Se rompen las olas

I am hollow and all my holes are full of the dust, of years.
I can’t hear anyone, I can’t breathe well, I never say what I want,
I can’t see clearly. I have never touched anyone, I’m not good at fucking, nor have I deeply loved someone. My heart is empty.
It’s just that all my homes are falling apart and I’m allergic to dust.

“I received all the questions in the same envelope, all of them. This project is an answer to the question: “Who am I?”
I was born after the earthquake. I did not live it, but I am afraid of it. I have come to the conclusion that I am a story not just written by me. We are all history, we are assumption, we are re- search, we are unknown, we are flesh, bones and guts, we are memory, we are relatives, we are fantasy, we are individuals, we are from here but we were born there, we are the yet unlived, we are new and old at it, we are consequence, we are project, we are claims. We have last names and we don’t. We lie, we clarify, we laugh, we do not speak, we cry, we eat, we move away, we seek each other, hence… are we family? They say that family is destiny, is it?”

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, 2012

Se rompen las olas [The waves break] is a play about myself [Mariana Villegas] and the 1985 earthquake in Mexico City. It was born from a desire to build a solid tale about my origins, to put the pieces together with fiction’s aid. To fill in the blanks of my own story with what I imagined my- self to be and what I would like to tell. I was interested in constructing a theatrical response to the question, “where do I come from?”; in justifying my existence and in composing my version of a story of which I knew very little: the relationship between María and Raúl, my parents,
their absence and an earthquake. I had a hunch that this earthquake, without having lived it, had decreed my destiny. I wanted to speak about how catastrophes shape people’s lives. I wanted, perhaps, to clarify and justify the absence, to find answers in theater’s repetition. Se rompen las olas was a work that linked my personal history to a collective memory. The collective memory, that ran in parallel to my personal history during the play, consisted of a series of documents related to the 19th of September of 1985, the day of the earthquake —a video of the news broadcast
Hoy mismo, with Lourdes Guerrero; an audio recording of journalist Jacobo Zabludovsky; images borrowed from the National Archive, and my own personal files. In addition to these I used excerpts from Nada, nadie. Las voces del temblor by Elena Poniatowska.
A red linoleum stage of about 6 by 4 meters where the rooms of a house were distributed, with a couch, a table, a weaved toy house, a toy table and chairs for children. There were toys, dolls, elements from my childhood, personal mementos, a fan, seashells, and a bucket full of rubble. From the catwalks hung two systems designed one to drop water, the other to drop sand. The play was supported at all times by projected images: pictures of the earthquake, family photos and beach postcards. The sand that first simulated a collapse turned eventually into a beach, I danced with an imaginary man, drank a red Tecate beer in a swimsuit, insulted a picture, told the story of Maria and Raúl’s relationship in 1985 and also mine, a fictitious relationship which took place in 2012 that was interrupted by the audio of waves crashing into the beach. During the course of both relationships, I wanted to draw a mirror, as to suggest that the stories of parents and daughters repeated themselves.
During the play the songs “La isla bonita” by Madonna, “Flor de capomo” de Carlos y José, “Dónde te agarró el temblor” by Chico Che and “Me persigue tu sombra” by Chalino Sánchez were used.

Un proyecto de A project by: Mariana Villegas • Asesoría artística Artistic advisors: Luisa Pardo, Gabino Rodríguez y César Ríos • Video y audio Video and sound: Carlos Gamboa • Iluminación Lighting: Marcela Flores / Sergio López Vigueras • Isadora Isadora: Emiliano Leyva • Asistente Assistant: Hoze Meléndez • Imagen Image: Francisco Barreiro • Producción Production: Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol.

Se rompen las olas was premiered on April 7, 2012, at Teatro El Milagro and had six runs in Mexico City and was presented at Santiago a Mil, Santiago; VIE Festival, Modena; Radar L.A., Los Angeles; Teatro a una sola voz, Mexico; Heidelberger Stückemarkt, Heidelberg; Münchner Kammerspiele, Munich; among others.