become “great puppets” that explore human behaviors taken to the extreme.

The irrational as part of reality

According to the Mexican creator, the validity of the Irish author has to do with themes such as lack of communication, anguish and confinement, through characters trapped in concentric circles. “They are post-war characters who inhabited a world in chaos and who were expelled, vomited from society.”

Although British producer and screenwriter Martin Esslin considered Beckett the pillar of the Theater of the Absurd, the director observes that the absurd has increasingly become part of our reality.

“That is to say, our permanent crises in capitalism lead us to think that our structure of life is based precisely on that virtuality, on what Beckett calls the confusion of the text.”

The cycle, which was presented in August of last year at the National Arts Center, is made up of Waiting for Godot (today and tomorrow) and End of game (July 28 and 29), two of Becketti’s masterpieces. Also, for Tributo a Beckett (August 4 and 5), which proposes a dialogue with virtuality and current stupidity. Performances are on Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 8 p.m.

For Cruz, the point of confluence between these pair of Beckett’s works is “the wait for the future of time. At all times the characters are reflecting in interior monologues.” This passage, he explains, becomes a “routine” that traps the characters “like experimental mice that go around inside a wheel and get nowhere.”

Despite developing in desolate atmospheres, in the midst of death and human feelings pushed to the limit, these creations are far from determining their author as a pessimist.

“Reality calls for us to talk about these issues,” the director clarifies, and even defines Beckett as “a comedian who takes humor very seriously,” based on his taste for Music Hall and farce, as well as taking up the absurd acting game of the Marx brothers, Chaplin and The Fat Man y The Skinny.

“He is greatly inspired by all this, also by the Commedia del Arte. Although he had a stern face, he was playful; he liked parody. He took things to the ultimate consequences, but with humor. There is always humor within the pathos, of delirium, and also the grotesque,” ​​concludes the director.

“I expose brutal, almost inhuman jokes through my actors, because I take them to the ultimate consequences in a brutal decadence, as a reflection of that impiety that exists on the human being of the controlled system that overwhelms us.”