Life on the boarder is deconstructed in Theater Mitu’s collaborative melding of history, politics, and performance

Art, more often than not, is an outlet for subjective thought. An artist uses his creative medium to offer a concise and compelling snapshot of the world as it appears through his own personal filter of observation. Theater Mitu Artistic Director Rubén Polendo, however, confidently rejects this widely accepted archetype in Juárez: A Documentary Mythology, now in performances at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. He makes a compelling though not entirely convincing argument for art without subjectivity in this innovative performance piece, offering a not dramatized, but theatricalized exploration of his hometown of Juárez on the U.S.-Mexico border. A collaborative company project, Juárez: A Documentary Mythology engages its actors as characterless mouthpieces for Juárez citizens whose firsthand accounts have been amassed in an extensive catalog of recorded interviews. Information without emotion becomes the clear objective throughout the piece as the performers trade off responsibilities reading facts from note cards or reciting recorded testimonies funneled to them through ear pieces. Polendo is forthright with his purpose from the start, opening the production with a series of home videos of his happy childhood in Juárez before the city was overtaken by drug cartels and gang violence. “I needed to understand what had happened to the city — what happened to my city,” he narrates over the joyful images.