OtB alums the Seattle Chamber Players are back with a new edition of the Icebreaker Festival. Now in its sixth year, the group has turned its visionary eye to the Mediterannean - the entirety of it.

Mariano Pensotti’s extraordinary production, El pasado es un animal grotesco, offers great rewards for multiple viewings. I was lucky enough to catch the show at the Public Theatre’s Under the Radar Festival in New York last month, and then again last night at On the Boards. I discovered treasures and insights tonight that I’d originally missed.

The line between fiction and life becomes blurred as creation, re-creation, and the metamorphosis of oneself continues throughout the years. Argentine author and theater director Mariano Pensotti has created more than fifteen performances in the past ten years, among them El pasado es un animal grotesco ‘The Past is a Grotesque Animal’. On a rotating round stage, we dive into the lives of four characters beginning on June 22nd, 1999. Mario (Santiago Gobernori) is an aspiring musician/ filmmaker who keeps imagining ways to escape his mediocre and defective life.

Pablo receives a large shoebox in the mail that contains a severed hand. He puts it in the freezer, and for ten years mulls over its various possible meanings (and periodically freaks out). Vicky sorts old photographs and discovers that her father has a secret, second family. She begins to spy on him and, as time passes, enters a kind of secret life of her own. Mario is a fledgling songwriter, plays in a band with a girl drummer, dreams of being a filmmaker. Dana takes up acting, eventually landing a big part in a play called “Holy Land.”