Diandra Reviews It All - Mascaras Afueras & Seis At Teatro Circulo

Teatro Círculo has entered its 2018 circuit with an absolute bang. Serving the best plays and entertainment form Latin America to further our community’s voice and empower our creativity in NYC. I had the absolute pleasure to see a back to back, artistic offering of Mascaras Afueras and Seis, which included English subtitles.

Mascaras Afueras

Thanks to writer Joselo Arroyo, Mascaras Afueras is an unavoidable hit. The comedy is laugh after laugh, as two friends, inadvertently, air out their secrets live on the radio. The world listens, and later calls in with opinions, as Luisa (Edna Lee Figueroa) confesses to her best friend Marta (Edmi de Jesus) that she is a lesbian leaving her husband to be with her son’s crush, Gina. If that bombshell was not enough, there are PLENTY MORE! For an hour, secrets and “back-stabbings” erupt between these two women, but the charisma of both actors helps you receive the love and laughs between both of them.

Figueroa plays Luisa with a restraint; she looks and moves like a woman BEGGING to be free, which turns her into the “straight” character for De Jesus to spark her fiery jokes. De Jesus’ Marta is coquettish, dynamic, and the appeared epitome of a liberated woman. Yet, she, too, holds her chains as a mother regretting her inability to accept her child’s sexuality, and that becoming the reason they have not spoken in over two years. The women go back and forth reclaiming, insulting, and relieving each other from any darkness they have caused the other. Director Gerardo Guldiño has constructed Mascaras Afuera to a brisk, but powerful testament to what is a good, solid friendship.

With a set that is small, but colorful intimate, you grow to believe in this outlandish situation. Two women regretting their pasts accidentally airing it out to the world? Actually, that sounds like, exactly, what happens in what can be a devouring, media culture. Yet, Marta and Luisa are example of how loneliness stems our actions, but friendships assures they are for the best.

Seis

After seeing Mascaras Afuera, Teatro Circulo gives you a 15 minutes intermission, before you can see the next 80 minute play and highly intense, Seis. In between a few songs and satirical bits, lies the dark sketches based off the brutal killing of six trans-women in Uruguay. While Mascaras Afueras feels like a breathe of fresh air, Seis will leave you breathless with its deep, dense reflections on social prejudice.

I laughed, I cried, and I became disgusted. Seis shows the cruelty prejudice is not simply that you see someone as inhuman, but you want to make sure they suffer because of your perception of them. Those six women in Uruguay were killed in ways that assured pain, and throughout each sketch you see that society, even in their murder’s aftermath, assures the pain keeps going. From a father (played gut-wrenchingly by Pablo Andrade) at his boiling point from seeing his daughter’s crime go unpunished to a woman (played with a meek sweetness by Gredivel Vasquez) mourning the loss of a friend who taught her to feel beautiful, you witness the human beings moved to call these trans-women what they are: love.

It is hard to put into words how impactful, smart, and nuanced Seis is in importance. It is not easy to display the pain and viciousness of prejudice because it is easy to go numb to it. Yet, with actors like Jerry Soto, whose talent range can leave you in giggles or tears, or Carmen Borla’s angelic voice, who can turn Daddy Yankee’s Gasoline into a hymn, you find yourself submitting to how horrible prejudice is and how rare someone artfully declares it so. Vividly directed by Pablo Andrade to be a work of moving metaphors and symbols and written beautifully by Federico Roca, Seis is a MUST- SEE.

For More Information on Seis And Mascaras Afueras Click Here. Máscaras afuera and Seis: Fridays 6 and 13 and Saturdays 7 and 14, 8:30 pm; Sundays 8 and 15 April, 3:30 pm. Teatro Círculo is located: 64 East 4th Street between Second Avenue and Bowery, Manhattan.