L'Opera des Figues

From Plastic Tub

Ribald piece of puppet theater written and produced by Argentine puppeteer Pablo Mollusconi with his troupe No Hay Banda. The play was performed throughout the Summer of 2003 in Toulouse, France, with mixed results. A riot at one showing, unrelated to the play itself, has ensured its notoriety.

The plot revolves around a farm set in a fictional post-revolutionary milieu. A young girl, made mute by the tragic loss of her mother, is beset on all sides by a callow student, a domineering father with incestuous designs, an enamoured, self-centered aristocrat and a scheming monk. Her only friends are a mangy dog and a hump-back mare well past her prime. The action is a battle of wills on which her physical and moral integrity depends, ending in a fiery cleansing. The girl absconds with an alien who finds her voice when he plays her like a delicate instrument somewhere far away on a red-sunned planet.

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