Camacho Watcho

Last night a few of us went to the theater with a woman that I work with here. It was a production titled “Barro Negro” (Black Mud) and it took place in a bus that drove through Montevideo. Yes, that is correct, the play was set inside a bus as it drove around the city.

In reading about the production beforehand, it seemed that the production was to portray the life and issues that are encountered by the Uruguayan people who ride the bus. I say it “seemed” like this because I was translating the summary from Spanish. I should also mention that the production was performed in Spanish, and while our Spanish has improved, it definitely was not to the point where we could follow anything that was going on. Which was both confusing and fun at the same time. We went into the experience with open minds, and that was definitely for the best.

I really liked the production, it had action, drama, humor and some bizarre moments that made it a great experience. In my mind, the night went like this (I’ll provide some further information later of the plot, but since I did not know the plot for almost the entire production, neither shall you).

Act 1: We board the bus and the ticket man gives us our tickets and we begin to drive. There is a lot of talking between him and a woman who is dressed in a sparkly outfit. The music turns off and they begin to argue. She starts talking about Michael Jackson and then she approaches one of my friends who was with me and points at her (obviously terrifying us that we were going to need to speak at some point). This part goes on for a while with an older woman jumping into the conversation as well. The bus stops and we pick up two soldiers from the side of the street.

Act 2: The two soldiers begin to interact and there appears to be a point when one of them is portraying the need to use the restroom and pretends to start going in the corner of the bus. This is not the case and he pulls a bottle of alcohol from his pants. Everyone laughs…so of course, we do too. Another man enters the scene and the three of them are arguing. I catch the word “professor” and I believe the man was once their teacher or something.

Act 3: The woman in the sparkly outfit gets up again and begins sauntering around and speaking in a loud voice. She gets upset, the bus stops and she gets off the bus. She begins screaming by the side of the bus and one of the soldiers goes out, throws her over his shoulder and carries her back onto the bus. (Mind you - the bus is traveling around the city so everywhere we go, people are staring. When the bus stops, people have no idea what is going on…it’s pretty funny). A man gets up from right next to us, he is portraying a drunk man, and he is staggering around, slurring and being rowdy.

Act 4: The bus stops on a random street and a man comes out of a building. He is dressed in an Elvis-like outfit with a large blonde afro wig. He comes onto the bus, says something and suddenly we are all getting off the bus, onto the dark street, and entering a dark building. Inside, there are colored lights, streamers, a bar (with a nautical theme), plastic chairs surrounding the outside of the room and many pornographic pictures on the wall. Yes, pornographic pictures covering the wall. At this point, we are thoroughly confused (I am still not understanding the plot, but here I am in an abandoned building with 30 strangers and nudey pictures on the walls). We all sit in the chairs around the room and watch as the production continues. People from the production are dancing, they are dancing with us, there is fighting between the performers, we are doing the “locomotion”…it was all quite confusing and interesting and suddenly we are back on the street boarding the bus. We have also picked up one of the dancers from the place who is now riding the bus with us in her wild makeup, tights, hot pants, and stiletto heels.

Act 5: The bus stops and a man boards. He immediately begin speaking very quickly and bee-lines it to the back of the bus, pointing at my friend sitting next to me and saying “Harry Potter.” It was a riot. In his defense, my friend does look a bit like Harry Potter and since this was truly the first thing we understood all night, we cracked up for a long time. The man proceeds to try to sell things in Spanish…mobiles, puppets, all sorts of things. He then packs up and leaves the bus, leaving us to continue cracking up at the Harry Potter comment.

Act 6: The woman in stilettos and one of the army men begin to fight. They are yelling at each other and pushing each other. Suddenly we hear sirens and see a car pull alongside the bus and then we are stopped. Two men board the bus and are showing their badges around…the actors truly looked surprised at this and seemed to fall out of character at this time. So, of course, with us not understanding Spanish, my friends and I honestly think the police have pulled us over…there is what looks like a prostitute on board and a very “drunk man” with an open bottle of wine as well. We definitely think the worst is about to happen. The police take the “drunk man” off the bus and suddenly we are going again. It was part of the play, apparently, which was much a relief to us.

Act 7: This is where it ends. We pulled back up to where we began and the actors came back onboard. We later found out that the plot was all over the board, but it was portraying common stereotypes in Uruguay - a rich woman who doesn’t understand poor people, men who join the army because they don’t have a job and then cannot support their family, women who have second lives to support their families when their husbands are away, the salesmen who earn their living selling odds and ends on the bus, etc. Although we still don’t understand the abandoned building part of the night, it was very interesting, and to say the least, a unique experience.

The night ended with us walking down the pedestrian street in the old city, reflecting on the evening. One of my friends says that while it was fun, “it just could not have been more strange.” At that very moment, a man dressed in orange jumped out of the shadows and yells, “Yah!”, making a karate chopping motion with his hands. We looked at each other, bewildered, and commented, “and the night goes on.” A perfectly strange ending to a perfectly stange evening.

Posted on October 29th, 2007 by katiejocannon
Filed under: Entertainment, Language, Transportation, Uruguay