“During the confinement of the pandemic I began to ask myself what keeps a couple together after a long time and what could break a few years of living together. In my small apartment we would spend hours watching series or in Zoom meetings. We were together, but we didn’t talk for a long time. So I began to imagine situations and then dialogues,” says Dominican writer, director and actress Yolanny Rodríguez Torres, who has lived in New York for many years, on the origin of her latest theatrical proposal.
The result is that a night of partying ends in a long reflection for Tania and Lucas, a couple who open their home to the public not like any other play, but giving them the opportunity to decide their destiny.
“Tonight: Tenderness” the play where “you decide the ending… with your cell phone” will be presented from 8 to September at El Barrio Artspace (215 East 99 th St, Manhattan). This production of Teatro Las Tablas NYC is an experiment by Rodríguez Torres that marks the return of his colleague and countryman Roberto Larancuent.
-How distant was the text from the original idea?
-In the pandemic many couples were breaking up around me and in the news there was talk of women trapped at home with their abusive husbands, and that the abuse might be increasing, but reports were less likely to be made. I also talked to people who were in long-term relationships and started reading about love, living together, codependency. I thought that I could synthesize this in theater dialogues, which is what I can write better. The original format bored me a lot because everything was more or less predictable, but out of curiosity to know what expectations the public would have as they watched the work, I decided to break with the structure and divide it into emotional waves rather than scenes and for the public to intervene. one way or another. I ended up with a work of only two characters, mature but still young, who love each other but do not know how to understand each other.
“A work of only two characters, mature but still young, who love each other but cannot understand each other”
Yolanny Rodríguez Torres, writer, director and actress
-Why give the public the option to choose the ending? Were you not convinced of a particular closure and/or did you simply prefer to experiment?
-It could end in any way, but none was enough. I wanted to talk to people and it seemed to me that they could determine the end. This made me go through the play one more time to do some more ambiguous dialogue.