20 Off-theatre Plays to See in Buenos Aires in October

Starring: Eugenia Guerty, Claudio Martínez Bel, César Bordón and Néstor Caniglia. Directed by Enrique Federman.

Twenty years after its premiere, No me dejes así returns to the stage with its original cast. The play brings three men and one woman together in a strange and emotional encounter whose reason is never fully explained.

Amid silences, tears, laughter and clichés that take unexpected turns, the play explores friendship, the passage of time and what remains even when words fail.

Where: Timbre 4, México 3554. Tickets.

Starring: Flor Orce, Florencia Pineda, Julia Nardozza, Florencia Patiño and Mirna Cabrera. Directed by Alfredo Allende.

Following Damas Bravas, the Síndrome de Eureka company returns to period fiction with a play set in a neighborhood shop in 1972. Against the political backdrop of those years, the revolution suddenly disrupts the shop's daily routine.

The space becomes a stage for clashes between ideas, desires and fears. A play that combines realism, vaudeville and musical theatre, with a focus on its female characters.

Where: Centro Cultural de la Cooperación, Av. Corrientes 1543. Tickets.

Starring: Amarella. Directed by Noralih Gago.

Carola lives life at full speed: she makes lists, answers messages, works, organizes herself and tries to keep up with everything as demands continue to pile up. Until something begins to fall out of place and forces her to stop.

Written by Amarella and Guido Zappacosta, Ahora Carola is a comedy about time, urgency and the difficulty of being truly present in the place you occupy.

Where: Nün Teatro Bar, Juan Ramírez de Velazco 419. Tickets.

Starring: Fernanda Penas, Ezequiel Martínez, Lautaro Disi, Micaela Oro and Luciano Diani. Directed by Paolo Giulian.

In a town where what people say carries weight in every decision, the Benavídez family tries to maintain a sense of normality that is beginning to crumble. Nora, the matriarch, keeps a secret that her children—and the entire town—seem to know.

The arrival of Marcos, the son who left in search of his own identity, puts everything back up for debate. The play addresses homophobia, transphobia and family relationships shaped by prejudice, silence and a lack of empathy.

Where: El Tinglado, Mario Bravo 948. Tickets.

Starring: Noelia Prieto, Valeria Giorcelli and Karina Elsztein. Directed by Macarena García Lenzi.

In an intensive care unit, two night-shift nurses make a mistake that ends in a fatality. When the head nurse arrives after taking part in a union protest, she discovers what happened and becomes trapped with them on the boundary between life and death.

In the style of a dark comedy, La Paciencia focuses on the physical and psychological toll of working exhausting shifts under precarious conditions.

Where: El Camarín de las Musas, Mario Bravo 960. Tickets.

Starring: Federico Aballi, Gonzalo Alonso, Jerónimo Bustelo, Lucía Capon Paul, Mara Fernández and cast. Directed by Maite Velo.

Written by Alberto Ajaka, Llegó la música is a comedy about a chamber orchestra from a municipal theatre preparing for a crucial performance: two foreign programmers could open the door to a European tour. Rehearsals become increasingly complicated by strikes, disgruntled neighbors, poor working conditions and an eccentric substitute conductor, while the musicians try to be ready for a concert in which much more than a good performance is at stake.

Where: Timbre 4, México 3554. Tickets.

Starring: Verónica Pelaccini. Directed by Lautaro Vilo.

Guadalupe is dealing with her daughter's final year of high school, preparations for her wedding and the exhaustion of a job that has left her drained. An unexpected visit from an old friend from her past pulls her out of her routine, and together they embark on a journey that quickly becomes strange, dangerous and revealing. El Mal follows a woman who begins to question the life she has built and faces the possibility of changing it completely.

Where: Caras y Caretas, Sarmiento 2037. Tickets.

Starring: Raquel Ameri. Directed by Paola Luttini.

A play in which motherhood appears far removed from its idealized image, with its desires, contradictions, losses and more uncomfortable sides. Drawing on the personal story of a woman marked by the early death of her brother, the play explores the expectations, guilt and contradictions surrounding motherhood. Featuring audiovisual material recorded over several years, it moves through love, exhaustion, desire and the need to remain oneself.

Where: Nün Teatro Bar, Juan Ramírez de Velazco 419. Tickets.

Starring: María Marchi and Julio Viera. Directed by Fabi Maneiro.

Written by Gonzalo Demaría, Deshonrada imagines a clandestine interrogation of Fanny Navarro, one of the major figures of Argentine cinema, in the early hours following the 1955 coup d'état. Her relationship with Eva Perón, her romance with Juan Duarte and the rumors surrounding her become the focus of a confrontation with a mysterious inquisitor who calls himself Captain Gandhi. The interrogation soon turns into a moral trial shaped by power and fanaticism, as the actress struggles to preserve the only thing she has left: her sanity.

Where: Andamio 90, Paraná 662. Tickets.

Starring: Santiago Fracarolli, Juan Azar and Irene Almus. Directed by Mariana Giovine.

Set between the 1930s and the 1960s, Espumas de Oriente tells the story of two radio drama actors who meet while working together and begin a romantic relationship. As Mecha Dalbón watches her career decline with the arrival of television, young Fernán Pelesucci begins to gain ground in the new medium. Their stories intersect with that of Argentine radio drama, amid tenement houses, live tango performances and a fiction that gradually becomes confused with reality.

Where: Centro Cultural de la Cooperación, Av. Corrientes 1543. Tickets.

Starring: Lorena Damonte, Agustina Triano, Verónica Mayorga and Gonzalo Bourren. Directed by Carolina Sturla and Laura Eva Avelluto.

