The surround-sound world of cinema collides with live theatre in an adaptation of a story born from the worst of human nature that also reveals its best

The idea to combine the best of the world of cinema and live theatre provides the magic for Compañia Teatrocinema’s ‘Sin Sangre’ or ‘Without Blood’.

Destined for the Macau Cultural Centre in September, ‘Sin Sangre’ brings the dark novel by Italian Alessandro Baricco to life. The thriller is an excellent choice for a play that merges celluloid and stage. The split-screen effects and flashbacks are artfully rendered by director Juan Carlos Zagal and film maker Dauno Totoro.

The central plot of the story is one of revenge as a woman who survives the murder of her family as a child, decades later is confronted with the dilemma of having to kill a man who saved her life.

The work by the Compañia Teatrocinema is technically, at the very least, a marvel. The reality of keeping a production flowing across two media, with parts for five actors, each working on a narrow stage where timing and choreography must be precise is daunting. That it can be done live, without missing a mark that would tear apart the illusion, and
sustained for a 90-minute performance is a real credit to the troupe.

Classic company

If there is a common theme to modern-day Chile it is its recent past. The company behind ‘Without Blood’ was also borne from the revelation and subsequent renovation of the country after the military dictatorship fell. In 1987, a group of diverse talents came together under the name La Troppa, or The Troop. Their mission was to combat what it saw as the “cultural decay” of the country under Pinochet.

A common goal was found; a quest for beauty, poetry, literature, image and music. They told stories that create an illusion of moving through space and time, all with an exceptional level of creativity. The Troop won widespread acclaim through international tours before winding down. In 2006, core members renamed the group to its current name but with the same yearning to heal the hurt Pinochet’s rule inflicted.

“We still hurt about what happened in Chile, so we must do stories like ‘Sin Sangre’ to heal ourselves. I will live with what happened all my life but life goes on as well,” Zagal told The Herald newspaper in Scotland.

Grandly, the reborn troop is a “quest for a new language” for drama, Zagal wrote in the notes for a 2009 tour of Singapore. The combination of cinema and theatre gives Teatrocinema the opportunity to “jump in time and space in an instantaneous way, not as cinema does it already, but in the way done by magicians”.

‘Sin Sangre’ has been one of the first efforts from the reborn troop. Last year it made the programme at the Edinburgh International Festival where, to be fair, it received mixed reviews. A review in The Guardian said that the high-tech elements in the performance deadened the imagination that normally drives live theatre. Similar reviews were turned in by The Telegraph.

Big story-telling

Just as Chile’s dark years provided the spark for Teatrocinema’s creativity, the plot owes much to those events.

In the immediacy and confusion in the aftermath of a civil war, three men raid the hideout of a doctor nicknamed The Hyena. He is the alleged perpetrator of macabre experiments on live prisoners and delivered summary justice. He is gunned down, taking his innocent son with him. The Hyena’s daughter survives, even though her hiding spot is uncovered by a gunman hell-bent on vengeance.

The daughter grows into a vigilante, seeking justice for her father’s death. She eradicates her father’s killers one by one until 50 years later, she comes face to face with the assassin that spared her life as a child.

It is a big plot, with larger than life characters and a certain melodrama to the performance. Again, it is easy to see why the company would opt for this hybrid story-telling medium with the benefits of its surround sound, three-dimensional characteristics.

‘Sin Sangre’ runs over two nights, September 17 and 18, at the Small Auditorium at the Macau Cultural Centre.