A plan for Venezuela, honest and demanding

Venezuela is the paradigm of theoretically rich South American states subjected to historical political disjunctions between left-wing spaces, which, wrapped in the flags of revolution, promise and do not deliver, and right-wing spaces abducted by the rules of maximum profit that promise and also do not deliver, between the defense of identity —they call it patriotism— and selling to the highest bidder. Today's Venezuela is Venezuela between, on the one hand, the inoperable and incapable Chavista dictatorship sold to the American mafia by the executors of the utopia and, on the other hand, the siren songs of an opposition led by a candidate who trusted the same gang mafioso that doesn't even let her return to her country.

A schizophrenia that particularly affects the eight million Venezuelans displaced around the world. A schizophrenia that the Catalan playwright born and educated in Caracas, Enric Nolla, has poured into an intense and powerful impromptu that exposes without taking sides, that asks who the toad is, and that appeals to the community's sense of belonging.

The proposal takes its title from a popular Mexican saying and is structured as an exercise in autofiction in the voice and body of Dailyn Valdivieso, a telenovela actress from Caracas and now a student at the Institut del Teatre. And what an actress! Valdivieso navigates through pain and joy, through love and death, illuminates herself and extinguishes herself, questions Caribbean female archetypes, reclaims another femininity, dances, and sings.

It must be said that Nolla's directorial debut is surprisingly demanding and provocative, and he tackles the movements of this kind of emotional score with absolute effectiveness. Honest to the end, the author acknowledges that the work is not finished, considering the latest tragedy the country is experiencing. He makes a record of it. A record of the thousands of deaths, of the thousands of victims who suffer and will suffer. Theatrically, it is a proposal that asks to reach a wider audience. An audience that will surely enjoy it, just like the sixty or so people who applauded enthusiastically on the rooftop of the Fundació Joia, which lent its terrace for this unique activity by the promoter Terrats en Cultura. Bravo!