KISS OF THE SPIDER WOMAN
Pegasus Players
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Valentin, a Marxist rebel fighting an underground war against Argentina’s right-wing military regime, has been confined to a cell occupied by Molina, a gay “pervert” imprisoned for “corruption of minors.” The two men could not seem more opposite (especially in the eyes of the sexually rigid Catholic culture in which the story is set). Valentin is “all man,” a husky, macho, 26-year-old freedom fighter who has tried to train himself not to show emotion or affection and not to need women too much. Molina, an effeminate window dresser who claims to be 37 but is probably lying, sees himself as a “bourgeois lady,” looking for a stable life with a good man. Both men deceive themselves–Valentin, despite his ideology, is hung up on his sexy but conservative girlfriend, while Molina’s dreams of landing Mr. Right are belied by a reality of quick tricks and drag-queen bitchery. While Valentin reads revolutionary theory and plans to change the world–knowing that the struggle will probably never end–Molina skims fashion magazines and retreats into an inner world of fantasy, in which he can forget about the restrictions of prison as he has always been able to forget the sadness of his life on the outside.
Molina has assumed a motherly, nurturing role in the relationship: he keeps the dingy cell neat, makes sure the water is fresh, tends to Valentin when he is ill, and insistently shares with him the rather expensive care packages his mother brings him when she comes to visit. But Molina is actually playing a dangerous game–one that he has been groomed for since boyhood in a society where homosexuals learn deceit as an essential means of self-protection. Hoping for a pardon, Molina has agreed to try to pry loose information from Valentin about his fellow guerrillas.
In an interesting piece of timing, Spider Woman opened the same week that Argentinean president Carlos Saul Menem extended amnesty to more than 100 people accused of human-rights violations during the “dirty war” of the 1970s–leftist terrorists and right-wing torturers alike. But the struggle that Puig depicted–the struggle not only against overt political oppression but against the subversion of human dignity even in “free” societies–goes on. Ironically, in conjunction with this play about the links between sexual and political oppression, Pegasus is distributing leaflets for Amnesty International–an organization that works (in its own words) “specifically for the release of prisoners of conscience . . . imprisoned for their beliefs, color, sex, ethnic origin, language, or religion.” Notably absent from this list is “sexual orientation,” despite the fact that sexual minorities are routinely subject to persecution, prosecution, torture (under the guise of “treatment”–including castration and brainwashing techniques), and even execution in countries the world over. A Chicago spokesperson for Amnesty International apologetically explained to me that “debates over shifts within the mandate” concerning this “not necessarily popular” issue are “always ongoing”; meanwhile, Amnesty International declines to recognize the right to love as a matter of conscience.
