Seen at Edinburgh Festival Fringe on the 13^th of August 2023

5 stars – the cleverest parody on stereotypes and racism

Who wants to become a LatinX? Between castings, the character Manuel lectures the audience through an exhilarating workshop that plays with stereotypes and prejudices on people from Latin America.

Uruguayan actor Guido García Lueches and the directors Mariana Aristizabal and Malena Arcucci have built a beautifully engaging and very funny show to raise important political themes. It is not an easy moment to be an immigrant in the UK right now. The show’s way of claiming it, though, runs through its amazingly clever, festive composition, and its absolutely spot-on jokes.

On top of all the stereotypes, Guido provides hilarious yet bitter examples of what it means to be a Latin American actor in the UK, a field where stereotypes thrive, with scripts incapsulating people in roles in accordance with their provenience or ethnic group. A representation of racism that reproduces itself, becomes part of the broad narrative and is reinforced by every such individual narrative. Because it is assumed by the audience, it sells.

The mainstream narrative goes all the way until the other end of the paradox, that seem to be so contagious in the contemporary art scene: ‘Be yourself’. Yes, an Actor being told so.

This thought-provoking show is genius: a good hour of fun with a substrate of a clever analysis of racism, in many of the shapes it materialises in.

Tickets and Info: https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/playing-latinx

Company Website: https://www.marianamalena.co.uk/playing-latinx

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElGuidoGarcia/