Exile, borders and tango

I had to read this play for my Post-colonial theatre class, and was instantly attracted, compelled into this monodrama with two versions of a character played by a same performer. It talks about exile, borders, stereotypes, cultural clashes... it’s theatre that makes you think but that doesn’t make you nauseous with political propaganda.
I found it a beautiful, compelling piece and here are two extracts that particularly struck me.

from Guillermo Verdecchia’s Fronteras Americanas (American Borders)


VERDECCHIA:

The tango, however, has not been entirely domesticated. It is impossible to shop or aerobicize to tango… porque el tango es un sentimiento que se baila.
An what is it about the tango, this national treasure that some say was born of the gaucho’s crude attempt to waltz?

(Music: ‘Verano Porteño’, Astor Piazzola)

It is music for exile, for the preparations, the significations of departure, for the symptoms of migration. It is the languishing music of picking through your belongings and deciding what to take. It is the two a.m music of smelling and caressing books none of which you can carry – books you leave behind with friends who say they’ll always be here when you want them when you need them – music for a bowl of apples sitting on your table, apples you have not yet eaten, apples you cannot take – you know they have apples there in that other place but not apples like these – you eat your last native apple and stare at what your life is reduced to – all the things you can stick into a sack. It will be cold, you will need boots, you don’t own boots except these rubber ones – will they do? You pack them, you pack a letter from a friend so you will not feel too alone.
Music for final goodbyes, for one last drink and a quick hug as you cram your cigarettes into your pocket and run to the bus, you run, run, your chest heaves, like the bellows of the bandoneon. You try to watch intently to emblazon in your mind these streets, these corners, those houses, the people, the smells, even the lurching bus fills you with a kind of stupid happiness and regret – music for the things you left behind in that room: a dress, magazines, some drawings, two pairs of shoes and blouses too old to be worn any more… four perfect apples.
Music for cold nights under incomprehensible stars, for cups of coffee and cigarette smoke, for a long walk by the river where you might be alone or you might meet someone. It is music for encounters in shabby stairways, the music of lovemaking in a narrow bed, the tenderness, the caress, the pull of strong arms and legs.
Music for men and women thin as bones.
Music for your invisibility.
Music for a letter that arrives telling you that he is very sick. Music for your arms that ache from longing from wishing he might be standing at the top of the stairs waiting to take the bags and then lean over and kiss you and even his silly stubble scratching your cold face would be welcome and you only discover that you’re crying when you try to find your keys –
Music for a day in the fall when you buy a new coat and think perhaps you will live here for the rest of your life, perhaps it will be possible, you have changed so much, would they recognize you? Would you recognize your country? Would you recognize yourself?

WIDELOAD:

Basically, tango is music for fucked up people.

VERDECCHIA:

Other things cross borders easily. Diseases and disorders. Like amnesia. Amnesia crosses borders.



Second extract:

VERDECCHIA:
… And written on the package is a note, a quote I hadn’t noticed before. It says:
No estoy el crucero:
Elegir
Es equivocarse.

SLIDE
I am not at the cross roads.
to choose
is to go wrong.
- Octavio Paz

And then I remember, I remember what El Brujo said, he said ‘The Border is your Home’.
I’m not in Canada; I’m not in Argentina. I’m on the Border
I am Home.
Mais zoot alors, je comprends maintenant, mais oui, merde! Je suis Argentin-Canadien ! I am a post-Porteño neo-Latino Canadian ! I am the Pan-American Highway !