In the presence of Minister of Culture of Cuba Abel Prieto, the president of the Casa de las Americas, Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Dr. Rolando González Patricio, president of the University of the Arts, the House managers, actors Yuyachkani Cultural Group, playwrights and Cuban students, the Peruvian director Miguel Rubio received an Honorary Doctorate of Arts from the University of the Arts, Cuba.
Manuel Galich in the room, intimate and historical space where, for over five decades, have found Latin American and Caribbean artists, Miguel Rubio received the highest distinction of the important house of studies. Accompanied by his colleagues Yuyachkani life and background Peruvian music played by actors of the group, Miguel received the diploma accredits you in that category from the Minister Abel Prieto, a sign of Allpa Rayku, collective creation in 1978 and the which the group did not retain any copies, and a collection of the latest discs produced by the Casa de las Americas.
Dr. Raquel Carrio, who was linked by strong ties of affection and Michael and Yuyackkani professionals, was responsible for the words of praise. Both speeches, both of Miguel as Rachel, revealed the profound sense of doing theater in Latin America today, the unquestionable duty of fighter essence, challenging and provocative. Miguel was dismantling its own path, which is also the Yuyachkani through influences, hidden and visible dialogues with the great masters that underpin its theatrical discourse.
Meanwhile, Rachel, a license that solved it brilliantly between the academic and emotional, spoke from the heart from memory, from the vivid testimony, but also from art, theater crafts, the method and system of signs and meanings for four decades has fostered notable Peruvian group.
Window reproduced below Miguel Rubio's intervention during the ceremony.
Theatre and our America
Words Miguel Rubio in the imposition of Honorary Doctor of Arts from the University of the Arts, Casa de las Americas on Tuesday May 11, 2010.
Thanks teacher, colleague and friend Raquel Carrio for your generous words. Thanks to the Casa de las Americas and the ISA for this award I share with my colleagues from Yuyachkani. Partners
time and light wind to whom I owe my learning. For forty years I am an observer of their growth, their autonomy as artists, authors, actors in their creation, on behalf of each of them make me this award.
is just too from this podium to pay tribute to teachers who formed us, some without knowing it, as Luis Valdez and Teatro Campesino, an inspiration to us.
Augusto Boal, Vicente Revuelta, Flora Lauten, Santiago García, Enrique Buenaventura, Osvaldo Dragun, Rosa Luisa Marquez, Antunes Filho, Eugenio Barba, they all live in us.
In this, our Casa de las Americas, understood and felt that I am part of a Latin American and modern theatrical traditions that emerged in our America in the middle of last century.
What is the Latin American theater now? I've ever heard this question many times and sometimes I've had to try to answer it without having very clear what to say. And now back to question, since it is an interest, a curiosity that somehow persists.
I have the impression sometimes usually address that question with a grand verbalization, somewhat weary attitude that repeats, or half answers such as to exit the step. At other times the answer is to ignore the question, or seek long pass speed outputs.
Beyond the silence as an option or the flight to the question, often heard voices replies relating to the subject as something strong emergence, as if nothing had changed in fifty years or, on the other end, presenting the Latin American theater and overcome old theme on which we have little or nothing to say.
When the conversation is geared towards these extremes, the breath is short and interest quickly slides into issues considered as 'most current', 'less complicated' or discourse is brought into the realm of aesthetics or art, of course, out of context .
And, of course, we know that much water has flowed under the bridge, the time has not passed in vain and they do not live just in time to withstand light or categorical statements address the complex situations which we live.
Indeed I feel part of this uncertainty, and somehow I join the conflict in a definition that brings us closer to a place that reflects the time.
This place, this new country we call "Latin American Theater", is showing signs of insurgency in the middle of last century. This is a paradigm, a dream shared by many, a great illusion and also result in the conviction of knowing that part of a great theatrical revolution that walked the path of a great social revolution that was sung and we had no doubt about its ability and its imminence.
Like any artistic phenomenon, our practice was accompanied by simplifications, of volunteerism, of rhetoric, etc. In half a century the foundations thereof we call the modern tradition of Latin American theater has gone through many stages in our theaters have continued to operate on the content and the audience in very different ways.
Our difficulties to assume the assets and liabilities of that memory should not lead to the claim of being "modern" including the cost of omitting this recent history, as if we could build the new omitting the experience.
