2015 » Cuba » Section of Countries and Regions

Zona de riesgo / Risk Zone

(…) each man on the resentful work of cutting away the borders of the most beautiful island in the world, (…)

Cuban theatre, as an expression of a particular zone of both Cuban thinking and being, just like them, has been submitted to constant transformations. From a few years ago until today, a part of it has experienced some changes related to the relationships the performance establishes with the spectator; specifically, between the audience and the space in which performance takes place.

There are more and more performances and theatre groups that “come out” of the theatre building, installing them in galleries, basements, parks – not to mention traditional street performances here – private houses, yards and museum halls. All of it is caused by contemporary Cuban possibilities of expression in existent theatre spaces and performance production mechanisms.

The Cuban national exhibition in Section of Countries and Regions wants to concentrate on this urgency of taking theatre out in the Cuban scene.

It’s a fact that since more than 50 years ago, the “outside” has turned into an obsession for us, into a symbol, piercing all periods and guiding most sections of art and theatre within the Revolution process. Probably because of our condition of being an island or maybe because the relative lack of communications the “outside” has inevitably turned antonym and opposite to the “inside”. The concept and idea of “the outside” has a dramatic and tragic sense for us Cuban people. It means hope, but also means remoteness and death. It’s the “bad”, the “enemy”, the “dangerous unknown new” as opposed to the “good”, the “friend”, the “comfortable familiar old”. The “outside” for us always involves a sense of risk.

This urgent theatre often performs texts from contemporary foreign authors, young national authors or dramatic writing students from the Faculty of Theatre Arts. It is also always performed by young directors, who take these performances “out”, attempting to escape from the most conventional theatre concepts, and looking for a new scenic materiality based on the truthfulness of everyday life.

These groups and directors find new dialogues and new contexts for their narratives in the spaces out of the theatrical circuit, just like new relationships with the contemporary Cuban audience, whom the growing flow of information and visual culture from the “outside”, leaves them more disconcerted every time with most of the performances that take place in the country.

Once more, things from “the outside”: the young, the new, the foreign, the non-official set up as a zone of risk and experimentation. We still look at the “outside” with the same faith and the same suspicion, just like this we look at these new approaches to theatrical performances. As a new and promising possibility, the Cuban exposition in the Prague Quadrennial exhibits some of the performances that have been taken place – within these criteria - principally in the capital city. Our borders are then open to explore the “outside”, the constant obsession of a curator and a people.