The steady pulse of a heartbeat recorded on an electrocardiogram sounds. The Sala Espacio Plural del Trasnocho Cultural looks like a cold office with two stretchers and a desk in the center of the scene where a laptop rests. After a couple of seconds, Corina (played by Kate Ramos) and Cristián (played by Mauricio Celimén) enter the room. They take place on each of the stretchers: both volunteered for a clinical trial with a new experimental drug that seeks to cure depression.
Doctor Lorma (interpreted by Rossana Hernández) begins to ask the questions established in an admission questionnaire. Her tone of voice is cold and impersonal. She conveys the image of a very professional woman, completely dedicated to science. The expert begins by asking Corina about her health history. Later, she does the same with Cristián. At the end, she asks both of them for a urine test: it is very important that nothing influence the results of the test that will last 5 weeks. During that time, both will have to remain in place, without cell phones and undergoing constant doses of Rlu37, la droga experimental that they are evaluating.
They are barely left alone Corina and Cristian they know each other. From the first moment there is a connection between them. He, extroverted and insistent. She, reserved and focused on his business. Both begin their role as subjects of the clinical trial that leads them to reflect on their lives, what they want, what they feel and how they perceive themselves. Between drugs, side effects and discussions about mental health, the two will discover love in The effect, play written by British playwright Lucy Prebble.
On stage, the public can see how the doctor and a nurse weigh, measure and evaluate the subjects of the study that works as a common thread of the story. At the end of the check-up, Corina and Cristián discover that they have several things in common, such as the habit of biting their nails or having their birthday on the same day. There are also aspects in which they are opposite: he with an enviable optimism, she with a silent sadness that led her to be interested in the clinical trial from the beginning. “You are happy?”Cristian asks. “Don’t ask me that question,” she replies.
The piece addresses the issue of depression through a love story, a romance that arises in the least expected conditions. While the audience watches how they fall in love and flirt, Dr. Lorma and Dr. Tobías (played by Elvis Chaveinte), who leads the study, discuss the effects of falling in love for the essay. Neither of them is sure if the love that the subjects feel is a consequence of the drug or if, on the contrary, it is a genuine feeling.
Directed by the young Sebastián Chong, 23 years old, The effect he was the first finalist of the eighth Trasnocho Young Directors Festival. This weekend it will be the last of his season with performances on Friday at 5:00 pm, and Saturday and Sunday at 4:00 pm.
Dare to lead on the tables
In The effect, the story progresses with transitions marked by the increase in the dose of the drug Rlu37. As time goes by, the drug increases its effect in the characters. At no time does one stop reflecting on depression and how medicine can intervene to offer a possible solution that improves people’s lives. That theme was what convinced the director Sebastián Chong to take the text to the stage. Motivated by personal reasons, identified with the topics that are addressed, Chong confesses that he had been with the text of El Efecto “kept in his pocket” for four years.
I came to this text by a google search. By then she had started going to therapy. I found the relationship formed between patient and psychologist very curious. Devoting myself to the theater, I became interested in investigating whether there were works that addressed this relationship. Among them was El Efecto. Perhaps this work does not cover that psychologist-patient part so much, but it is a text that made an impact on me the first time I read it. He made my head fill with images, ”he says.
Trained as an actor since 2019 at the Skena group school and in the Thepis group of the Metropolitan University, Chong assures that something unusual happened to him with this play: took an interest in her as a director, not as an interpreter. She then decided to take on the challenge of directing for the first time and dared to apply to a festival she had heard a lot about, the Festival of Young Directors After Night.
“Anyone who does theater and has some kind of aspiration in this medium wants to be at the Festival of Young Directors After Night, whether directing or acting. Since I started in theater I always heard about him and I had never dared. I think that the audacity arises from forcing myself and telling myself: ‘It’s time’, he confesses. The young man told himself that he should do it even if deep down he didn’t feel ready; or with the training and tools that he wishes he had. For him, it was an act of courage and confidence towards himself and his talent, a decision that led him to experience one of the most organic and beautiful processes of his career.
He sent the proposal, was selected, presented and was elected as the first finalist for the jury. The panel was made up of the maestro Antonio Costante, the actor Antonio Delli, the production director Eva Ivanyi, the scriptwriter and part of the programming committee of the Trasnocho Cultural María del Pilar Arteaga and the general director of the Trasnocho Cultural, José Pisano.
The prize was awarded “for a balanced work sustained on the complexity of a work that explores physical and emotional aspects linked to a highly topical topic. It allows its director to control a proposal with adjusted elements and a substantial acting development, capable of moving the viewer”, explained the jury.
Interested in what is being said
For Sebastian Chong to direct The effect it was like getting on a roller coaster of emotions and moments, some very good, others not so much. When talking about his experience as a director, he refers to the words of Héctor Manrique, who was his teacher at the Skena Group: “A director is nothing more than a person who creates work spaces and environments.” For him, that was the biggest challenge during the process.
In his role as director he tried to create those environments where the technical team and the artistic team could work in harmony. He wanted the ideas to be understood and transmitted correctly. “It was ua beautiful process It still is, but it has its challenges and that’s the rich thing, I take a huge learning experience with me”.
Describing Prebbel’s text, Chong points out that as a playwright the author is characterized by writing in a formative manner. That is, she is interested in teaching the public. “It is a work that also comes to break a little with that scheme of the theatrical. He tells us about the most informative things and facts”, describes the young man. For him as a director, he continues, the most important thing will always be what is said. How it is said, why it is said and that what is said is understood. there is the magic of this work, he says.
“I wanted the viewer to understand everything that these characters go through, every moment, every situation and emotion. There is the real juice of the work. For me that was the most important focus besides the relationships of the characters and how what is said is said, ”he explains.
a mirror of himself
After rising like first runner up and having two seasons in Trasnocho Cultural, Sebastián Chong highlights how much directing has changed him The effect. By taking the story to the tables, he began, in a certain way, to realize many thoughts and attitudes that he himself had without knowing it. “In the end, theater is a way of doing, not therapy, but catharsis. I think that after leaving so much of myself behind, because for me the topic of depression is also quite a person, making that catharsis and taking it to the stage has genuinely changed me. It made me see things from another perspective, ”he reflects.
It has also helped him grow as a director and power develop criteria. With a story that invites you to reflect on mental health, many have been the comments it has received. Above all, opinions that come from colleagues in the medium. Chong points out: “You get everything. We have had very positive comments, people who like it a lot and people who think differently. There are people for whom it is not their style of work and that is something that I think is completely natural and normal”.
As a director and actor, Chong continues, he is always grateful comments that are not entirely positive because they help you think through the decisions you made. “Then I begin to reflect on whether it is worth correcting them or not, if they are decisions that I really marry,” he explains. Focused on working on new projects that he can’t reveal more details about; and focused on appearing in July at Trasnocho Cultural with the work Las Esenciales by Grupo Thepis, Chong continues to bet on the work he does on stage. “If this work reaches a person, he moves him, transforms him… my work is done.”