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Reprinted from Explore Costa Rica.com All Rights Reserved Costa Rica Calendar of Events Moseying, dancing, trick-playing, flopping and curling up for story time from riveted joints, 20 computer-designed, flat marionettes cavort in front of mosaic, stylized Caribbean backdrops recounting the adventures of Anancy, the human spider, at the Teatro Molière in San José.
In the show entitled “El Prodigioso Viaje de Anancy, la Araña Humana” (The Marvelous Journey of Anancy, the Human Spider), the puppets prance and speak with the help of 13 professional vocalists and actors, including Roberto McLean from the multiple award-winning Costa Rican feature-length movie “Caribe,” who plays Anancy. Some of the musical sets are original calypso tunes that writhe in their own homegrown authenticity, recorded by the nationally acclaimed but unspoiled-by-pretensions Walter Ferguson. Anancy, a figure from Afro-Caribbean folktales told throughout Latin America, is half dreadlocked Rasta man, half spider – and a broke thug. Thanks to his shrewdness and quick wit, he gets whatever he wants. The story opens in front of a modern-day house in the Caribbean port city of Limón. A parrot swoops onto the scene, the hands of the puppet operators occasionally dipping into view. The parrot narrator tells the story to a young Afro-Caribbean girl who curls up cutely to listen. A colorful Jamaican backdrop unfurls behind them, and a hungry Anancy takes on a job with the suited corporate cutthroat, Brother Tiger. He tricks Tiger and his dopey employee, Brother Monkey, out of bushels of fruits and other foods, which he eats, rather than sells, in Tiger's shop. The jig is up when Tiger arrives at the shop and sees Monkey and Anancy recovering from a nightlong eating binge, and he threatens to eat them. So, Anancy jumps on a ship bound for Limón, where a new banana-company railway under construction is rumored to be on the lookout for workers. The ship founders, and Anancy washes ashore on one of the Antilles islands, this one under the dizzying regime of Brother Girar. Girar's parents named him well – his name is the Spanish verb for “spin” – because he grabs Anancy and other intruders in his crabby clutches and whirls them around, sending them flying to a hard land- ing on other parts of the island. After some adventures with a band of unfortunate pirates, Girar throws Anancy to another island, where he continues his epic series of adventures with normally inanimate objects that magically talk and frighten the islanders. The islanders come to him for advice – Anancy's advice to an old woman who can't interest a man is that she look for an older man – and he hones his wily means of tricking people out of food and avoiding work. Finally, Anancy reaches Limón, where Tiger has since moved, set up busi- ness and become a judge. He sentences Anancy to the fate of becoming his dinner, but the great Queen of the Earth intervenes, admonishing Tiger to relax and ordering Anancy to dedicate his life to helping the poor. For folk-tale and cultural-tradition aficionados, the show could be considered a condensation of the building blocks of Afro-Caribbean values. But Anancy's aversion to work and love of trickery might also rub uncomfortable on conscientious viewers who object to the propagation of such stereotypes of the Afro-Caribbean community. The subplots are based on historical research by Costa Rican author Diego Andrés Soto, gleaned from oral tradition and books by Quince Duncan and Joice Anglin. Theater and movie producer Gabriel González-Vega congealed the puppet play into a polished production with a digital-impression backdrop of a house and scenery from the Caribbean coastal province of Limón. Producciones Lunanegra theater group presents the show, which opened last month and is sponsored by the University of Costa Rica and the Spanish Cultural Center, among others. Show times are Sundays at 11 a.m. and 3 p.m. Tickets cost ¢1,200 ($2.75). For more information, call 223-5420 or 255-2694. Special performances in the theater and anywhere in the country can be arranged upon request. For information, call Gabriel González-Vega at 398-2383 or 253-1866. ©Copyright 2004 by ExploreCostaRica.com |
