In the center of the stage, a person wearing a dog mask turns his back to the audience. It could be any person or any dog because the room is so dark and the microphone distorts its voice so much that there are few clues to identify it. Until he takes off the mask, and the dog reveals himself and confesses that he is, or rather was, a popular television presenter. He no longer works, now, he says, he has chosen exile somewhere in the pampas of Argentina. He has gone there, he emphasizes, of his own free will. Nobody has banished him, he reminds the public again. He was the one who chose to go far away after a younger colleague, his employee, reported him on social media for sexual assault.
From this first confession, the journalist and actor Sato Díaz goes through the character’s emotional states during the hour-long monologue. The dog’s tiradea text signed by the journalist and activist Cristina Fallarás, directed by Rubén Romero. It is a deep reflection on how a man who fit into the category of ally of feminism faces a public accusation of this type. The play premiered this Sunday at the Teatro del Barrio in Madrid and has scheduled performances until April 26, with the possibility of extending dates.
“I didn’t want to ridicule the figure of the ally, to make a comical work, it was too easy to fall into the grotesque. That’s why I thought that the worst thing that can happen to an ally is to be publicly left naked,” says the author on the other end of the phone about the assignment that Díaz himself gave her back in 2022, when the journalist started working at Public.
For almost a year, Fallarás put himself in the shoes of the aggressors. She knows them well, she has made her social media accounts a platform where women go to narrate all types of violence. His goal, he says, was to try to find vulnerability in men, a place that was not “buried by masculinity.” “It would be a brutal advance when it comes to redefining the role of men in feminism if they were able to show it,” he adds.
Fallarás has dedicated the last years of her life to building a memory of women’s experiences, through the testimonies she publishes on her social networks. Men, he considers, are not, for now, in that task. “In the case of men, since that doesn’t happen, there is no collective story. There is a story, as happens in this play, and in response to that confession the dogs throw themselves on top of the presenter so as not to be dragged into recognizing their own vulnerabilities,” he continues. In some way it is the theatrical interpretation of the Not all men, that phrase that many men use to defend, attacking, that not all are rapists or aggressors. That sexist violence is almost a matter of bad apples. “There is a generation that is being blamed for being violent, for being extreme right, and that girl deserves this reflection from her elders,” he continues.
In The dog’s tirade It is confirmed that male weakness has the same effect as an open wound in the middle of the ocean. Attracts predators. In this case, the dogs, the packs, the packs… Díaz will be in charge of reminding the public on several occasions with direct interpellations with a powerful montage in which light shots, techno music and sound sharpen the message.
The actor will seek the complicity of the men in the audience, he will encourage them to confess, to recognize themselves, he will shout out to them to define themselves as rapists, aggressors, abusers… “The play aims to make people uncomfortable and raise awareness, especially among the audience. In the end, it is an appeal about how they exercise, well, we exercise the abuse of power over the aunts,” explains Díaz, “hopefully many guys will come wanting to debate, this consists of raising a problem, put it on stage, open it to society and generate a debate about it.” Fallarás has more doubts about the attendance of men at the work. “Maybe the ones who arrive will be the dogs,” he advances.
—It is women who usually go to this type of works, the same happens with films and books that fall into the feminist category. How are they going to attract the male audience?
—You will fail: It is not our role to take them to the movies and the theater, they are not going to go. A click has to happen in their heads.
—And how do you think this work can achieve that effect?
—You will fail: For example, that they recognize historical figures that appear in the text, with a lot of power… There the curiosity of the ego will be able to say that they are talking about one of their own.
The dog’s tirade It includes references to current events, but also to historical and high-media cases. All quite recognizable, although no real names appear due to the decision of the director, Rubén Romero, who confesses that this intention is also in the editing: “There are references to porn movies, to the sets from which the crypto bros speak on social networks, to television.” They are places so widely recognizable in the culture of the scroll infinity that once again blur the face of the protagonist and his possible alter egos.
Even so, it is more than likely that the public believes they can identify politicians, filmmakers, singers and journalists whose complaints became known after Fallarás delivered the text. “All the subsequent cases could be seen coming, I already knew that if they came out they would be much more relevant than those of a right-wing man,” he says, pointing to the communication magnate who appears in his text. “There are archetypes and models of behavior that are very similar, it doesn’t matter how time passes, a man uses his power to abuse a woman who is in a condition of inferiority. Toxic masculinity has permeated us all and continues to permeate us. Me the first,” Díaz acknowledges.
—What have you learned about yourself by interpreting this text?
—When I read the text, I thought that this guy was very far from me. I have not experienced the things that happen in the play very closely, but there are reminiscences of things that I have seen and that other people close to me have told me.
Before the premiere, hate messages began to arrive on social networks when the production was announced. For Fallarás, he says, his anxiety alert had gone off before, the day Díaz and Romero told him that the piece was going ahead. “The alarm that goes off in my mind is whether they are once again going to turn against me and what I do,” explains the author, who in the last year has received death threats from Vox followers. “But what caught my attention is that I suddenly realized that the same thing was happening to the men who participate in the play. It’s an alarm that they don’t know about.” Díaz himself recognizes it, he is not afraid, he explains, but he is worried about the possible reactions. “If this were a work about the army, about dog handlers or about serial killers, at no time would they be afraid,” adds the journalist. “The fear comes when you do a work written by a woman and that is also going to deal with the vulnerability of men. And that interests me very much.”