Who've come a long or short distance along this road, we have an obligation to lead us especially young people dissatisfied with the theater that they inherited, to tell you that some of us are so that we Tired of categorical statements that affirm or deny absolutely, to tell the world that we can be without giving up our village, that Godot has relatives who are waiting in these lands, that Antigone has many sisters here as children and brothers Arthur Mother Courage Ui, of course.
Time has not passed in vain and the survivors of Latin American theater have known relativize our assumptions, so we're still alive.
We must make every effort to not get sick of oblivion, without even so much history has prevented us find a balance between past and future. Walking in the weights that are moved between a seemingly obsessed Latin America to look at its history and the particularities that distinguish it in the world, and a Latin America that seems to have inclined rather to positions where the prevailing economic model that supports globalization "at any cost", although part of the price can be the future of mankind.
The teatreros previously exhibited with pride to be part of this' exotic paradise "and" cradle of revolution ", it seems that we now have great difficulty knowing who we are and where we stand.
a witness I feel privileged to have lived close to times when there was no doubt the subject and which proudly endorsed the vitality of Latin American theater.
I have met teachers and groups part of the story, the founders of modern theatrical tradition is primarily supported collective creation where we learned to invent knowing that the culture is growing in every moment of life.
I can recognize very specific characteristics that made us similar, while different, as are the various ways of the theater in our continent. With them, and thanks to them, we know the momentum of collective creation, the Group Theatre, and we have new opportunities to the scene.
The emergence of new protagonists of new stories, new actors, new audiences and new places, has involved the development of a new and complex drama, able to contain so much diversity.
is a whole set of signals which put us in a process in which we acknowledged in a woven and filled with a diverse, as are our cultures, and within that diversity we witnessed confluent and Once part of a growing movement.
Sometimes we have reason for our theater is associated with an idyllic view, naïve, associating identity with a nostalgic and anchored in the past, and whose therefore some simplification is certainly generates rejection.
This leads to another equally extreme position is just nowhere to differences and similarities or common factors. I can understand that the basis of this attitude is a rejection, which I share a certain look that combines Latin American theater to a kind of expression less, vernacular and customs.
In many European festivals macondo wanted to see in our work, if not sensual or exotic Amazonian plains.
On the other side, some colleagues who do not find sufficient grounds to speak of Latin American theater prefer to refer to this as the theater is done in Latin America, that simple, period. Others, in order to support an original theatrical prefer to take refuge in pre-Hispanic origins, as if it were possible that culture could be kept unchanged over time.
To find links that allow us to speak of a Latin American theater for us to look critically and with as little bias as possible, almost forgotten our recent history. Thus we see how essential it great strength and vitality of our theater was made possible by the unprecedented combination of large movements generated by actors, writers, directors, playwrights and artists from all disciplines.
The stem cell group was that we manage to gestate the new theatricality that we demanded loudly and had to march with the times that they lived, where a collective sense prevailed. This occurred in parallel with other creative agencies showed signs of fiery presence as the so-called boom of literature, dance, the new Latin American cinema, photography, film, visual arts, etc.
This certainly was a fundamentally political and aesthetic act that was under intense political and social context. The artists explicitly or not, were reflecting the hope of mobilizing our people determined to take charge of their history. And there, beside them, not by chance, the theater people were inventing auroras, as I said a Nicaraguan popular song of the day.
I realize that this is a story more or less known to the people of my generation, so that I can refer to it by quoting a few episodes to see what we mean when the audience is contemporary to me. At the same time I check the difficulty that causes me to pass this memory to young students, who in this story only seem to have a pale reflection. Abounds including ignorance of that period not so far away and, of course, young people have every right to live their present without charge with a past that is not theirs.
However, I must say that the younger generation should give some curiosity to know what their parents did. Knowing they could be useful to eliminate ghosts, better placed in this and keep working, no weights and no dark areas in memory, in a good theater that we deserve.
We come from troubled times but I think more now. Trying to look forward means from my point of view not only recognize in ourselves the possibility of imagining the future, invent, and not just accept what comes to us as if it were given part of a natural order compelling. It also implies knowing where we came to know that we have saved memory on what we call Latin American Theater, which now appears as an elusive area and, when not unknown in our history, our biography.
This means also to give a comprehensive perspective that allows us to not only see texts and authors, but also movement, displacement. The shows can be landmarks of this recognition, but at the same time we can approach the creative process, not only their results but also the educational guidelines. We could see how this has operated in recent history.
If we take as a starting point the last half century, we would see a movement in progress, a theater that is released to invent, to recognize its peculiarities as a result of a large and rich cultural diversity, and at the same time we would see new social sectors traditionally depressed sticking his head as public, as maker and key partner.
is not my intention to make a historical claim but the remaining task of rescue and reconstruction of a report which comprehensively attend our history in all its multiple dimensions.
In my opinion, the best, if we can speak of better times, or rather, moments of great strength and uniqueness in this history have been those that our theater has been part of the struggles of our people for taking a better life. Then, at the time, we dared to recognize ourselves in our uniqueness and to invent creative drama we needed, without being obliged to march to the beat of hegemonic cultures.
If I stay with something essential in this process experienced since the middle of last century, with the exercise of the theater as a space for creation, for our old teachers taught us to invent. That was the fundamental lesson. Opening to the invention is what has allowed us to change and transit through the various paths to learn and to know that being at the right time to get closer to genuine forms of theatricality born of the need to communicate. That was the road I've traveled with my group Yuyachkani and our story is an episode, a small part of the history of Latin American theater.
impulses that gave rise to radical and confrontational theater of mid-century, not from any voluntary effort or the dialectical operation of ideology. Its roots, which is explained and allowed it to be, they sink into the story and come from the need to refute the cultural and political imposition arising of conquest. The European theater was imposed in disregard of the forms of representation that lived in these lands, which at best were identified with Western categories, and many of them proscribed theological arguments converged with the needs of conquest and domination. During the conquest and colonialism, to the exclusion of indigenous people, whose status as human beings was even questioned by the official ideology corresponded to the exclusion of cultural and artistic practices. The latter processes can not be considered completed even today.
The colonial mission that could not be eradicated was built to internalize the values \u200b\u200bof Catholicism using for it the elements of representation present in dance, music and image, which subsequently will be treated in great displays holidays, beginning and mix levels and syncretism with which we live today and those that support the meeting of pre-Hispanic and Christian rituals in a combination of diverse origin. Raise public awareness of how this mechanism operates is fundamental to understanding syncretic mixing and hybridization of cultural processes in constant movement.
During the colony, many forms of pre-Hispanic representation took molds according to parameters of Western theater, ie, the "gender" natives encountered by the conquest were defined with reference to a cultural canon English, leading this dispossession of the original forms and neutering of which the essence of ephemeral event, in some cases and sacred ritual.
This is history and worth remembering because it is currently performing practices remain unaware that do not correspond to cultural hegemony. It therefore seems fair to say a theatrical complex that has to do with recognizing an inclusive identity.
dramatic forms of pre-Hispanic origin are similar to Asian genres such as drama Chinese, Japanese, Indian, where, for example, there is no separation between actor and dancer, and where the focus is on experience of what generated in the scene before it is narrated, which is often a pretext on which link codes that make up a complex entity.
We Antonin Artaud, Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook and Eugenio Barba, among others, have been redesigned and expanded the criteria for access to other levels of understanding of the practical stage. They conducted a careful look into the sacred, ritual and anthropology, dug into cultures from Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean. This look is returned to us as a mirror in whose reflection we have not yet sufficiently confronted with that mighty scenic imagination dwells among us from the origins of our civilization.
Theatre is a cultural construction that comes from values \u200b\u200bdetermined according to the community where it generates, in response to specific social relations, as were those that operated at different times in history. The theater that comes from Spain is the theater of the father, who came and imposed on the theater of the mother, the pre-Hispanic America, created in ritual contexts, celebrations, play, dance, masquerade. These forms are still alive and have crossed the time with a mythology that sustains them and where you build unrepeatable events that evoke ancient ways of representation.
New generations are not performing models and our borders are healthy moves, there are areas more and more indefinite and these new audiences, all located within a framework expanded and trans-cultural universal.
is necessary that the language of our profession do not resist using new terms and that we go to meet a theatrical complex, that has to do with recognition in all shades of inclusive identity, where are the elements of a pre-Hispanic America, and in her hybrid, conceptual art, the artist objects and subjects of his work denial of representation, the intervention of public spaces, environments, the appropriation of technology, etc. All these entries are meaningful and relevant as objects of exploration, because of the complexity of our society, where citizenship, exclusion, corruption and racism are the object of ongoing demand.
The good theater will always be one who works in the codes their community without giving up the complex relationship between reality and artifice.
The Latin America and Caribbean is not one, is indigenous, it is African, European and contemporary is open to all practices performing XXI century, our theater runs the spirit of the three continents and culturally feeds the three roots and talks with them on equal footing with theaters around the world.
Miguel Rubio
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