In the days leading up to the opening of a major exhibition, the ex-wife, daughter and collaborators of eccentric visual artist Catalano try to survive his provocations, whims and creative delusions. When the boundaries between art and life begin to blur, the family chaos is exposed. The second joint creation by Carolina Sturla and Laura Eva Avelluto, Mujer suspendida is a comedy set in the 1990s that questions the authenticity of art, the boundaries between public and private life, and family expectations.

Where: El Camarín de las Musas, Mario Bravo 960. Tickets.

Starring and directed by: Guillermo Ghio.

A stage adaptation of the novel of the same name by August Strindberg, telling the story of a writer who returns to his country while struggling with writer's block and retreats into solitude to reconsider his life, relationships and decisions. Featuring offstage voices by Celeste Cid and Carlos Portaluppi, the play presents solitude as a space for reflection and personal discovery.

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Where: Ítaca Complejo Teatral, Humahuaca 4027. Tickets.

Starring: Jorge Capussotti, Guido D'Albo and Patricia Guillermina Rozas. Directed by Norberto Gonzalo.

Rather than presenting a monumental portrait, this play approaches José de San Martín during his final days, imagining him from an intimate perspective. Through a fictional conversation with his friend Tomás Guido and the presence of his daughter Mercedes, it leaves the major historical events in the background to focus on the memories, affections, doubts and convictions of the man behind the national hero.

Where: Teatro La Máscara, Piedras 736. Tickets.

Starring: María Rosa Frega, Francisco González Gil, Javier Marra, Santiago Otero Ramos and Nacho Pérez. Directed by Tatiana Santana.

Titina, Marosa and Urania live shut away in a mansion on Paraná Street, clinging to a routine that seems to exist apart from what is happening outside. A maid, a cow that refuses to give milk, messages that act as omens and the unexpected arrival of a pianist disrupt this fragile balance. Tres pálidas hermanas brings together two periods of time that gradually begin to blur, as the secrets of the house come to light.

Where: Milion, Paraná 1048. Tickets.

Starring: Mariana Arrupe, Ana María Castel, Nahuel López and Mario Mahler. Directed by Sara Mon.

Harriet Robinson, an older woman with a singular personality, arrives at a historian's office with a proposal capable of turning his life—and the lives of those around him—upside down. From that encounter, La tortuga de Darwin, by Juan Mayorga, builds a dramatic comedy that plays with the relationship between memory, history and truth. With humor and unexpected situations, it asks who writes history and what can be left out of official accounts.

Where: El Método Kairós, El Salvador 4530. Tickets.

Starring: Ariel Azcárate, Facundo García, Víctor Gómez, Pablo Lyonnet, Triana Menéndez, Irene Pérez Diatto and cast. Directed by Pablo Lyonnet.

Chichí is 70 years old and has a very specific problem: she has no private health insurance and needs to get herself admitted to a clinic. To help her daughter, she decides to pretend to be her daughter-in-law's mother-in-law so that her son-in-law, a doctor at the clinic, will admit her. The plan soon turns into a tangle of identities, lies and absurd situations that push everyone to the brink of chaos.

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Where: Alquimia Centro Cultural, Dr. Emilio Ravignani 1408. Tickets.

Starring: Victoria Barone, Julieta Billaud, Ana Bori, Coni Dodorico, Darío Fernández, Charo Gejo and cast. Directed by Santino Santos Laya.

Fifty years after the Night of the Pencils, El lápiz no se borra returns for a new season to revisit the story of a group of teenagers from La Plata in 1975. Through songs, dancing, friendships and first loves, its characters navigate a political climate that transforms their lives. The play offers a perspective on youth, memory, the defense of democratic values and human rights.

Where: Poncho Teatro, Leopoldo Marechal 1219. Tickets.

Starring: Ernesto Falcke, Natalia Pascale, Pablo Shinji and Matías Turina. Directed by: Héctor Levy and Daniel.

Traición, by Harold Pinter, follows the seven-year clandestine relationship between a woman and her husband's best friend. As the relationship between the three changes, the play reconstructs the story in reverse chronology: it begins in 1977 and goes back to 1968. Through encounters and conversations filled with silences, Pinter explores desire, infidelity and the different forms betrayal can take.

Where: Ítaca Complejo Teatral, Humahuaca 4027. Tickets.

Starring: Juan Pablo Rebuffi, Verónika Ayanz Peluffo, Germán Tirini, Florencia Rey, Daiana Fossati, Ian Mignone and Sofía Ojeda. Directed by Osvaldo Peluffo.

The second chapter of La trilogía argentina, which began with Ravioles, No matarás (del otro lado) reconstructs, through biodramatic fiction, the assassination of Cesáreo Cardozo, head of the Argentine Federal Police, carried out by a Montonero group in 1976. The play draws on real events and testimonies from people who lived through the period, and takes as one of its starting points the letters of Oscar del Barco. Through the memories of a militant and his comrades, the production revisits the political violence of the 1970s and its consequences.

Where: Muy Teatro, Humahuaca 4310. Tickets.

Starring: Laura Eugenia Molinuevo, Carmen Augusta Bermúdez and Julia Soledad Morales. Directed by Mariano Martín González.

Based on Francisco Fernández García's 1896 play, Pretensiones de un burgués brings together the history of the labor movement, theatre and mysticism at a public university in Buenos Aires. Amid a strike and the possibility of a student occupation, two teachers receive an exiled researcher and end up involved in the appearance of an ancestor's ghost, who demands that they stage an old proletarian play. Fiction, family documents and delirious situations come together in a production that plays with humor, memory and history.

Where: Teatro El Grito, Costa Rica 5459. Tickets.