Riots, ecology and sexual transitions on another day of the Theater Festival in Brazil

Several very realistic Latin American theatrical performances were presented on Tuesday 13 September at the Ibero-American Festival of the Performing Arts, which takes place in Santos, Brazil.

They have also been exhibited in these works mergers with dance, video, photography, for example, increasingly used. This was the case with three very impressive works such as the Chilean Reminiscence; Argentina the woman I am; and Colombian The moon in the Amazon. Everyone was applauded in a packed hall in this sixth edition of the theatrical meeting.

Reminiscence it is one of the most original works seen here so far. Malicho Vaca Valenzuela has developed a pandemic project in which he worked on the personal and family memory and that of an entire generation that is now a protagonist in his country: kilos.

Malicho is the interpreter, director and author of this work that takes advantage of Google Earth to leave his home in full confinement and visit the important places of his life and see them in their current state. Also to reconstruct his political militancy in this century with audiovisual archives.

The artist lives in a shared but separate house with his grandparents, who participate in this experience that can be seen on a screen behind him as he recounts these key moments in his life with the boleros of the trio Los Panchos in the background.

“I wanted the screen to stop being a wall and somehow become what theater is, no, what is this image that opens up and with which you can emotionally dialogue and leave”, explains Malicho to Clarione.

political struggles

The work, which also generates an immersive atmosphere in beauty Armenian Mendes Theater de Santos, addresses the political struggles of the last 20 years that have seen Malicho protagonist since he was 14 in student protests which has gone through various street and digital expressive modes.

“In the process of creation we started from the idea that the most important thing was that we were in a social uprising in the midst of the reports of crimes for violation of the human rights and when this revolt was underway with a kilos appears by burning the pandemic ”.

And he continues: “Then there is something that was truncated and I started from there, trying to see if this revolution that we are experiencing and that we are all doing, can be maintained through this”.

Her grandmother’s Alzheimer’s causes both her grandson and her romantic husband Many things must be remembered every day, such as, for example, that Malicho is an artist and is preparing this documentary work that elevates them to protagonists of a personal and collective story.

A place apart deserves the discovery of material from the hospital archives where the director was born and its destruction to create new works in the “new” Santiago.

The theater applauded, rising, crying, this original work, an initiative of the Le Insolenti Theater Company emerged in 2013 with the premiere of the show Bolero of lost souls and is composed of the actors Malicho Vaca Valenzuela and Ébana Garín (also assistant director).

Argentine work

Meanwhile, in the exquisite Atlantico Hotel -in front of the sea of ​​Santos- the Argentine opera was presented the woman I am.

The staging developed in two different departments and at the same time surprised audiences from different countries who grew (and here yes, all with chin straps) to celebrate this staging of the Bombón Theater. Before the start, two trans girls invited the audience to enter one apartment first and then the other to complete the experience.

The mirrored structure is the precise frame to tell the stories of Mercedes and Martha at the same time. They were together, in another life, and now they live separately, but in adjacent environments. The one who breaks into this life separated by a wall is Cecilia, their daughter he comes with a suspicious new girlfriend.

Hero Maiamar Abrodos, Daniela Pal, Mayra Homar Y Silvia Villazur and directed by Nelson Valente, the work subtly exposes the gender transition of one of the protagonists: “all this has changed, Martha,” Mercedes points out and points to her body. The work continues in the corridors of the hotel which turns a century this year.

This work was part of the Bombón Vecinal project, a festival site specific of short films made by artists and neighbors, in co-production with FIBA ​​- Buenos Aires International Festival, with the support of the Cultural Patronage.

Audiovisual technology, combined with dance

Already at the end of the day, the Colombian company was presented in the central auditorium of the Festival Theater map with a work that combined the use of audiovisual technologies with dance and even musical interpretations that gave the representation of a multifaceted problem a postmodern operatic character.

An openwork map showed the enormous size of the Amazon which includes the territories of almost all South American countries. And of all political tensions.

The directors Heidi Y Rolf Abderhalden to relate the current situation with that of the late nineteenth century, when an indigenous community deliberately isolated itself from the violent intrusion of settlers in its territory in the Colombian Amazon. In 2019 it was learned that there were indigenous communities in isolation for self-determination

Scientific and fictional texts, visual material, contemporary testimonies, electronic sounds and live music form the basis of a futuristic ethnofiction that blends history, present and curious anecdotes. To do this, they have collected stories from shamans, anthropologists, and testimony narratives that offer some indirect evidence.

Colombian actress Agned Brecke (of Norwegian origin) is one of the protagonists of the show and has also worked on the film Memory directed by the Taiwanese Apichatpong Weerasethakul and protagonist tilda swinton.

In the continuation of his trilogy Anatomy of violence in Colombiawhich illuminated various facets of the Colombian civil war, the filmmakers create a form of poetic resistance to the current situation of ideological and ecological violence.

They also explore these tense scenarios: are the destruction of the environment, the appropriation of areas of the jungle by multinationals, the murders of representatives of indigenous communities or environmental organizations, are they signs of a new colonization?

Meanwhile, in the rooms of the Sectionwhere the activities of the Festival are concentrated, an installation based on texts by Antonino Artaudbookshop with editorial exhibits dedicated to the theater, street performances, DJs who arrive when the night gets deep, continue to animate this luxuriant meeting of Ibero-American theater.

wd