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EL PASADO ES UN ANIMAL GROTESCO

Mariano Pensotti (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
Presented by the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival and SFU Woodward’s

February 2-4, 2012, 8:00pm
The Fei and Milton Wong Experimental Theatre, Goldcorp Centre for the Arts, 149 West Hastings Street.
Post-Show Talkback Feb 3, led by Kenji Maeda

…the past arises… an animal glimpsed in our dream jungle. An animal that changes shape each time we remember it. A grotesque animal.

It’s 1999 in Buenos Aires. Mario, Laura, Pablo, and Vicky are in their mid-twenties and ready for careers, love, and adulthood. Over the next 10 years, Argentina’s economy will collapse and their lives will take a series of unexpected turns. In this fast-paced, multilayered “mega fiction,” director Mariano Pensotti—the artist responsible for lighting up the streets of Gastown with La Marea as part of PuSh 2011—deftly unfolds the lives of these four characters. El pasado es un animal grotesco (The Past is a Grotesque Animal) is a funny and moving portrait that takes place atop a slowly spinning turntable stage; a reminder of time’s ceaseless march. Guided by a narrative voice-over, we are granted access to a string of defining moments in the touching and tumultuous lives of the four characters. Moments that illustrate how quickly and easily real life can transform into fiction and back again.

>>[Pensotti creates] a compelling portrait of the self-obsession of his own generation that achieves that rare feat of profoundly moving an audience without ever descending into trite stereotypes or easy sentimentalism…The production is also blisteringly funny.<< Plays International

Mariano Pensotti is an Argentinean-born writer and director whose experimental work incorporates elements of theatre, literature, film and visual arts. His work has been shown extensively in his home country of Argentina, as well as in Belgium, Germany, Ireland, France, Spain, Denmark, Canada, Poland, Latvia, England, Switzerland, Austria and Japan.

 In Spanish with English subtitles

Tickets Advance $32 /$28 /$26; at door $34 /$30 /$28
Tickets Tonight
ticketstonight.ca | 604.684.2787 Additional service charges apply to phone orders
Eligible for PuSh Pass access

Text & Direction Mariano Pensotti
Performers Pilar Gamboa, Javier Lorenzo, Santiago Gobernori, María Inés Sancerni
Set & Costume Design Mariana Tirantte
Assistant Director Leandro Orellano
Tour Manager Juan Pablo Gomez
Lighting Design Matías Sendón
Music Diego Vainer
Co-Producers Grupo Marea, Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Festival de Otoño de Madrid, Theaterformen

Running Time 110min

This North American tour is made possible with the support of National Performance Network in collaboration with Performing Americas, and includes stops at P.S. 122/ Under The Radar (New York), Wexner Centre for the Arts (Columbus), Walker Art Centre (Minneapolis), On the Boards (Seattle), Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (San Francisco) and REDCAT (Los Angeles).

About the Festival

PuSh presents acclaimed local, national and international artists and showcases contemporary work that is visionary, genre-bending, starting and original. The Festival runs January 17 – February 5, 2012!

The annual PuSh International Performing Arts Festival is one of Vancouver’s signature events. Produced over 20 days each January, the PuSh Festival presents groundbreaking work in the live performing arts: theatre, dance, music and various hybrid forms of performance. It attracts acclaimed local, national and international artists and their work.

In a spirit of innovation, the PuSh Festival engages and enriches audiences with adventurous contemporary performance, while promoting cultural exchange and development.