Monday, January 15, 2018

BI- “Milagro” SE Portland

Containment

This production is written and directed by Georgina Escobar with choreography by Gabriela Portuguez.  It is playing at their site, 525 SE Stark St., through January 20th.  For more information, go to their site at www.milagro.org

What is your vision of the Future for our planet (assuming we have one)?  At present we have countries gnashing their teeth and rattling sabers at each other…too many Powers having nuclear capabilities…floods, fire, famine in all parts of the world…and so that future looks pretty bleak.  But Escobar’s vision cuts even deeper into the human psyche, just who the hell are we anyway?!

If you watch many films or TV shows, they picture people in a very stero-typic way so that an audience can easily identify the heroic types, the losers, the villains, etc. but humans, in reality, are not quite so simply identified.  They are many-faceted, many-layered possibly even multi-dimensional.  But, in order to discover ourselves, we have to start at a beginning in which we question and wonder. 

And so we enter a desert community made up of squares, as these four individuals, Hex (Kenyon Acton), Isa (Sierra Brambila), Noir (Justin Charles) and Fig (Ajai Terrazas) lock-step a straight and narrow path laid out for them behind a Great Wall in the year 2089 (as I was reminded, 100 years after the Berlin Wall fell).  They each have their own squares to deal with and don’t dare vary from the prescribed predictability of their patterned lives.  They are a product of a regimented, regulated and regurgitated society that needed these “huddled masses” to be complacent and easily identified…and contained.

But they hear of an underground club that varies from this order, in which they can release all these pent-up abilities and just…be.  As to the outcome of their journey, that will be something you will have to experience first-hand.  Know that it has been said that music can sooth the savage beast, but it can also release the inner self.

These actors play a variety of roles and movement/dance is a large part of that expression, which is very well choreographed by Portuguez.  Escobar has written and directed a story that seeks to touch all the bi-levels of our being and she has chosen a very eclectic and talented cast to mold her vision around.  And when you depart the theatre, you may have more questions than answers but that is a good thing.  As long as we can question, we are!

I recommend this show.  If you do choose to see it, please tell them Dennis sent you.

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