Federico Luppi, the doyen of Argentinian theatre, brings to life a military general responsible for the 1981 El Picadero theatre fire in a monologue that unmasks authoritarian thinking under a dictatorship. An enduring message that still rings true today.

Santiago Varela’s El reportaje plunges us into the preparations for a TV interview filmed from prison, where a former Argentinian general is serving time for his role in the brutal genocidal dictatorship that devastated Argentina from 1976 on.
The general tells of how he helped to censor cultural events, focusing especially on his role in burning down the El Picadero theatre in Buenos Aires one fine evening in late July.
A group of writers, directors and designers had just launched a cycle of thirty-minute pieces. Three were presented every day of the week – twenty-one in total. The cycle was called Teatro Abierto; years later, it would become an icon of cultural resistance during the dictatorship.
In homage to this cycle, the Argentinian Cultural Secretary organized the Nuestro Teatro playwriting festival in 2013. The winners were grouped into triads and shown over the course of six months at the new El Picadero theatre, which opened in 2012. They featured the same creative freedom the Teatro Abierto had been known for. El reportaje was presented alongside Luis Gabriel Cano’s Padre e hijo, contemplando la sombra de un día and Fabricio Rotella’s El cruce, farsa sindicalista.