Garlic Shrimp, the Indepilables of Parakultural: feminism avant la lettre

"Here are the incredible, the indecipherable, the Indepilable Garlic Shrimp!" That's how Omar Viola introduced us on "Paracultural Nights." "Neither feminists, nor communists, and certainly not Christians," we said of ourselves in one of the first photocopied programs, hand-drawn from a clipping of Solano López's "Evaristo" (yes, the one from El Eternauta). Rather, we were anti-everything, perfectly in keeping with the spirit of the times.

Our little monsters were wild countrywomen stomping their feet on the rickety wooden floor of the Parakultural or Rojas stage as if they wanted to break through; turbaned women battling the untimely attack of a purse to the rhythm of Marlene Dietrich's deep voice; or girls shouting ironically about Sarmiento's school history and dancing to his anthem as if it were the last thing they could do in the midst of the gaucho war.

But we could also be stripper nuns swapping habits for tiny bikinis to the sound of the city heat; battered women enjoying punches and smackdowns; spinsters threatening divorce or butch feminists; filthy old women; porn singers; acrobatic and abusive paralytics; dominatrices; and often dancers: tap, jazz, blues, or New Wave. In all cases, uglier, crazier, with bigger "new hairstyles," and less feminine than in real life. A physical construction for a theatrical construction of women who shamelessly displayed themselves amid a mob of young punks fresh from the catacombs of the last civil-military dictatorship.

A pure event, like its own drama written for the stage, which appealed to the personal stories of women without "coolness to beguile them," without a wind, pure grotesquerie and plenty of sex appeal . Seductively phallic and outrageously irreverent, unconscious women. We were doing a feminism without labels at a time when you didn't claim it because it was out of date, as if you were asking permission to join a club you were already part of.

We were the real deal. We walked right into the door, asking for nothing, giving no explanations to anyone: not to directors, not to theater priests, not to schools, not to sexual orientations. We coexisted with obstacles, transvestites, drag queens, semi-effeminate men, slightly scatterbrained musicians, singers very Janis Joplin-like. Alejandro Urdapilleta could babysit your child for a while in the dressing room after having delivered a ham and cheese bun on stage to the cry of "Pebetito!" You could share palazzo pants with Batato Barea or listen to him admiringly recite Urda's poem "Sombra de conchas" (Shadow of Shells).

But you'd never hear anyone say, "Close the door, I'm changing." We weren't feminists; we were women who stood up for themselves without needing to say so, even mocking the "Be Yourself" sentiment a little. A horizontal group, without hierarchy, all directors, authors, and actresses ready to take the world by storm (often also the iron pillar that limited the precarious stage of the beloved "Para"). Hungry to go out into the world, a world that was the end of the century, the end of history.

A pure event that could have left a crack open for other groups to come later, other stories of theaters in old houses, without backstage, without structure, or production, driven by pure passion, without having to answer whether they are this, that, or the other. And that, without intending it, burst the papier-mâché bodice, foaming at the mouth. A break with a patriarchy we didn't give the slightest thought to. Today I see that we were indeed feminists, and that there were still many doors left to kick down.