THEATRE-COSTA RICA: Erotic Comedies Pilloried as Mere Cash Cows

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Laura Vargas

SAN JOSE, Sep 17 2002 (IPS) - The predominance in Costa Rican theatres of erotic comedies, adapted to the daily lives and language of local society, has sparked debate — and growing unease — in the world of “conventional” playwrights and theatre critics.

The only ones who try to stay out of the debate are the directors of what have been dubbed here “sexicomedias”, many of whom are not even mentioned in the plays’ advertising.

When they are unable to avoid the press, these directors tend to argue that this type of theatre is a global trend, and Costa Rica is only following in the footsteps of others.

“They found here that bringing cheap jokes to the stage is good business. Everything that is bad theatre is good business. Real art doesn’t attract money,” lamented Alberto Cañas Escalante, a local playwright who has served as Costa Rica’s minister of culture.

“They simply brought to Cuesta de Moras (San José’s theatre district) the audiences of Centre City (an old cinema that showed mostly pornographic films),” Cañas Escalante said.

However, this genre of theatre is popular among Costa Ricans, who regularly fill the old theatre buildings, many of which are old cinemas renovated to serve this new purpose.

“These sex-comedies give the audiences easy entertainment, easy laughs. They don’t need to think because the plays don’t require a double reading,” commented actress and director María Laura Salom.

Furthermore, she said, “production is cheap because they usually use amateur actors, who are paid less.”

In the past months, sex-comedy stagings have included plays like “Las locas de Cristo Rey” (referring to the prostitutes of a San José neighbourhood), publicised with the slogan: “A Tica (Costa Rican) comedy! Daring, street-wise and hot!”

Others are “Four Women in My Bed”, advertised as “A super-wild party!”, and “Tome chichí”, the title being a popular slang expression of superiority. Both were described by theatre critics as examples of the “degraded vocabulary” used by “certain sectors” of the urban population.

“Bochinche en la calle 8” (Uproar on 8th Street) is another sex-comedy currently in the theatre, and refers to the San José avenue that is filled by street vendors, and is an area frequented by drug addicts and criminals.

Andrés Sáenz, a critic for La Nación newspaper, stated that the producers of the sex-comedies “simply pick up foreign plays, change the title and add things from Costa Rican popular culture.”

He recognised, however, that it is currently very expensive to produce plays of higher quality in this Central American nation, and that the “sexicomedias” bring good commercial results for the producers.

Lucho Barahona, a Chilean director who has lived in Costa Rica for many years, has charged that anyone who thinks like Sáenz, that the plays follow a simple formula, is completely mistaken.

“People say things without really knowing much. These plays represent a global trend. This is happening in many countries,” he stated. Barahona cited the example of “The Penis Dialogues”, by fellow Chilean Gustavo Adolfo Aguirre, a play that has been performed more than 100 times in the Teatro Del Angel, and which he described as a “serious” production.

There were also many unfounded criticisms in Costa Rica, says Barahona, when “The Vagina Monologues”, by U.S. playwright Eve Ensler, arrived here. It remained on the marquee for an entire year, and was a very “profound” work, he adds.

Ensler’s play has been a box-office hit in Berlin, Madrid, Paris, London, Stockholm, Buenos Aires and many other cities around the world. Some critics argue that “The Vagina Monologues” does not belong in the category of sex-comedy, as it deals with such issues as the abuse of women.

Bernal García, who is directing “Eight Trapped in an Elevator” at La Máscara theatre, limited himself to telling the press that the criticisms of sex-comedies are “absolutely erroneous”.

Sociologist Alonso Calvo Pardo, meanwhile, believes that what is occurring in Costa Rica is “a shift in values, because society is evolving, not only through what happens here, but also in other countries,” and mentioned the similar phenomenon in the theatre world of Chile, Mexico and Venezuela.

“It is best to keep asking oneself: ‘What is good taste?'” he advised.