the drama of former Argentinian women in love with music and dance

The years away are like timbers of a suspension bridge that takes me to the other side. But what will I find there? This is the reflection on the future of one of the former members of The days outside which concludes Lola Arias’ new documentary theater creation, the second part of a project started with the film Reaswhich was shown at the last Berlinale and which reconstructed the time spent in prison.

They are ex-women and also transsexual. And this, of course, is a double obstacle to work in society. A The days outside they talk about them before, during and after incarceration. Sons and daughters of poverty and exclusion explain who they were and who they are and face the prejudices of society. A fiction about real dramas. Nacho has been in and out of prison several times. He studied some law in prison and sees life on top of a car. He is a driver. Noèlia does it as a sex worker (just like before), because some things have changed during her time behind bars, but others never change. Paula, Peruvian without papers, has turned to clandestine work. Some got jobs in the public sector. Until the government changed.

Six dramas, collection of many other dramas in an Argentina where today, according to the Argentine Catholic University, 54.6% of the population lives in poverty. But our protagonists do it by singing, dancing and playing cumbias and rock’n’roll (with the support of an excellent professional, Inés Copertino). The music envelops the drama making it digestible and breathes life into the forgotten who exude tenderness when they talk about the children or the dogs, who value the family as the only stronghold of security and who share the daily fear of prison with that of now when a policeman approaches them. Fear is like tattoos, it’s there forever. On stage they are actresses, they are musicians, they are dancers, and their lives seem to have changed…temporarily, of course. they know But it is when they sleep that they can dream.

Poverty, exclusion, resilience, energy, sympathy in a stage cocktail that receives the unanimous applause of a bourgeois audience in a bourgeois theater of a bourgeois society that rewards the efforts of the forgotten with whom I would not want to have many other dealings. A proposal co-produced by twenty European stages that raises reflections similar to those of the freak shows of the twenties of the last century.