Spring 1986
At five in the afternoon...
Santiago is a run-down, crushed by patrols and trying desperately to survive in the midst of unemployment and borrowed supplies. In the rowdy arena of nights filled with marimba and vagabonds and split by the sparks of blackouts caused by bare electrical wires, and lulled by the radio crackle of languid honey and dulce de leche laden songs, the Fairy on the Corner (a passionate transvestite), the student Carlos (a militant from the Manuel Rodríguez patriotic front), General Augusto José Ramón Pinochet Ugarte and his faithful partner Lucia, lost in the disjointed chorus of the lazy and feverish city, dance, sinuous or stiff, their fatal and grotesque bolero with fate...
Exploring the chaotic and taciturn, angry and anguished, cynical and lovestruck pages of Ho paura torero (2001), a dark and precious treasure of Hispanic-American fiction, Claudio Longhi and Lino Guanciale create a reluctant mural of interwoven stories in the latest stage of their long partnership.
A play that walks the line between dream and history, flights of fantasy and violent routine, and that also pays tribute to the ironic and impassioned, scathing and visionary, scandalous and subversive hand of Pedro Lemebel (1952-2015), an icon of queer and pop-camp literature of the Southern hemisphere. An account of the unavoidable parable of desire shot with eros and politics.
I am afraid Torero; I am afraid that tonight your smile will vanish...