Overview
This play is based on the folk story "Juan Darien" told by Horacio Quiroja, relating the moralistic value of "a life for a life" and the transformation it creates in the life of the avenger. An animal becomes a human and then reverts back to an animal by an act of revenge. The play can best be told in dramatically en masque with some choreography. It lends itself to musical enhancement of a Latin, jazz/blues, or ethereal Andean flute music.
The text for this work is but the skeleton upon which the work is co-constructed by the performers in a manner more than is true of most plays. Building it out requires music, choreography, magic and masque. It is also an ensemble piece. The story told in the verse should be enacted in dance, e.g., in the sequence of death taking off souls of the village, in the jaguar courting scene, in the school scene, in death taking of the Mother etc.