Los Fantoches

Los Fantoches by Carlos Solorzano

People
El Viejo who makes the puppets
His daughter, Nina

The Puppets
La Mujer who loves
El Joven who works
El Artista who dreams
El Cabezon who thinks
El Viejito who tells
El Judas who shuts up

Place: This closed world

Part 1

Set
A store where they keep puppets made of reeds and painted paper in the popular style. Seen throughout aregrotesque and colorful figures. Only one small window in the high part of one of the grayish walls. One small door.
When the curtain goes up the stage is in semi-darkness, then entering through the window is a ray of light which increases and then you see the puppets in rigid postures than remind of the postures of dream/sleep. When the lights are fully on the are incorporated one after the otherwith pantomiming movements. This movement will alternate, in the view of the director, with real movements and other rhythms according to the occasion.

Information For The Foreign Reader
This play has its origen in the mexican custom "The Burning of Judas." Easter Sunday, consummated the passion of christ, the town gives outfut to their desire of revenge, every year, they publicly burn inthe streets giant puppets made of bamboo and colored paper with a chain of fireworks tied to the joints and along all of the body, with which it is hanged, symbolically, the biggest traitor in humanity.
The puppets have changed little by little and adopted different forms of men and women who represent the most popular people of the moment, in politics, in film, etc., but they subsist othertraditions in popular art like the devil and the dead.
In Los Fantoches, they have chosen a series of puppets, especially significant to the taste of the Author, to represent with them, a contemporary drama of the same manner that some mexican painters have done the transposition "Los Judas" to the plastic arts to suggest that the existence of a world which, after its apparent shiny color, hides aheartrending and cruel underworld.
The people, all dressed with colorful tights of capricious manner, will have painted faces the same color as the dress and will represent "types" known in the tradition of the puppets of popular art in the following manner:
El Joven: Represents an athlete with huge muscles, a rosy face and a boastful walk. Big red wheels on the cheeks. Shiny hair with rabbit skindyed with black. Wears a drum strapped to his neck.
El Viejito: Wise figure, represents an ancient hunchback, a rogue face and a defective walk. Hair and beard made with lamb skin.
La Mujer: White dress, in which "the points" of bamboo are very visible. She is "the puppet of popular art." Big eyes, enormous eyelashes, and really red cheeks. Reddish hair which cascades
El Artista: Represents a"romantic youth." Striped suit, sideburns and a mustache with big points and a great tie. A black hat.
El Cabezon: Is one of the wisest figures in popular art: Big pumpkin head made of carton from which appears a painted face the same color as the pumpkin. Dress with leaves. Walks unstably because of the huge weight of the head.
El Judas: Face and dress green with two big serpents around the arms,"the snakes of evil," out of whose heads the eyes sparkle copper-colored.
El Viejo Que Hace Los Munecos: Represents the ancient figure with white monastic habits like a dream. Big beard and a long wig made of white fiber.
La Nina. Su Hija: represends a "skeleton dressed in a cowboy outfit" childrens clothing, white, with ruffles and lace. Hat, white shoes. Smiling "Death's mask"
During therepresentation, the light will change. It will be bright when it is sunny and then change to light of afternoon to finish with the blue light of the moon. All the puppets wear a cartridge in the chest and the ramifications in he body like a visible circulatory system.

El Joven: It's already the day
El Viejito: One more
El Joven: It's a beautiful day
El Viejito: You always say the same thing...