Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes (Certain Inhabitants' Theatre) El Automovil Gris (The Grey Automobile)

"Enchanting and surprising...
tradition and modernity are brilliantly combined."--Ovaciones

Vanguard Mexican theater director Claudio Valdes Kuri has created an artistic tour-de-force with his imaginative theatricalization of a legendary Mexican silent film classic from 1919, the rarely screened El Automovil Gris (The Grey Automobile) by Enrique Rosas.

Please note: Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes has recently become an independent company from Compania Nacional de Teatro. Rosas's film El Automovil Gris chronicles the exploits, capture, and eventual end of "The Grey Car Gang," a real and infamous band of thieves and home invaders who terrorized the countryÌs wealthy elite. Blending history and tabloid sensationalism, Rosas cast many of the actual victims, policemen, and judges in his film, playing the roles they had lived. In a sequence of searing intensity, he even included documentary footage he captured himself of the gang's execution by firing squad.

Vald»s Kuri begins with the film El Automovil Gris, then adds another twist. By chance on a visit to Japan, he saw a Japanese silent film presented in the storytelling style of benshi. Benshi employs live actor/narrators, drawing on the traditions of Noh and Kabuki, to enact and expand the film's narrative.

Applying the benshi concept to the film El Automovil Gris, he brings together a kimono-clad actress and a male actor who looks as if he's walked off the screen to interpret multiple on-screen voices in Spanish, Spanglish, and Japanese and to add sound effects...plus there's piano accompaniment. There are English subtitles, too, but you will hardly need them since the actors' eye-popping enactment literally transcends language as they add comic counterpoint and underscore the drama in this crime spree saga.