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El pasado es un animal grotesco

Argentinean writer and director Mariano Pensotti returns to the Luminato Festival with multi-layered play

By Lauren Gillett • June 20, 2015

Written and directed by Mariano Pensotti

El pasado es un animal grotesco (the past is a grotesque animal). Photo courtesy of the Luminato Festival.

After receiving praise for his play Cineastas at the 2014 Luminato Festival, Argentinean writer and director Mariano Pensotti returns to Luminato this year with El pasado es un animal grotesco (the past is a grotesque animal), on stage until June 21 at the Bluma Appel Theatre.

Ten years ago, Pensotti began collecting damaged photos thrown away by a nearby photo lab. As his collection grew, he was inspired by the blurred and discarded fragments of the lives of strangers to create a narrative about a group of twenty-somethings in 1999 Buenos Aires. El pasado es un animal grotesco follows four main characters—Mario (Santiago Gobernori), Pablo (Javier Lorenzo), Vicky (Laura Paredes) and Laura (Maria Ines Sancerni)—as they grapple with lust, love, longing, loss and the collapse of Argentina's economy over the course of a decade. Staged on an enclosed wooden platform that rotates like a clock, El Pasado explores the shifting of time and how we remember it.

Pensotti gets fine performances from the cast, who move fluidly between scenes and characters while taking turns narrating Mario, Pablo, Vicky and Laura's biographies. The result is a layered sequence of moments, both banal and extraordinary, that make up the lives of these young people on their journey to adulthood. Mariana Tirantte's clever set design changes throughout the show, keeping the audience guessing as to where the story is going.

The problem with this production is the fact that it is performed in Spanish with English surtitles on screens to the left and right of the stage. This makes for a challenging viewing experience since non-Spanish speaking audience members are tasked with a lot of reading in order to keep up with the rapid-pace dialogue. Unfortunately, this effort to understand the script distracts from what is happening on stage and makes it difficult to follow the plot. Still, Pensotti's work is quite remarkable and inspires theatregoers to reflect on their own coming-of-age memories.

El pasado es un animal grotesco runs until June 21 at the Bluma Appel Theatre. Visit luminatofestival.com for more information and to buy tickets.

Show Dates:

Fri, 2015-06-19 - Sun, 2015-06-21

Our rating: