Firstly, there was very good scenery. They used only the necessary material. For example, to represent the jail they only used a structure of wood painted with a grey colour. They used little scenery for some scenes and you could still imagine where they were and you could understand it very well. Another example could be the prostitute house. They used a table some chairs, that was it, nothing else.
Secondly, the lighting was also fine. They played with the lights. On a normal scene the lighting was the same, without a change but when a character started to sing the lights automatically changed and focused on that character. When a character was singing the lighting was only for those characters and all the rest of the stage was dark.
The music was being played at the same time, real, it was not a CD. That´s from the beginning a positive point to the play because a lot of hard work and concentration is needed so that the musicians could understand the characters and so, make different sound effects and musical pieces at the beginning or at the end of each scene. Thus, the sound effects were played always on time without mistakes as well as the musical pieces. The instruments used were a bass guitar, a clarinet, some drums and a keyboard. The music helped by giving the audience the ability to feel the characters’ feelings. For example, when “Máquina baja”, a famous thief, was in jail the music was mysterious and then sad because he was going to be executed in one hour and those was his feelings.
The acting was great. I liked them a lot. It was clear that the actors sat and analyzed the play before acting it to make sure that everybody could understand their roles in it and their intentions and actions. This is a very important step when receiving a play. The audience could identify with any of the characters.
The character that I liked the most was the Maquina Baja´s girlfriend. It was very clear that the actress had a lot of experience, ability and preparation. To represent her character she used oppositions. Her head was in an opposite direction in contrast to the hips. It was amazing all the balance that she had and how she had total control of her body. I also liked her voice, it was very loud and it was like a doll. Her character was very funny because of her face expressions also. When you were watching her you could also see a doll; the creative make up helped a lot the face expressions to look like a doll.
In general, this Colombian play was very interesting and good. It was an example for us, the young actors, who are still learning from other performances. I´m glad to watch plays like this and not just bad performances, where you get bored very easily.
