Out in the Tropics: Caligula (6/14 - 6/16)

Caligula’s love devours everything: his weakness for masculine bodies and his intent to seduce and trample the innocence of Escipion are simply examples of his passion for the impossible. Others like Helicon act as his game pawns, while everybody contributes in one way or another to a string of endless manipulations in this cubanized version of Rome where bodies come with a price tag and desire tucked between their lips. The desire to defeat a body that reflects the strength and vigor of his own youthful adolescence gives the tyrannical Caligula a contemporary face, making him into an icon armed behind the mask of gayness and the glamour of the most illustrious uniforms, thus inciting us to other forms of misconduct way beyond the sexual.

For Teatro El Público, Caligula is a calling card. Like Cesar, we desire a theatrical moon. Like Caligula, we believe in the strange tyranny of desire: the desire that joins impossible bodies and links them in theatrical performance that tears down conventions and prejudice. Camus says that Cesar is a leader of the impossible, and that extends to the most moving forms of love. That is how Teatro El Público understands this work. As a parade of beautiful uniforms; of extraordinary dialogue; of bodies that, upon embracing, will forever encourage the resurrection of the most terrible (and seductive) emperor of all time.

At the Colony Theatre Thursday, June 14 - Saturday, June 16, 2012.