E-Mail This Article to a Friend Town crier ART presents The Keening BY IRIS FANGER

A woman, carrying a shopping bag, enters alone. Soon she will take off her shoes, pull on a pair of boots, and put on an apron. For the rest of the play she will be engaged in mopping the entire floor, "down to the last corner," according to the stage directions for Colombian playwright Humberto Dorado’s The Keening. The play, which has been translated by Joe Broderick and Ryan McKittrick, will make its American debut at Zero Arrow Theatre beginning tonight. The Colombian actor and director Nicolás Montero, who helped develop the material, is staging it for American Repertory Theatre.

The Keening is built around the memories of the woman, identified only as a "plañidera," a hired mourner or keener, who recalls her history in order to come to a decision. Her one life stands as a metaphor for those of the contemporary rural people who have been the chief victims of the lawlessness that pervades a nation beset by paramilitary guerrillas and drug traffic. "The play is about the point of view of the victim. Life becomes disposable. This situation is not only happening in Colombia but the world over," Montero says.

The play grew out of a familiar theater exercise: an actor and director working together to develop a piece. Montero and Colombian actress Vicky Hernández began with her personal feelings of pain, which quickly expanded into the suffering of their nation. "I wanted Vicky to improvise around her life. Actors are special. The line between their public life and private life is very thin. We had the exploration of pain and the need to connect to reality. When we had this structure, we called in Humberto. He wrote a text about a woman he had known, a professional keener, and later added the story of the massacre in the rural village of Chengue. The men of this village were murdered by a paramilitary band that imposed their own kind of justice. The events of the play are beyond anything that I know personally. We deal with feelings that are bigger than me. So it’s an exploration. Vicky, Humberto, and I worked together: I’d stage a scene, she’d act it, he would watch and cut lines."

Hernández played the role of the woman in the play’s Bogotá premiere three years ago. For Cambridge, the American stage, screen, and television actress Marissa Chibas has been cast. "Marissa is being very honest, making the journey. It’s going to be her performance. What I’m providing is a space so she can meet with the character," Montero says.

"The play brought me closer to the victims. We’ve all become ‘keeners,’ the community becomes the mourners. The Colombian President, Alvaro Uribe, is now negotiating with the paramilitaries through a new law. The paramilitaries are the ones who did this massacre. We should ask the victims if they are comfortable with the process. It’s a controversial law."

The Keening | American Repertory Theatre, Zero Arrow Theatre | October 14 through November 13 | $35–$48, $15 for students | 617.547.8300 or amrep.org