“I was born to love you”: The Preludio musical that wonders why Peru broke down (and how to fix it)

Can anyone love a country as convulsed, divided and imperfect as ours? That is the question that revolves around “I was born to love you”, the new musical from the cultural association Prelude that seeks to explore the moment when our country lost its way.

Produced by Denisse Dibós, written by Mateo Chiarella, and under the co-direction of Tommy Párraga and Juan Pablo Lostannau, the show spins three stories set in different times – the 60s, 80s and 2000s – and regions – Coast, Sierra and Selva-, united by betrayal, greed and the thirst for power.

It is without a doubt the show most charged with political content by Preludio to date, whose writing process was influenced by the protests that have hit our country in recent months. “We realized that due to a national situation there were many things that we had to adjust”, pointed to Trade Denisse Dibos. “Theater is alive, theater is life, and we cannot be oblivious to what is happening in our reality.”.

Thus, the play revolves around power relations and methods of resistance by the people where the antagonists – a violent foreman, a politician who forgets his promises and an affably ruthless logging businessman – manage to get away with it supported by a system indifferent to the weak and forgotten.

Despite this context, for Mateo Chiarella the work does not seek to present a political position. “They are fictions that are not based on real events, but they are based on sadly constant social dynamics that have been going on for decades and that are recognizable by Peruvians”argued the playwright.

Instead, the real villain is indolence and submission to the ‘status quo’, represented by the character of A Thousand Faces played by Paul Martin, a masked being who moves as a corrupting presence behind the scenes and who represents how this system does not lean not on one or two people, but on everyone and our worst impulses

“Our idea is not to question specific people, but a cloistered mentality in our society that we must banishChiarella points out. “If we don’t, even if we change politicians, the same thing will continue to happen. It’s a whole system, we can’t talk about one or two people in particular because it’s really too small for us”.

To counteract it, there can only be a superior effort born from the ties that unite us Peruvians as beings who share a culture. This is illustrated in the musical arrangements by César Vega, a mixture of rhythms from all corners of the country. From there, songs such as “Walk with pride” by La Nueva Invasión and “El juicio final” by La Sarita stand out. And the cast itself also says something: it is a heterogeneous group of people of different skin colors, creeds and political ideologies who come together to, according to Dibós herself, become “a voice of peace of what we believe and feel is failing in our situation: that we are forgetting that we are all Peruvians, a diverse mix that makes us who we are”.

Can anyone love a country as convulsed, divided and imperfect as ours? Yes, says the work “I was born to love you”, with constant effort and encouragement to achieve a better future.

Prelude for Prelude

“I was born to love you” opens in a still complicated context for the performing arts, where although the theater billboard with small-scale projects is constantly growing, there are still few large-scale shows that Preludio has made its letter of introduction. “It has been very, very difficult to move forward,” Denisse Dibós confessed to this newspaper. “The boys told me that I was crazy for trying to carry out this project, but I told them that they are crazy too because they continue to accompany me. Of the 26 years of our cultural association, this has undoubtedly been the most difficult. From six to 10 sponsors in past years, we ended up with two.”

Despite these obstacles, the production company is hopeful for the future of its theater company and aims to strengthen its strategic alliances with the business sector to continue and grow its group of artists.

At the moment they are also thinking about their next project, an adaptation of the play “Dear Evan” by Steven Levenson that will be directed by Roberto Ángeles Tafur and that will be released in the second half of the year, although without forgetting to produce focused content. in Peruvian music that began with “Let me tell you” and then continued with “Todos volver” and now “Nací para quererte”. The dream, Dibós confesses, is that these musicals serve as “a forceful menu” that attracts investors to achieve a long-awaited international tour.

I am sure that one day a company will come and tell us let’s go, we will take you here and here so that you can represent Peru.”

Denisse Dibos