"La Redención", a play by Spanish & Portuguese Professor Ana Merino, will be performed in Theatre B of the Theatre Building on May 10 and 11.

The six-act, two-hour play, set in a dystopian future, will be performed in Spanish, the language of Merino’s original text. Performers and crew members are members of the University of Iowa campus and community, originally from all over the world.

 

LA REDENCIÓN (The Redemption)
UI Theatre Building, Theatre B
Wed, May 10 & Thurs, May 11
8 pm

 

• Ana Merino: author, co-director, co-producer
  UI Spanish & Portuguese Professor, MFA Spanish Director (orig. Spain)
• Taylor Claman: co-director, co-producer
  UI Theatre Arts and Spanish major, honors student (Iowan)
• Eloy Barragán: actor, choreography, scenography, and musical director
  UI Dance Professor (orig. Mexico)
• Lily Larsen: sound
  UI Theatre Arts major (Iowan)
• Ignacio Álvarez: light and assistant to production
  UI Academic Advisor (orig. Los Angeles)
• Ollín García: assistant to production
  UI MFA Spanish grad (orig. Mexico)
• Iván Parra: assistant to cast
  UI Spanish & Portuguese lecturer (orig. Colombia)

CAST:

• Isabel: Karla Alvarez
  UI Center for Diversity & Enrichment (orig. Mexico)
• Ada: Beatriz O. Gallado
  Community member (orig. Mexico)
• Jaime: Eloy Barragán
  UI Dance Professor (orig. Mexico)
• Rod: Jim Evans
  BA1979 (Iowan)
• Nicolás: Horacio Olivo
  College of Pharmacy Professor (orig. Mexico)
• Dancer (Vision/Dream): Valeria Amador
  UI Dance major (Illinois)

Summary:

"La Redención" ("The Redemption") is a six-act play with five characters (two women and three men). “The Redemption” is set in a dystopian world in the future, on the coast. Trash has taken over the planet and there are different isolated treatment plants all over in the most damaged areas near the sea. Ada (performed by community member Beatriz Gallardo), a trash inspector, is a woman with a pragmatic consciousness who travels to the different treatment plants to ensure correct treatment and procedures. Her assistant Isabel (performed by Karla Alvarez of the UI Center for Diversity & Enrichment) is suffering from a deep personal crisis and is convinced that extraterrestrial life will eventually arrive to save the planet. The play takes place in a plant during Ada’s inspection while Isabel is in a critical emotional mood. Isabel will have two intense moments that are represented by a dancer (Department of Dance student Valeria Amador), who will perform the intensity of the crazy, dreamy mood (with choreography by Dance Professor Eloy Barragán).

There are two key workers who are living in the plant during Ada’s and Isabel’s visit: Jaime (performed by Barragán), a married man with a great sense of humor who has a tendency to seduce women, and Rod (Jim Evans, BA1979), the plant’s main worker, a tortured man whose complex past includes an unsolved accident that left him with memory loss and a sense of emptiness from his past. Certain events related to Isabel’s mental condition necessitate the presence of another character, Nicolas (performed by College of Pharmacy Professor Horacio Olivo), the company psychiatrist who deals with the health and emotional problems of treatment plant workers.

The play starts in a glass corridor that overlooks the polluted sea, where characters pass by and comment about the situation. The actors will look out at the audience as if over the sea. In this first act, we discover Isabel’s obsession with an extraterrestrial life that she hopes will soon arrive to redeem the world. Ada’s concern regarding Isabel’s obsessions arises during her work conducting inspections of the plant. The plant had some minor problems in the previous year’s inspection, a situation that created friction between Rodrigo and Ada. Rod, the main worker, is very upset with Ada and annoyed with her style and manners. Jaime, another worker, had an affair with Isabel during the previous inspection and is trying to win her back for another affair during the days of this new inspection. There will be a good deal of reflection on the direction in which the planet is heading and an expression of nostalgia for a better time that was part of the characters’ grandparents’ and great-grandparents’ lives. This position will blend with emotions and personal conflicts found in the present.

Isabel’s obsession with redemption and her very sensitive mood will have an impact on Rod and Jaime. Her obsession with extraterrestrial life will force her to have a deep nervous breakdown that will motivate the presence of Nicolas, the psychiatrist at the plant. Meanwhile Ada will feel more and more alienated from her job, her position and the way others perceived her as a powerful woman.

When things appear to be calm and Isabel is ready to leave the plant for mental health support, an emergency report of a severe weather situation will force the group to take shelter. Some water filtration problems in the new shelter will make them take emergency refuge in an old shelter. Tension between Nicolas and Jaime will become more evident, the relationship between Ada and Rod will improve, and Isabel will still be convinced of the imminent arrival of a spaceship from another universe with ensuing redemption. This play will thus combine the poetic perception of each of the characters with the awareness of a precarious reality where the past was better than both the present and the future. The characters survive on a planet in total degradation while trying to adapt and make sense of their lives.