100 years of Attitude approaches the theme of execution, imperialism, invasion, and colonialism making several explicit references to the war in Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq, and the official discourse of the US president George W. Bush’s administration regarding the role of the United States in the international context. The play talks about the end of the world as a subjective experience, that is captured in the following sentence: “When everybody around you is dying… that’s the end of the world.” In the piece, a Christian executioner prays before killing and an American family comes to live in town taking over the local homes. The people of this fictional lesbian town are executed several times, always coming back to life; the life of a community prevails over that of the individual.
Homerun (2003)
Homerun is a monologue about God and home runs that Susana Cook performs playing a guitar. The solo piece was inspired by a commentary by a famous baseball player that Susana saw on TV, in which the player presented home runs as “a God-giving thing.” In the monologue, Susana humorously locates this “gift” in inadequate […]
Spic For Export (2002)
Spic for Export is a performance about memory and the borders of life. “Spic” is the ethnic slur applied to Latinos and Hispanics in the US. In the piece, which explores the borders between the “inner” and the “outer” world, death appears as just one more element of life. The show is organized in a series of monologues that describe the character’s journey in search of God, Truth, Justice, Friends, True Love, and True Gender. The protagonist ends up finding the frontiers of the social body, looking for a job, trying to survive in a corporate world. Includes Cook’s “Lemon Cookies” monologue.
The Fraud (2001)
The Fraud was performed after the 2000 controversial elections in the United States. The play addresses the rights that were lost under the Bush administration, when most of the social services were cut off and the poor and marginalized lost the basic support that kept them alive. In the play, the characters experience feelings of loss and confusion. They end up not knowing if they ever had what they think they have lost. During the rest of the scenes, the characters experience apathy, fear, and desperation while dealing with all the dead bodies around them. In the last scene, they “represent” the people from Third-World countries; the ones who were not called to vote, but that will be affected by the measures enforced by the president of the United States. Because US policies will affect their lives deeply, they claim their right to vote.
Gross National Product (2001)
Gross National Product is a response to the Giuliani administration in New York and the devastating effects that his policies had on the poor. The play deploys the interrelation between poverty, the working class and marginalization.
Conga Gorilla Forest (2000)
At the end of the millennium a group of women get together to build a time capsule. Believing the prophecies and that the Y2K will end the world, they decide to spend the last days of the millennium building a time capsule for future civilizations. They try to conciliate religion and science. How the destruction of the world, produced by science and computers and the belief in prophecies will come together in one second at midnight 1999.