House of Awareness (Or Harvesting the Seeds of Death)

amilton de azevedo*

The human perspective on the institutional horrors committed in the name of national development is a recurring theme in any historical comparison of Latin American countries. In the show “Labio de Liebre” (“Hare-Lip”) by Teatro Petra, a man responsible for thousands of murders – who was sentenced to three years of house arrest in exile – is confronted with ghosts from his past.

The staging by Fabio Rubiano Orjuela (who also plays the role of Salvo Castello) soon establishes a logic of its own – one that certainly creates some discomfort. Salvo’s home – in a remote location of a neutral European country where the winter is harsh and long – is initially configured as a realistic environment. However, some fantastic elements are incorporated starting in the very first scene.

At first, they appear on stage as detached, metaphorical, strange images. A hare appears in the window; a man who is visiting Salvo seems to be the only one who can hear the lady who had already entered the scene, cleaning the house. Between the scenes, the stage becomes increasingly crowded by trees and vegetables.

As the play progresses, these elements justify their presence and start to add new interpretation layers for “Labio de Liebre” – the very title of the play, which refers to the cleft lip of one of the characters, becomes a powerful metaphor for the murder of children.

A quintessential political play, the work materializes the ghosts of murder victims whose bodies were never found. Using comic devices, the Sosa family sometimes acts like mocking spirits, moving items around the house and making noises; haunting Salvo in pursuit of their goal – that he admits his guilt for the murders he committed. In addition to allowing them to locate the missing bodies, this admission would also legitimize the existence of the crime and, more importantly, of the victims.

It is not a search for revenge, nor for reconciliation – even if, as the play moves along, we start to glimpse the possibility that the executor might be developing a conscious awareness of his actions. Thus, Salvo’s home in exile is presented as a place where he can revisit his memories to, perhaps, resignify them. “Labio de Liebre” draws from fantastic realism in order to bring the executioner and his victim face to face, without seeking to explain how the encounter takes place – it doesn’t matter if we are in the realm of memory, hallucination or reality. The audience accepts this situation and, in this sense, the work is generous in constructing its own logic, undeniably absurd.

Incisive, the drama creates an uneasy sense of humor for its spectators. The relationships between the characters add a positive complexity to what could otherwise fall into a shallow discourse on the attribution of blame. It should be noted, however, that the figure of the daughter introduces a different kind of discomfort – if on the one hand her attitudes end up “justifying” her label of being a victim of sexual abuse (and, as the performance by the actress suggests, at a very young age), her behavior seems to support what, at the very least, is a dangerous narrative.

While navigating through the various complexities of the play is certainly to touch upon some controversial issues, in this case her actions seem, at times, like a comic device that is a little detached from the main themes being portrayed – even if they do end up triggering discussions that help develop such themes.

As for the relationship between the members of the Sosa family, the play succeeds in offering a critical perspective on the harmful, structural machismo that is found among poorer families. At the same time that the matriarch is an extremely strong woman who blatantly confronts her killer, she is also submissive on several occasions – be it in remembrance of her husband or in the conflict with Salvo.

The brutality of “Labio de Liebre” comes through in the metaphorical and comical way with which it approaches such a complex subject. It’s comic, and it’s also absurd; but as things begin to connect, laughter is replaced by a powerful discomfort with the events that unfold. The play skillfully resorts to the cliché of “putting oneself in another person’s shoes” as a way to create alterity. The representation game created by the characters establishes a new relationship of guilt between the family and Salvo. The phantasmagoric presence shifts between allegory of obtaining justice, even if in the afterlife, and the victims’ search for closure – which would liberate them.

This double complexity gives the play a new dimension. And it does not offer any justification for genocide – the scenes in which Salvo tries to defend himself are ridiculous and laughable. At times, he hints at the supposed banality of his evil actions; however, he is no of Eichmann: he is not just a mere order-taker, but a cold-blooded killer.

The stage setting, which is increasingly contaminated by plant life – at one point, even the house becomes part of the forest – offers a physical medium for the revolutionary idea that those who are killed for political reasons become seeds. The clothes between the foliage belong to the fictional Sosa family, but also to all the children and grandchildren of the Mothers and Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo and of the bones buried in the Atacama. Drawing parallels with the Brazilian reality, they are the bodies in the clandestine grave in the Perus cemetery, the victims of police violence, children of the Mothers of May. And it’s impossible not to think of Marielle Franco.

Following this historical perspective, the play establishes an almost direct dialogue with our amnesty process. If in “Labio de Liebre” the criminal was at least relegated to exile – albeit with a negligible penalty –, here in Brazil the perpetrators of the horrors of our dictatorship still walk freely among us. Instead of using the memory of our past to raise our awareness, we prefer to set that memory on fire.

*amilton de azevedo is a research artist, critic, and teacher. He writes for Folha de S. Paulo and for his own website, ruína acesa. He teaches the course “Studies on education in theater” for the undergraduate program at Célia Helena Centro de Artes e Educação.