Isaac Chocron: Tap Dancing Until the End.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

ISAAC CHOCRON IS IN HIS ELEMENT. Surrounded by theater folks, he's relating his latest triumph, that of Tap Dance, which opened in Buenos Aires in September 1999, at the same time he shares a dish of fried calamari with his admirers. The Venezuelan playwright is in Washington, D.C., for the fiftieth-anniversary celebration of the Georgetown University Faculty of Languages and Linguistics. One of the main attractions has been Chocron's Alfabeto para analfabetos [Alphabet for Illiterates], performed by the university's Spanish-language theater group, El Retablo. Alfabeto para analfabetos is a celebration of language in which letters join together to show the creative power of words. The play has no plot. The letters themselves--which the actors form with their bodies--produce the structure. The images generated by each letter suggest the infinite possibilities of linguistic expression.

Chocron has been writing for the theater for over thirty years. In fact, he is considered one of the creators of modern Venezuelan theater. During the 1960s nothing much was happening on the Caracas stage. "All of a sudden three playwrights appeared," explains Chocron. "Jose Ignacio Cabrujas [who died in 1995], Romin Chalbaud, and I. Before, those who wrote plays did it as a side line, whereas we were real theater people.

"Our plays were applauded at the First Venezuelan Theater Festival in 1959. We put together a show called Triangle that included plays by all three of us. Then, we decided that we should have a theater where we could put on not only our own things, but also those of other playwrights. We founded the new group in 1967, and it lasted twenty years. And during those twenty years we developed our careers as playwrights. A journalist called us the "Holy Trinity" because every one of our plays was a success, not only in Caracas, but everywhere. Then, in 1969, a play of mine called O.K. opened and was especially successful. It played for six months and, while it was on in Caracas, it opened in Buenos Aires, in Montevideo, in Madrid, and in Mexico."

As for his aims, Chocron says: "A playwright creates people. When they ask me what my message is, I say, `Whatever you want' because if a person wants to convey ideas, or a message, well, there are other ways of doing it. But the theater is people above all, people in a tense situation, in an abnormal situation that transforms them, that changes their lives, their personalities. I think the monotheistic...