Drama and reality in Latin American Monologue Festival

 CIENFUEGOS, Cuba, Feb 19 (ACN) One of the 13 plays featured in the program of the 6th Latin American Monologue Festival (FML) and the Terry Award, to be held later this month in the province of Cienfuegos, is the Uruguayan actor’s solo performance of Diciembre, about the forced disappearance of people during one of the darkest military dictatorships in the continent.

The pain of those who are left waiting and weighed down with uncertainty and their eagerness to preserve a few memories of their loved ones come wrapped up in a mixture of feelings in Diciembre, by Marcel Sawchik Monegal, a renowned Uruguayan actor with a 30-year-long experience, whose character in this play―he said―depicts the perspective of a six-year-old orphan trying to come to terms with the disappearance of his father in 1977’s Buenos Aires and, as an adult, to cling to the few memories he treasures about him.

“The boy’s name is Pablo Sobrino, and he has been my personal friend for many years. We have worked together in some audiovisual journalistic projects, since Pablo is a cameraman and editor for a production company”, Mr. Sawchik remarked. “This was an advantage for me to get into his skin for this story. (…) For instance, what his family tells him about the military raid on his home when he was a child is astonishingly similar to the one my mother told me when they broke into our house around that time, when I was one year old. We all knew that his father was one of the missing detainees, but it wasn't until very recently that Pablo decided to break the silence”.

Knowing the details of his story led the writer and theater director to think about his monologue, “an option that keeps one actor in the solitude of the stage in direct and almost compulsory eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart communication with the audience".

Sawchik Monegal is the author of plays such as El último estertor, El maestro del sueño, Lo Fausto, 8 segundos 1/2, El cordero y el mar, Neso, Extrema and El despojo.