★★★ The employees who worked in the Buenos Aires environments, crowded into tiny rooms, never ceased to be seen as simple labor. Despite sharing a house and food with their employers, the integration of both classes was infrequent and the work totally precarious. In general, they were Creole people, many from the provinces in the interior of the country, who were dedicated to domestic tasks as cooks, ironers and butlers. In the 1980s, the 19th century, the great village began to transform into a metropolis and the wave of immigration brought European women to the country who began to work as governesses.
In 1888, the mayor Antonio Crespo, imposed the application of the so-called conchabo booklet that had already been used in rural areas to discipline the peons and that constituted a record of the disposition to work and conduct. The Ordinance required that workers in private homes, hotels, and restaurants have a document in which employers could describe, at will, the strengths and weaknesses of each employee.
This motivated a furious strike in claim for violated rights. The success of the protest was so great that the media quickly began to receive complaints reflecting the indignation of the employers. The pressure was so great that
VALUABLE SHOW. The official gave up and had to cancel the use of this authentic tool of submission and control.
Such a significant resistance movement was taken by the playwright Patricia Suárez and the actress and director Rita Terranova as the basis for “Babel Cocina”. The work brings together a series of different vignettes featuring a housekeeper, a young coachman, a pregnant seamstress, a milkman’s helper, a beggar woman, a journalist, a gypsy woman who predicts the future, a mother looking for her lost son and a whole series of almost discepolian characters, who refer to the time.
Within the extensive and enthusiastic cast, in a staging without stagecraft, very well directed by Terranova, stand out Claudia Cárpena (Gina, the Italian kitchen assistant), Gabriel Schapiro (in his double role as poet and curator), Renata Marrone (Narcisa, the flower girl), Gaby Barrios (the nun) and Susana Giannone (the French governess). In short, a rare show that rescues the epic spirit of independent theater.
