Your Chicago Guide’s tickets for two to the press viewing of North & Sur courtesy of Water People Theater.
Chicago’s Water People Theater started its 2023-24 season with the U.S. Premiere of North & Sur. A fictional meeting takes place between preeminent poets of their hemispheres: Edgar Allan Poe to The North, and Alfonsina Storni to El Sur. Written by Oscar Perdomo Marin, and directed by Water People Theater’s Iraida Tapias, North & Sur runs through October 6, 2023.
North & Sur is an extraordinary encounter between two icons of World Literature: the great North American writer Edgar Allan Poe, who is recognized as one of the foremost progenitors of modern literature, and the South American author Alfonsina Storni, one of the most relevant postmodern poets of Latin America. Edgar and Alfonsina discover their differences and similarities within an atmosphere of incredulous astonishment. They contrast, attract, and repel each other in a space of encounters with no options. Now, they are in an undefined place that encompasses all spaces of the immaterial Universe, the space of transcendence.
Performed at Instituto Cervantes of Chicago, the show absconds regular staging in favor or three different spaces within Instituto. Only one of them is an actual stage. The audience is invited to follow the actors from space to space, as they move through the play. The part of Alfonsina is performed entirely in Spanish, with subtitles projected onto the wall. Poe’s part is then subtitled in Spanish, inviting a bilingual audience.
The show marks Water People Theater’s first production in the 2023-24 season. Each performance of North & Sur featuring Kris Tori as Alfonsina Storni, and Eric K. Roberts as Edgar Allan Poe. The play is performed in an intimate setting accommodating only 30 audience members per night, creating an immersive experience for viewers.
“We are incredibly excited and grateful to start our 2023-2024 season with the U.S. premiere of North & Sur, a vital encounter in these times when it seems that instead of reconnecting, human beings are drifting apart,” said Water People Theater Executive Director Rebeca Alemán. “We are reaffirming, once again, the resilience of theater. North & Sur is a space for bringing cultures, differences, coincidences, literature, poetry, theater, and life together. North & Sur is an act of faith in favor of humanity.”
Water People Theater’s North & Sur runs through October 6, 2023, with performances Wednesday, Thursdays, and Fridays at 7 p.m. at the Instituto Cervantes of Chicago, 31 W. Ohio Street, in Chicago’s River North neighborhood. Performances run approximately 75 minutes with no intermission. Tickets are available at www.waterpeople.org.