Andrea Garrote, the cult-theater director taking on the challenge of untangling family ties

Andrea Garrote will arrive at Buenos Aires’ Teatro Picadero on Sunday with Amaru, a new play that asks what happens to family ties when they begin to come apart. She wrote the piece, codirects it and performs in the leading ensemble.

The title comes from the Andean imagination, where Amaru is the Quechua name for a sacred serpent. It was understood both as a deity and as a source of energy and wisdom. Garrote used that image for one of the characters and for the work itself.

Taking part in the performance while directing creates a demanding split in attention. “You have your head divided. It is a job that requires a lot of concentration, because I am onstage, but I also have a role outside it as codirector,” Garrote said. She added that she relies heavily on Carolina Stegmayer’s “very complicit perspective” and that she could not do the work alone.

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You have your head divided. It is a job that requires a lot of concentration, because I am onstage, but I also have a role outside it as codirector.

Amaru also features Marcos Ferrante, Fiamma Carranza Macchi and Julián Cnochaert. Its two narratives unfold at the same time, bringing together the fantastic and the private life of a family in the process of emotional collapse. The play also examines parents and children, and the passage and perception of time, while the power of Amaru seeks to alter the existing order.

Garrote said rewriting is central to her work. As the production develops, she adjusts, removes, adds and rearranges lines, allowing the text to mature before opening night. She contrasted that process with Pundonor, her acclaimed monologue about a university lecturer facing personal collapse and public humiliation before her students. That work, which she directed with Rafael Spregelburd, became a cult production and has returned to the stage repeatedly.

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I am very interested in that process. I enjoy rewriting; that is where a writer’s craft appears.