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Theatre

PASO DE CEBRA E SUCESOS

By GUSTAVO PERNAS

About this book

Gustavo Pernas, one of the most remarkable voices in contemporary play writing, listens accutely to contemporary society and shows once again a critical spirit with texts that establish a direct dialogue with the real world.

Paso de Cebra was awarded the 2006 Premio Max das Artes escénicas, and is a long play where six men are waiting to cross the street, isolated by traffic in the middle of the street, in a no-man’s land with white stripes on the ground, where the usual thing is for us to stop for a few seconds before the green light gives us permission to continue with our daily duties.

Sucesos includes several comedies: Ruins, The old Feeling of the Prohibited, Black and White, What Will Become of Us Without Workers! and Spinning Around. They are all plays that continue the author’s fondness for fog and blurred landscapes, for indefinite and ambiguous places, with characters located on the border of being and non-being, in transit or waiting, with timely topics such as discrimination, the passing of time, tolerance, aggression and conventions.

Book fragment

“You tell me, I am digging the sewage every day! And meanwhile these people spend their time with their arms crossed in the Zebra crossing looking the other way. Hurry, hurry, what hurry! If they were in a hurry they wouldn’t be walking, those who are in a hurry are those who drive at fucking top speed in front of your face and on top of it all these people want us to stop. Go and cross your arms at the employment office, fucking hell, same as I do when there’s no shit left to stir, though if it’s shit we need there’s enough for everyone, but the kings and queens don’t want to see that, they leave that to those of us who are hired and to the pakis, all in the whole, and then they complain that they bring down buildings… No surprise, mates, they have no fucking idea, here we don’t need planes or terrorists, they just dump them on an excavator to dig the sewage and that’s it. Oh! They are coming to invade us, for fuck’s sake! I don’t have anybody else to speak to and I spend my days with Alis and Mohammeds and I have to explain the whole thing to them and they learn how to speak properly thanks to me… yes, mate, while we invade their countries, what do they do? They run away to ours because even if it’s amongst rats, they’re alive…”