It’s a bitter pill, Rodrigo Garcia’s theater. Anyone who has laced up Nikes, chowed a Big Mac, or filled the car with groceries — the average consumer in the developed world — is fodder for the Argentinean playwright and director’s caustic wit and dark humor. Short of living under the poverty level, few can fail to recognize themselves in the mirror held up by this agitator with an antiglobalist agenda. Advocating ethics above esthetics, Garcia’s theater is devoid neither of beauty nor of poetry; however, in his campaign to develop a critical perspective on an unjust world of haves and have-nots, he is capable of breathtaking concision of both images and language. One year after the stunning introduction in France of the 38-year-old founder of Madrid’s Carniceria Teatro, Garcia returns with the explosive “Jardinería humana” (“Human Gardening,” 2003) and the disabused “Compré una pala para cavar mi tumba” (“I bought a shovel on sale to dig my grave,” 2001). Caveat emptor.
A scene from “Jardinería humana” encapsulates the violence and risk of Garcia’s work, where an actress lashes into garbage bags heaped with packaged foods, slurping them down and smearing them on herself until she has consumed the entire sickening mess. In his exploration of the human body and its reduction to just another unit of exchange, Garcia assembles series of ever more daring images in a narrative style that blends performance art, the gargantuan excesses of the Elizabethan stage and the desperate energy of Buenos Aires’ barrios. “My theater is dirty and ugly, like my vision of the world,” he explained for the French paper ‘L'Humanité” in 2002. “Mine is a violent theater that responds violently to the violence that I feel simply all around me.”
In “Jardinería humana,” Garcia takes aim at the inhuman representation of the body served up by the media and advertising, which, like a gardener pruning hedges into geometrical shapes, mold an unnatural standard of beauty. “Compré una pala” examines another kind of violence, perpetrated by the “live to work” mentality and its creation of notions of “leisure time” and possibilities for spending it. As in previous pieces (“Prometeo,” 1992, “After Sun,” 2000, “Je crois que vous m’avez mal compris,” 2002...) which underscored their creator’s obsession with the sacred and profane qualities of food (whether cold or hot: actors grill hamburgers, roast chickens...) and the reality of the action taking place (as in when actor Juan Loriente convinced 10 people at a performance of “After Sun” to drop their pants on stage), the audience can expect to participate passively or actively in the “life moments” that it is Garcia’s intention to create. Which is why nervous laughter commonly accompanies his work : it’s the sound of an audience getting the message.
“Jardinería humana,” to Dec 6, “Compré una pala para cavar mi tumba,” Dec 9-20, (in Spanish with French subtitles), Tue-Sat 8:30pm, Sun 3pm, Théâtre de la Cité Internationale, 21 bd Jourdan, 14e, RER B Cité Universitaire, 9.50E-19E, tel: 01 43 13 50 50 or Festival d’Automne: 01 53 45 17 17
