|
Secret Obsenities (La secreta obscenidad de cada día) *
Professional debut at The Cleveland Play House, 1988
The most performed play in Latin America since 1984
COUNTRY OF ORIGIN: Chile
translated by Prof. Charles Philip Thomas
CAST: 2 men
SYNOPSIS:
Secret Obscenities is an intelligent, humorous, and political play set in Santiago, Chile. A chance encounter of two men who are dressed as flashers, outside a Girls' School in Santiago, quickly develops into a battle of words, egos, and philosophical theories.
 As the dialogue progresses, we learn that the two men are Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, or so they claim, and the resulting exchange of ideas, confessions, accusations and beliefs increases the level of humor and leads to a powerful and unexpected turn of events as the play ends.
De la Parra uses an almost vaudevillian atmosphere of exchanges to make reference to the sexual and social theories of Freud and Marx as the two battle each other for the right to be at this certain place in the park. Transference, neuroses, free association, workers' rights, mothers, fathers, psychoanalysis, and environment are all fair game as humor provides the basis for an examination of the Chilean society under Pinochet.
|