Cachirulo para adultos : el gigante egoísta.

Farcical cabaret performance featuring Enrique Alonso, whose legendary character 'Cachirulo' starred Mexico's first TV show for kids 'Teatro Fantástico.' Cachirulo presents a satiric rendition of Oscar Wilde's 'The Selfish Giant' in the light of the signing of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) by Mexican president Carlos Salinas. In 'a land far, far away, in a big city affected by the citizens' carelessness, but that thanks to the government ... was totally devastated, ' a little girl with an 'uncanny' resemblance to President Salinas meets a vagabond who gives her terrible news: a dangerous giant ('a subproduct of civil indignation for electoral fraud') approaches the city intending to rebel from the abuses of political tyranny. The giant indeed arrives, and destroys the public garden (for which the girl calls him 'selfish'). Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

He is then approached by villains Fanfarrón and Escaldufa (the latter a witch, here impersonating the United States), who intend to render him 'politically unconscious' and make him an ally in their agenda of destruction. Cachirulo helps the girl look for a magic elixir that can counter the villains' evil influence. With the aid of three magic talismans, they dodge the villains' repeated attacks, but Escaldufa ultimately outsmarts them by dressing up like 'the NAFTA fairy.' She proposes the girl to barter the control of all the hemisphere in exchange for an elixir that erases any political 'mishandling.' Sealed the agreement, the girl makes a public speech promising to magically transform Mexico into a First World country, but instead wishes for hair and pours the elixir over her bald head, emptying the bottle in the process. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

With no more elixir to transform the country, the girl resorts to the argument that 'it is not with exotic formulas that the country will improve, we require patience, strength, unity.' Cachirulo, indignant, interrupts the political speech, silencing the girl and ending the story. Mexican director, actress, playwright, performance artist, scenographer, entrepreneur, and social activist Jesusa Rodríguez has been called the most important woman of Mexico. Often referred to as a chameleon, Rodríguez moves seemingly effortlessly and with vigor across the spectrum of cultural forms, styles, and tones. Her espectáculos (as both spectacles and shows) challenge traditional classification, crossing with ease generic boundaries: from elite to popular to mass, from Greek tragedy to cabaret, from pre-Columbian indigenous to opera, from revue, sketch and carpa, to performative acts within political projects. Humor, satire, linguistic play, and the body are constants in her productions. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

She seeks to render corporal and, thus, visible, the tensions between the discourses in operation on and through the individual and collective body. Rodriguezs energy is intense and her commitment non-negotiable, always interrogating the nature, site, and consequences of power and its representation. Liliana Felipe, one of Latin America's foremost singers and composers, was born in Argentina in the 1950s. She left for Mexico just before the outbreak of the 'Dirty War' (1976), but her sister and brother-in-law were both 'disappeared'--victims of the military dictatorship's criminal politics. Liliana's music has a wide following in Latin America. She continues to be a powerful presence in Argentina, working with human rights organizations--especially H.I.J.O.S. (the organization of the children of the disappeared). In Mexico, Liliana went to one of Jesusa Rodríguez's performances. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

Jesusa, catching a glimpse of Felipe in the audience, remembers saying to herself: I am going to die with that woman. Since then, Liliana and Jesusa have created two performance spaces, El Cuervo and later El Hábito in Coyoacán, Mexico City, that they still run. They 'married' in February 2000. El Hábito (www.elhabito.com.mx) is a hotbed for intellectuals, feminists, gay rights activists and open-minded, progressive people who want to be engaged by a smart and critical humor. In this off-off space, and with the collaboration of their theater cooperative Las Divas, Jesusa y Liliana have produced hundreds of shows since the 1980s. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics