Abyss

Abismo
by Abel González Melo (Cuba), 2022
Two female, two male.

From the writer of Chamaco (HOME, Manchester), Weathered (Casa Festival, Arcola) and Tell Me the Whole Thing Again (Arca Images, Miami).

A renowned theatre is thrown into disarray when its long-standing artistic director is accused of bullying, harassment and inappropriate behaviour. As the leadership of the company attempts damage limitation, the allegations only grow more insistent and increasingly concerning. The director, recently widowed, stubbornly refuses to engage. But times have changed, and actions once tolerated in an industry fuelled by passion are finally being questioned. To make matters worse, this theatre is a family affair: the theatre’s Company Manager, tasked with dealing with the fallout, is the director’s daughter, desperate to do the right thing but fearful too for her fragile father. As opening night for the theatre’s latest production, The Crucible, approaches, the outside world demands answers. But in a febrile atmosphere where the heart and the mind are uneasily reconciled, can the truth ever be unearthed?

I woke up in the night screaming again, in the middle of a ridiculous nightmare… Mom and Dad arguing on top of a mountain of sand. She’s talking really loudly, he seems kind of stunned… Mom takes a rotten apple out from her pocket and he, he’s dumbfounded, he tries to run away but it’s hard because his feet sink farther and farther into the sand, until he grows wings that carry him away. Mom follows him, she’s on metal wheels, I don’t know, or are they bristles? She tries to catch him, but she can’t… The desert ends, over in the distance, at a precipice. Mom runs, I shout, I scream for her to stop, but all she can see and hear is Dad, flying up high, too high… She runs and runs faster, Dad disappears into the clouds. And then Mom, who’s been looking up at the sky all this time, she reaches the edge of the desert, the end of the world, she trips on a little stone, a tiny pebble, and she falls, with a deafening roar, into the abyss.

This translation of Abyss was originally commissioned for the Arca Images world premiere production at the Miami Dade County Auditorium, Miami, in March 2022 (pictured, starring Alina Robert, Larry Villanueva, Luz Nicolás and George Akram; photos by Rocio Guerra).