You Can't Bite Your Lip and Deliver 'Molotov Kisses'

Gustavo Ott Writes Plays To Challenge Fellow Hispanics

A contented upscale couple in an unnamed Latin American city are ready to make a baby. What can this possibly have to do with Islamic terrorism?

"Latin American theater is more open than American theater in its style," says Venezuelan playwright Gustavo Ott, who forges the unlikely link in "Tu Ternura Molotov" ("Your Molotov Kisses") at GALA Hispanic Theatre. "In our theater, it's easy for us to do almost anything on the stage."

Thus the absurdity of a woman -- a local television anchor -- monitoring her temperature and comically urging her high-profile lawyer husband into action . . . with the specter of Hamas eventually making its unlikely way into what might not be a bedroom farce after all. Seems one of the sleek figures in this two-character play has been hiding a sleeping-with-the-enemy episode. For Ott, that throws open questions of allegiances and identity while also triggering unexpected strains of bigotry.

"That's really, really what I do," says Ott, 44, sitting in the GALA lobby at Tivoli Square, where the show opened last weekend. (The performance is in Spanish, with English surtitles.) "You go through something mainstream, and then you punch. Like this play: You can say it's a comedy, but it's tough, especially in its idea of Hispanics. The main task we have to overcome is our own prejudice, our own idea of ourselves."

Although the play has flourishes of non-realistic dialogue and what Ott calls poetry of situation -- i.e., that unlikely premise -- it's not magic realism; it's an easily accessible comic drama. GALA Associate Producing Director Abel López, director of "Your Molotov Kisses," wonders whether non-Hispanic audiences will wholly tune in to the critique of Latino culture, as Ott explores the fault lines of race, class and intolerance. (Says Ott of Latinos: "We're as bad as anyone, you know?") López is also curious to see whether the theater's core audience will take to a comedy that GALA is promoting with the line, "Prepare to be offended."

"There is an intermission," López says with a laugh. "That may be a visible indicator."

"Your Molotov Kisses" is the fourth of Ott's plays to be produced at GALA, making him the company's favorite contemporary playwright. The shows -- "I Never Said I Was a Good Girl," "Divorcees, Evangelists, and Vegetarians" and "Pavlov: Two Seconds Before the Crime" -- have been directed by López, who has an affinity for Ott's sneak-attack style. Ott says he's deploying it again in a new novel called "I Don't Know How to Kill, but I'm Going to Learn," which starts with beauty pageants and gets into politics.

"It has to do with the idea of superficiality in Venezuela," Ott says. "We tend to be very superficial on important issues."

Ott was born and raised in Caracas, where he worked as a journalist for a few years before going to the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop in 1993. He studied there with playwright Tony Kushner and married the American woman who translated his play, Heather McKay.

Ott's English is good enough that he has translated plays by David Mamet, Daniel MacIvor and Orson Welles into Spanish. Although McKay continues to translate his work, surely he could do it himself?

"No, no, you can't do that," he insists. "It's a whole ballpark -- it's a different ballpark, really. If you do it, you're killing your work."

Ott has run Teatro San Martín for 15 years in a poor section of Caracas and generally writes a play a year for the troupe. The company's location and audience are among the reasons the upper-middle-class "Molotov" hasn't been staged there yet, although it has been produced in Europe and Latin America (GALA is presenting the East Coast premiere). Local poverty is also why Teatro San Martín runs daytime workshops that often have nothing to do with writing or acting but are often more practical: the carpentry of set building, the electrician skills of lights.

But Ott spends summers and holidays with Florida in-laws, and is perpetually plugged in to U.S. news. "I can talk about American politics all night, if you want," he says, laughing. "Everything that happens here happens to us. Many Americans don't realize that, but it does. That's why we have to be informed on what's going on here."

That helps explain "Your Molotov Kisses," which Ott began in 2002 and revised over the next several years. For Ott, the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks brought Venezuelan intolerance into focus -- a phenomenon he says has sharpened as factions for and against President Hugo Chavez dig in.

"That kind of rivalry generates a way of thinking that has no middle," Ott says. "You're black or you're white. You're with me or against me, as somebody said not long ago."

While Ott rhapsodizes about the energy for such subjects in movies, among young adults and even in the current U.S. presidential campaign, plays on these themes aren't instant hits. Just as English-speaking audiences flock more easily to Shakespeare than to topical new material, so was GALA's next offering -- Lorca's "Blood Wedding" -- already outselling "Molotov" last month.

"Contemporary work is a hard sell in general for us," López says. "But we have to reflect on what's happening now."