LAFPI

Antaeus Theatre Company presents the West Coast premiere of Stephanie Alison Walker’s striking new play, The Abuelas. Andi Chapman directs.

“If you have doubts about your identity, contact Las Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo.” So read billboards across Argentina, where thousands of people were “disappeared” between 1976 and 1983 under a brutal military dictatorship.

The Abuelas explores the repercussions of Argentina’s “Dirty War” on one family.

In March of 1976, a military junta seized control of Argentina. Those opposed to the new government were told “to make themselves invisible, or they would be made to vanish.” By September of that year, the regime was already responsible for an average of 30 abductions each day. From these abductions, a new word came into common usage: desaparecidos, the “disappeareds.” Among those detained and tortured were young pregnant women who rarely survived, and whose babies were then stolen and illegally adopted out to “politically acceptable” parents. Despite the atmosphere of fear promoted by the junta regime, two groups of women — representing the mothers and grandmothers of the disappeared — began protesting the disappearances of their relatives and striving for the reunification of their families. “The Madres” embarked on a crusade to obtain information about their missing children, demanding both the return of their children and punishment for their captors; “The Abuelas” have a sharper focus: to find the living. They call them los desaparecidos con vida (“the living disappeared”), referring to the babies who had been taken from their murdered daughters and sons.

Argentine actress Luisina Quarleri stars as Gabriela, an Argentine concert cellist living in Chicago whose ordinary life is upended when she discovers a devastating secret from the past. The cast also features Argentine actors Irene De Bari and Carolina Montenegro, along with Denise Blasor, David DeSantos and Seamus Dever.

This is the first time the company will offer a full production of a play developed in its Playwrights Lab. The company’s production of The Abuelas will be immediately followed by a second new, Lab-developed play: Eight Nights by Jennifer Maisel will open Nov. 8. A rotating performance schedule is set for the weeks during which the two productions overlap.

Previews: Oct. 3 – Oct. 10
Performances begin Oct. 11
• Fridays at 8 p.m.(dark Nov. 1, Nov. 8, Nov. 22)
• Saturdays at 8 p.m. (dark Nov. 2, Nov. 9, Nov. 23)
• Sundays at 2 p.m. (dark Nov. 3, Nov. 17)
• Mondays at 8 p.m. (dark Oct. 14, Nov. 4, Nov.18)

PARKING:
First 90 minutes free, then $2 per hour in Glendale Marketplace garage located at 120 S. Artsakh Ave. (between Broadway and Harvard)

INFO:
(818) 506-1983 or www.Antaeus.org
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