by Fredric Dannen

Sabina Berman's play Testosterona, about power dynamics at a big city newspaper (presumably Mexico City), has been performed in eleven different countries. It ran for four sold-out seasons in Mexico City, where Testosterona debuted in 2008, and won both the Audience Award and the Metropolitan Theatre Award (or Metro, the Mexican equivalent of a Tony) for Best Play. It has never been presented in San Miguel de Allende – until now.

Berman, who is acquainted with La Troupe México, the only dedicated bilingual theater company in San Miguel and one of the few such in all Latin America, and with La Troupe's cofounder and creative director, Marcela Brondo, has given her personal stamp of approval for the upcoming San Miguel debut of Testosterona. I am the director of the play and executive director of La Troupe.

I am going to give you, dear reader, ten reasons why you should attend this production, in no particular order. Except for the first reason, which is personal.

When, at Marcela Brondo's urging, I read Berman's play, I knew immediately that La Troupe needed to present it in San Miguel. Apart from loving the play on its own merits, I was struck by the portrayal of its protagonist, a 42-year-old woman named Alejandra. Testosterona is set in the 38th-floor executive office suite of Ricardo, the editor-in-chief of a never-named newspaper. Alejandra, who goes by Alex, is his managing editor. Those are the two on-stage characters in the play; there is a third significant character, Beteta, the newspaper's deputy editor, whom you never see but whose voice you hear.

After reading the play, I recalled an interview I conducted a few years ago with Garrett McQueen, a spokesman for the Black Opera Alliance, for an article I was writing for Billboard. I called to ask him what he thought about a conductor's plan to present Blues Opera, a hitherto unproduced opera with music by Harold Arlen and a libretto by Johnny Mercer. I thought he would oppose a production, because the opera calls for a virtually all-black cast and its authors were white. What McQueen said delighted me. He did have qualms, but what he liked about the work is that it was not, as is typical of black operas, such as Porgy and Bess, Treemonisha, and Fire Shut Up in My Bones, a "trauma drama." The protagonists of Blues Opera are rich, happy, successful champagne-drinking members of late 19th century St. Louis society.

"We could use more operas that don't tell the same old story of the downtrodden, abused, oppressed black person," McQueen told me. "There's more to the black experience than pain."

That, in a nutshell, is my first reason for recommending Testosterona, at least to our expatriate theatergoing audience. It is not a trauma drama. I may have missed it, but I cannot recall seeing a theater piece presented by expats in San Miguel for other expats that did not depict Mexicans as downtrodden, oppressed and abused, in particular Mexican women, who in these theater pieces always seemed to be victims, with absent or abusive husbands, scraping for existence, and yearning to emigrate north. Alejandra, in Testosterona, graduated Phi Beta Kappa in history and philosophy, has a sharp wit, a brilliant mind and a rewarding sex life, and (imagine!) absolutely no desire to live in the United States.

Author Sabina Berman
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My second reason is that Testosterona is a terrific and highly entertaining play. It takes place over two days, Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Ricardo has to step down as chief editor for medical reasons, and Alex is one of two candidates in line to replace him. The other candidate is Beteta, the newspaper's ruthless deputy editor, who will stop at nothing to land the top job. As Ricardo pits Alex against Beteta in what she sardonically calls "a shootout," something else occurs to the chief editor – he might not have long to live, and his long-avoided romantic involvement with Alex may finally be at hand. Two lines of dialog from the play pretty much sum up its basic themes. At one point, Ricardo admonishes Alex: "If you don't fight for this office like you were fighting for your life‚ then you don't have the stones to fill it." At another point, Alex declares: "There's only one hormone that distinguishes men's sexual appetites from women's, and it's called power."

(In case you haven't guessed, this play is not suitable for children.)

The third reason is the author, a prominent Mexican woman of letters. Sabina Berman is well known to Mexicans as the host of an interview show on Canal Once called Largo Aliento. I suspect few expats know of her. Berman is a playwright, novelist, screenwriter and journalist, born in Mexico City in 1955 to Polish-Jewish parents who moved to Mexico, where they met, after both had fled the Nazi occupation of Poland.

Fourth reason: Radio theater is a wonderful and somewhat underutilized format, though fans of L.A. Theatre Works, BBC Radio Theatre, and (the gold standard) Ficción Sonora, on RTVE, Spanish public radio, know what I'm taking about. Radio theater is not a mere playreading, but a kind of quasi-musical soundscape of dialog, music and sound effects.

La Troupe has previously presented two live radio plays: In April of last year, Arthur Miller's The Price, which I directed at the Shelter Theater, in English with supertitles in Spanish; and Estela Leñero's El Codex Romanoff, directed by Marcela Brondo in 2022, at the former San Miguel Playhouse, in Spanish with supertitles in English. There are also two La Troupe radio plays recorded without a live audience during the Covid lockdown, both written by David Auburn, one in Spanish and one in English, on our cultural podcast channel, smapodcast.com, with downloadable word-for-word translations.

Fifth reason: The bilingual experience. Marcela and I created La Troupe because we live in a bilingual and bicultural city. We may have our divisions, but all human beings share a love of stories. That's what theater is: stories that entertain, provoke, surprise and inspire. By using supertitles, La Troupe is able to break the language barrier.

Sixth reason: Rodrigo Demián, who portrays Ricardo in Testosterona, is one of San Miguel's finest actors. Rodrigo was Edmond Tyrone in the inaugural La Troupe production, Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey Into Night (watch), at the former San Miguel Playhouse, in 2017. He was Diego in La Troupe's 2018 production of Las Madres, directed by Marcela Brondo, considered one of the peak theatrical events in San Miguel in modern memory. In between, he played Valentín Arregui in Caja Negra's excellent production of Kiss of the Spider Woman at the Shelter Theater.

Seventh reason: Marcela Brondo, who portrays Alejandra in Testosterona, is another of San Miguel's best actors. A professional actor since childhood, with theatrical training from Mexico's prestigious theater guild, ANDA, the National Association of Actors, Brondo has been seen by San Miguel audiences as Beatrice in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, and Mary in The Language Archive, both productions of Symmetry Theatre of Berkeley, California. She is also a voice actor and has recorded for Audible.

Eight reason: It's the San Miguel premiere of a hit play. C'mon.

Ninth reason: Testosterona is a comedy drama, and quite funny.

Tenth reason: The twist ending. No spoilers.

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Fredric Dannen is a journalist and author with a specialty in criminal justice. He has been a staff writer for the New Yorker and Vanity Fair.

In 1990, Hit Men, his book about the American music industry and the influence of organized crime, spent a month on the New York Times bestseller list. The book is #2 on Billboard's list of 100 Greatest Music Books of All Time. One of his Vanity Fair articles prompted the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals to rebuke the U.S. Justice Dept. for fraudulently withholding exculpatory evidence in the case of Cleveland auto worker John Demjanjuk, who was extradited, wrongly convicted, and sentenced to hang in Israel as the Nazi war-criminal "Ivan the Terrible." He secured the only interview given by Los Angeles police chief Daryl Gates on the heels of the infamous Rodney King beating, and the only interview ever given by crime boss Lorenzo Nichols, the crack kingpin of New York City.

While conducting research for a forthcoming book, Dannen uncovered lost evidence in the case of Calvin Washington, a Texan wrongly convicted of homicide. As the direct result of Dannen's efforts, Calvin Washington won a full pardon for innocence, the first ever granted by Texas governor Rick Perry under the state's DNA statute.

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