Cantina

            Cantina was a show unlike anything I have ever experienced before. It was both artistically sensual and confrontational. Multiple topics were addressed and ranged everywhere from male nudity to domestic violence. Men were portrayed as the weaker sex, removing their own clothing while the women were fully clothed, being pawed at by the men trying to remove their clothes, and all the while they were acting overly modest by wearing bloomers and continually re-covering themselves when performing a stunt that ended up showing too much for their liking. In one scene, there was an intense fight scene between a man and a woman, which resulted in the woman overtaking the man in the end. Both the man and woman showed dominance over the other at moments and vulnerability at other moments. The man’s nearly naked body was walked on by platform high heels at one point and at another point he was throwing her around like a rag doll. This entire play seemed to be pushing the limits of everything I am used to seeing in plays in the United States. Not only does it push the boundary of the appropriateness of being so open about a dysfunctional relationship, but in America we are not nearly as open to sexuality as I have already seen here in London. When the man in Cantina ended up fully nude and swinging all of his business around, no one in the audience seemed disturbed by it whatsoever. If this was a show in the United States, most guys in the audience would have some sort of reaction to the full nudity and other people may even have felt offended by it. This show was all of the differences between the way our different cultures view sexuality and gender roles wrapped up into one amazing performance.