From the Executive Director
Bogotá and Beyond
By Teresa Eyring
My first true spark of interest in Colombia was inspired by the founder of Cabellos Hair Salon in New York, who talks passionately about the beauty and cultural richness of his native land. Until hearing his stories, I hadn't thought much about Colombia. I'd perhaps been influenced by popular media that typically portrays that part of the world as a haven for drug lords and danger—not a place to go for fun, or to explore a rapidly evolving arts scene.
Then, over lunch one day in 2007, the agent Harold Norris of H-Art Management urged me to attend the Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Bogotá. In all of my years in the theatre business, I'd never heard of this event—which is one of the largest international theatre festivals in the world. I was curious and signed up, wishing to bust through some of the isolation that can beset me as a theatre practitioner in the U.S. On the eve of the festival's opening, a border skirmish with Venezuela was transpiring, raising the question of whether the festival would go on. But FITB's fearless founder Fanny Mickey pronounced that nothing could stop the show. Fanny died in August of '08, but this spirit of ferocity continues to infuse the entire enterprise, now under the leadership of Ana Marta de Pizarro (see story here).
Last fall, TCG polled its membership to see who might be interested in joining a delegation to Bogotá's 2010 festival. Reflecting the ever-increasing interest in global collaboration among theatremakers, the response was strong and enthusiastic. TCG's delegation ultimately numbered 24 people (listed at www.tcg.org/international)—representing a geographically diverse range of theatres, as well as a variety of structures and aesthetics. Through the VIA program, currently headed by David Melo, each delegate met with 50 or 60 different theatremakers and musicians through a "speed-dating" process in the mornings, going on to attend outdoor theatre in the afternoons, productions in the evenings and music presentations into the wee hours. It was inspiring and eye-opening for the U.S.-based participants. And the five days also offered great opportunities for networking within the U.S. delegation itself.
Colombia is just under the size of two Texases, but it feels much bigger, and it is wildly diverse. It has Pacific and Atlantic coasts, Andes Mountains, Amazon forest and 10 percent of the world's biodiversity, including 130,000 species of plants. Bogotá itself is filled with an amazing array of trees, including some that could've been pulled from the brain of Dr. Seuss. This density of plant life is rivaled by the country's range of artistic expression. The culture minister, Paula Marcela Moreno Zapata, reports that there are some 5,000 dance companies at work in the country, and 1,250 music groups just in the poorest neighborhoods of Medellín. The musical range extends from more traditional salsas, cumbias and currulaos to new hybrids represented by bands such as El Systema Solar, a musical-visual collective located on the Caribbean coast, and Bambarabanda, which defines itself as a band ("rock fusion of the Andes") as well as a theatre organization. In the established theatre world, companies such as Teatro La Candelaria, Teatro Petra, Teatro Libre and Mapa Teatro are being joined by newer enterprises, including Pedro Salazar's La Compañía Estable, Javier Gutiérrez's Colectivo Inédita and the Buenaventura-based Jóvenes Creadores del Litoral, which was formed to build an Afro-Colombian identity "from experiences and points of view on stage," led by Manuel Francisco Viveros and Diego Fernando Burgos.
In addition to joining the official festival activities, TCG was part of a few historic gatherings. On March 27, I flew to the city of Armenia, in the heart of coffee country, to attend a meeting of Colombia's National Playwrights Network. Spearheaded by the playwright and director Pedro Miguel Rozo, with funding from the Ministry of Culture, the network operates in four cities: Bogotá, Cali, Manizales and Armenia. This playwrights' convening, held in nearby La Tebaida, coincided with Armenia's Festival Internacional de Teatro Sagrado. Among the assembled were about 30 people who are, or are studying to be, playwrights. They expressed their interest in learning from U.S.-based playwrights and play-development processes, as well as in accessing U.S. plays in translation.
In another session in Bogotá, we conversed with a variety of Colombian culture officials about "Artplan," a concept designed to increase cultural dialogue and exchange between Colombia and the U.S. Separately, members of the TCG delegation spent a day exchanging ideas about new work and international collaboration with veterans such as Jorge Ali Triana, Fabio Rubiano and Victor Viviescas, as well as representatives of the newer guard, including Ella Fuksbrauner, Veronica Triana, Carlos Maria Romero, Natalia Guarnizo and Andrea Beltrán.
In all these conversations, we realized how much we have in common in terms of challenges: audience development, funding, access and opportunity for women and artists of diverse backgrounds, compensation for artists. But we also share tremendous optimism about the work itself and new opportunities for collaboration.
A marketing campaign to change the world's perception of Colombia uses the motto "Colombia es pasión," and states that the only real "danger" there is that you won't want to leave. We did manage to pry most of our delegation members out of Colombia at the end of the festival's VIA program, but I am certain that many will be going back before too long.
P.S.: In this issue of American Theatre, Colombia is just the jumping-off point for exploring the vastness of Latin American theatre. If you find your interest piqued, check out the extraordinary work of the NYU-based Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, which has for years been tracking, presenting and documenting performance activity all across the Americas.
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