Theatre of the Borderlands by del Rosario Moreno Iani;

Author:del Rosario Moreno, Iani; [Moreno, Iani del Rosario]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2015-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.1. Source: Alberto Orozco Ahumada. Rompe-Cabeza by Antonio Zúñiga. Chihuahua City, September 2014.

Reprinted by permission of Alberto Orozco Ahumada. Rompe-Cabeza by Antonio Zúñiga. Chihuahua City, September 2014.

Antonio Zúñiga is a playwright, actor, director, producer, and scriptwriter.18 Originally from Parral, Chihuahua, Zúñiga now works and lives in Mexico City as an actor and playwright for the group Carretera 45 Teatro A.C. “Highway 45 Theatre Civil Association.” According to Zúñiga, playwrights of the Border have a great power: “What we do has a lot of vitality coming from the earth and having the habit of living in an ambiguous and wide space . . . [to create theater is] the investigation of languages, and the fables and short stories with a richness from the north” (Zúñiga, Personal Interview). While his work appears to be rooted in themes related to the violence in Northern Mexico and the deaths in Cuidad Juárez, his other plays revisit the history and historical figures of these territories.

Rompe-cabeza is fast-moving and filled with action scenes. There are several characters in the play, hombre 1 and 2 “Man 1 and 2,” Muchacho “Kid,” Licenciado “Mr. College graduate,” Pez gordo “Big Fish,” Mujer 1 and 2 “Woman 1 and 2,” and many more that have ambiguous and universal names. The spaces where the action takes place require minimal construction and props. The men and women of the play are somehow involved in the criminal world. They live in a sub-world of narco-violence which governs the population of many parts of Mexico on a day-to-day basis. The language in each scene is colloquial, playful, sometimes strong, and in general uses slang typical of the world of narcotrafficking. In some scenes the tempo is quick with brief, repetitive phrases.19 Additionally, there is evidence of dark humor. The scenes are presented in a somewhat ambiguous form so that the reader/spectator has to guess a character’s profession and his/her relation to the characters in other scenes. In this way, one completes the rompecabezas “puzzle” of the play.

The play’s dialogues are brief, sometimes in monosyllables with phrase repetitions and silences. In each scene clues are left in the form of repetitive sentences and situations. Part of the game is to match these pieces until they complete the entire puzzle: “Es en vano quebrarse la cabeza pensando” “It is in vain to break your head thinking” says Mujer 2 (Zúñiga, Rompe-cabeza 4). This play on words comes from the play’s title but also refers to something that literally takes place after the first scene ends.20 Mujer 1 and Mujer 2, the Quintero sisters, are the main characters of scene 1: Dos gotas de sangre “Two drops of blood” in which the two frantically try to hide from someone in an enclosed location. This scene also opens and closes the play. Mujer 1 constantly asks Mujer 2 if the shooting has stopped so that she can flee. Her other obsession is to yell but Mujer 2 suppresses her, because if she does, they will be discovered.

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