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Celebrated Mexico City director Martín Acosta presents the world premiere of playwright Alejandro Ricaño’s Timboctou on REDCAT’s stage this week (March 2-11). With highly visual multimedia elements, the wryly humorous play is set against the volatile backdrop of ongoing intense border politics and the Mexican drug wars. The new production “imagines Timboctou as a mysterious, unreachable refuge at the end of the earth and illustrates the narrow line between victim and victimized.”
Produced by the CalArts Center for New Performance, its bilingual theater initiative Duende CalArts and Cultura, the University of Guadalajara’s (Mexico) presenting organization, the project is a binational collaboration performed in English and Spanish with subtitles and developed through workshops at both colleges.
“I am interested in Timboctou as interpreted by the artists at CalArts—a dialogue of gazes between artists from Mexico and the USA,” says Acosta about the production. “The dual collaboration allows for a complex and rich framework: the only way of tearing down walls and crossing rivers and tunnels without visas, with the powerful flight of imagination.”
Following the REDCAT performances, Timboctou will be performed at Teatro Esperimental in Guadalajara (dates to be announced).
Above is an interview with Acosta about the show (Video: Scott Groller).
Tickets: General $20-25, Students $16-20, CalArts Faculty/Staff/Students $10-12