Casa Matriz (2002), a one-act play for two actresses, is the story of Bárbara's search for the perfect mother. Bárbara is turning 30, and as a (very expensive) gift to herself, she decides to hire a "substitute mother" from a very unique agency, Casa Matriz. This agency —a bizarre mothering equivalent of an escort service— specializes in delivering fully customized mothers-for-a day to their clients, who shape their ideal matriarch by filling out a form detailing their every emotional need, all the desired characteristics, and the perfect scenario. Bárbara is picky, however, so the substitute mother she hires has her work cut out for her...  |  View the video

Los Perfiles por la espera (1998) "This is a theatrical act made against persecution, torture, desperation, and fear. The two actresses fundamentally represent the many women, at home or in their workplaces, who are living the anguish of waiting for their disappeared family members. The words and movements of the characters subvert silence, making us witnesses to a world encircled by fear." —Teatro La Máscara  |  View the video

A flor de piel (1995/1997) A co-production of Teatro La Máscara (Colombia) and Bekereke Antzerki Taldea (Basque Country), "A Flor de Piel" is a Latin-feminine performance about sexuality from a feminine point of view. Four women meet at a bar, sharing their romantic and erotic dreams and stories between drinks, love letters, and pop quiz questions on love and sex. Abandoning traditional social certainties in order to explore personal doubts and contradictions, the characters submerge in the subjectivity of their consciences, setting free their instincts, sensuality, beauty, pleasure. Through this play, La Máscara evidences the extent to which it is still taboo to talk about feminine sexuality from a feminine perspective in Colombian theater.  |  View the video

Luna menguante (1994) Theater piece by Teatro La Máscara on political violence and displaced people in Colombia. Four women from all walks of life (a peasant, a bourgeoisie, an actress, a security guard) meet at a bus station, fleeing from the war for diverse reasons. Created collaboratively (at a time when both La Máscara members and theater director Patricia Ariza migrated, fleeing from political persecution in their native Colombia), the piece blends personal stories, fictional characters, and texts by Eduardo Galeano, Rigoberta Menchú and Patricia Ariza, in order to portray how the violence populating the regions of past and present passes on tormented memories, throwing the characters unto a place of encounters and departures, a place where dialogue is implausible, impossible, amongst torn and fragmented personal and collective histories. Haunted by their inner ghosts, the characters confront an adverse world in which they recognize, reinvent, and forget themselves.  |  View the video

Bocas de bolero (1993) "Bocas de bolero" is a collective creation by Teatro La Máscara on the relationships women have with everyday activities in the domestic realm. The melodrama of marriage, the notion of waiting, domestic chores, religion, mother-daughter relationships, gender conventions, etc., are woven with the romantic and melancholy sounds and themes of bolero. Through a polysemic treatment of space, reiteration, movement and image that explores the dynamics of memory, personal present and collective past, the performance artfully confronts the taboos, conventions and struggles surrounding cultural notions of gender.  |  View the video

¡Emocionales! (1992) Collective creation by Teatro La Máscara, a free version of a series of poems in "For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow is Enuf" by American writer Ntozake Shange. The poems, revolving around feminine stories, characters and issues, were performed in the diverse rooms of the empty house in the San Antonio neighborhood in Cali, Colombia, where La Máscara eventually built their theater.  |  View the video

Noticias de Maria (1985/1986) First theater piece by Teatro La Máscara, "Noticias de María" is composed of two skits exploring feminine issues from the perspective of education and matrimony. "María M." emphasizes the sense of confinement a woman feels in her marriage, where her role as a wife is idealized in order to mask the submissive behavior expected by her husband; Maria M. is driven to madness (we find her in a psychiatric ward) and ultimately to death, rather than to return to her married life. "María Adelia" portrays the adolescent world in a religious school, where young women are taught the cultural expectations of division of roles between men and women in society. Overall, "Noticias de María" poses a feminist critique to women's passive acceptance of a gendered "destiny" determined by a "machista" society.  |  View the video

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