Experiencia II: Encuentros breves con hombres repulsivos

Argentinian director Daniel Veronese moves between commercial theatre and independent theatre with equal respect and commitment, here in Madrid, where he comes to work from time to time, and especially in Buenos Aires. As someone who worked as a theatre historian in the 90s in Argentina, his curiosity has led him on a journey to look for a theatre space that can stand the test of time supported by a strong body of actors.

In 2019, he started to pull together a selection of works under the title Experiencias Veroneseand that find a place in the already mythical Timbre 4 theatre founded by Claudio Tolcachir and company in Buenos Aires and Madrid. The second collection is Encuentros breves con hombres repulsivos , a theatrical adaptation of some of the stories in the book Brief Interviews With Hideous Men , by the American writer David Foster Wallace. Among the stories are La persona deprimida which is a dazzling and blackly humorous portrayal of a woman's mental state and originally written by Foster Wallace. Unfortunately, the work was discontinued due to the tragic death of the actress María Onetto. Veronese says she was the only woman for the role. The third work is Los arrepentidos based on Marcus Lindeen's play Regretters.

The staging could not be any simpler: two chairs, a table, a white floor, and some actors. In Encuentros breves con hombres repulsivos there are two characters: A and B. Two actors who interact and who during eight brief encounters will alternate in one role or another. There are various themes, but all finally point to the contemporary masculine condition that appears in an encounter with a woman. The actors are both men, Marcelo Subiotto and Luis Dziembrowski, and they alternate between the role of the man and the woman. They are dressed in simple black t-shirts, jeans, and go barefoot to show neutrality. It is a representation of the deceptive normality, the stereotypical man in which sexist ideologies and misogyny dwell to contrast the exaggerated one that ends up in headlines, but the everyday one, the most recognisable and the one accepted in our societies.

The piece moves forward by unravelling the contemporary male condition in encounters with women. (false) overprotection, intimidation, degradation. They unleash their cynicism without acrimony. In this area the work is developed. It shows the infantilisation of women, micro-aggressions (and macro- for that matter), which many men force the narrative of it being a complement or something women should appreciate. There is the recalcitrant selfishness and the resistance and incapacity to look at themselves with critical eyes entangled in a clumsy desire for seduction that no longer works. There are many uncomfortable and awkward phrases spewed out of these men’s mouths and other times they have us smiling and laughing at bizarre statements. We know they don’t mean to be malicious, and we gain a sort of soft spot towards them. But we cannot keep forgiving this ‘innocence’ and empty honesty. Yes, they may be unprotected beings closer to animal than human, but they are people and as such there is a supposed level of intelligence. We need to work together to stamp out dangerous and hurtful rhetoric from our society. Foster Wallace, according to Veronese, has a way of making the reader feel uncomfortable. He states: “He deals with topics as infamous as they are real, such as machismo. Machismo is living and breathing everywhere around us, and the worst thing is that we have normalised its presence when we know it’s something that is repulsive.”