In near-total darkness, under a barrage of ear-destroyingly loud music, some kind of horrific act of violence is taking place, involving figures in grotesque animal masks, streams of blood, and a range of hideous weapons. So begins a play—or at least, a lumpy mass of parts of a dozen plays congealed together—by José Rivera. Not that either the chaos, the violence, or the congealing jumble of dramatic events should surprise anyone. Rivera is a poet who is also a clown, an American playwright whose dramas mingle our homegrown psychological naturalism with symbol-heavy European idea-drama and lush infusions of Latin... More >>>