CHAT: those predictable virtual truths
Written in 2007 by Venezuelan Gustavo Ott and directed in Spain by Carlos La Rosa, the CHAT dramatic piece was revived for a brief season after last year submitted under the Call for Aid I Production and Performing Arts Exhibition at the House of Spain. La Rosa is also responsible for Pony (2009), a gentle comedy of the same author, and Ott is one of the most significant contemporary American playwrights today. In CHAT the author shows us the dangers of abuse (and naive) of the Internet as a means of communication, with disastrous results for the characters in the story. And despite the proven virtues of the director, staging can not overcome their previous work, including the remarkable Lock out (2010).
chat (or its equivalent "talk" in English) is one of instant communication conducted via the Internet between two or more people whose main disadvantage of hiding the more intense the true intentions are hidden in the messages. And the author presents a handful of cases in the public domain: the woman who desperately seeking to emigrate to America, the sexual pervert looking to satisfy their base instincts, the vengeful teenager who concocts and executes a murder in her school, the unsuspecting family that pays mothers abandoned by the desired child, the young eager to satisfy your hormonal needs, and the useful idiot recruited by religious subversive. None of these stories have a happy ending, the characters are meant to be the victims "computer" by the huge amount of virtual truths to which they are exposed, but that is something that unfortunately the public sensed from the beginning and not generate the be suspended until the expected outcome.
AND CHAT is full of surprises as an argument not only provides proper practice acting, without going into some issues interest, such as the large amount of personal information available to everyone through social networks like Facebook. Omar Alosilla performances, Cecilia Collantes, Carla Martel and Fito Valles are toiling to give veracity to the staging, but can be even more precise in defining vocal and bodily to the different characters he plays each. The good director Carlos La Rosa, in his eagerness to give impetus to the assembly, the keyboard ignores the middle of the chat between the characters so that they interact "virtually" face to face, but this proposal is not entirely consistent, especially when actors make physical contact or "send" files through pieces of paper. CHAT is not a good work of Gustavo Ott, it is an important work, with some beautiful texts filled with poetry, but that does not have the strength necessary to be a real warning about the terrible dangers that offers our new virtual world.
Sergio Velarde
February 11, 2011
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