El policía de las ratas (The rat policeman), written by Roberto Bolaño, directed by Alex Rigola and starring Joan Carreras and Andreu Benito, is opening the 2015 season at the Timbre 4 theatre in Buenos Aires, with the support of AC/E’s PICE. It is the staging of a text which, although not specifically theatrical, is one of Bolaño’s most powerful, imaginative and captivating stories.
Pepe el Tira is a policeman, a sort of underground blade runner who is investigating a murder, and a few pages on (shortly afterwards in the theatre) we realise that the person talking to us is a rat, like the rest of the characters. Accustomed to extreme violence (predators – cats, weasels, snakes and blind crocodiles – that prowl the sewers), Pepe discovers the evil that dwells in his own species: a serial killer, who kills for the sake of it and not to feed himself, and derives sadistic enjoyment. Unlike his bureaucratic colleagues, Pepe is set on returning to the crime scene over and over again to attempt to understand it. In a manner as oblique as it is suggestive, El policía de las ratas also speaks of art, of art as an obsession and difference.
Pepe el Tira is a policeman, a sort of underground blade runner who is investigating a murder, and a few pages on (shortly afterwards in the theatre) we realise that the person talking to us is a rat, like the rest of the characters. Accustomed to extreme violence (predators – cats, weasels, snakes and blind crocodiles – that prowl the sewers), Pepe discovers the evil that dwells in his own species: a serial killer, who kills for the sake of it and not to feed himself, and derives sadistic enjoyment. Unlike his bureaucratic colleagues, Pepe is set on returning to the crime scene over and over again to attempt to understand it. In a manner as oblique as it is suggestive, El policía de las ratas also speaks of art, of art as an obsession and difference.