tlf news

Vol. xxv #3

December, 2004



Celebration




Some people say that today is the day
When the wind will rise and blow the world away.
And it may be so, I just don't know.
All I know is up until we have to go
I want to celebrate every day.

As I write this, the muchachos are in final stages of rehearsals for Navidad Nuestra, one of the two pieces that will make up our December Christmas season, and the close of the year-long celebration of our 25th anniversary.

Cristy Lucía Barahona dances the lead of this year's version of A Dancer's Christmas. Cristy was born the year teatro la fragua was celebrating it's tenth anniversary, 1989. Her father, Edy Barahona, was a ticket-taker for the first show in 1979, and is now associate director. Her mother, Lizeth Caballero, was an actress for a year; this year she has taken over as administrator of the ballet school.

As is fitting for an anniversary, it was a year of "something old, something new." The new show of 2004 was Los de la Mesa 10, by the Argentine playwright Oswaldo Dragún. His play Historias para ser contadas has been in our repertory since 1983; Rigoberto Fern ández and I met him in a workshop in Havana in 1992. I had discovered the text of Los de la Mesa 10 20 years ago, and had wanted to stage it from the first time I read it. We finally got around to that.

We continued to host other groups from outside Progreso. Teatro La Eme from Mexico City presented the Cuban work La Noche de los Asesinos. I had gotten in contact with this group in my trips to give workshops in the National Theatre School; centred in the world's largest city, this is a group very similar in its aims to our own, and has produced actors who have gone on to graduate from the National Theatre School and are active in the professional theatre life of Mexico. And Teatro Bambú from Tegucigalpa proved that The Bald Soprano can still confuse people as much as it did back in 1950 on its opening night in Paris. ("I really liked it, but I don't have any idea what it's about.")

Our old friend Guillermo Anderson sang for a week-end and presented his new CD. A jazz group, made up of six young musicians from the National Music School in Tegucigapla, Hibridus Jazz, combined with the Ballet School for a night of jazz in music and dance. We hope that this marks the beginning of a long collaboration with this group of brilliant young musicians.

And all the normal things continued: Un Poquito de Música Nocturna, our daily radio show of classical and world music; regular workshops for groups in the barrios of Progreso and in the villages of the north coast; our regular Sunday series of movies for children, our alternative film series both here in Progreso and in San Pedro Sula; Atrapados en Azul, our showcase for young Progreso poets.

Some old friends, Gene Sessa, Larry Reuter, and Deborah Cohen, visited for a short time this year. A new one, Gonzalo Penche, an acting student in Madrid, spent six weeks acting with us; and Robert Dolan sj spent a fortnight photographing (you can see some of the results of his labour in the 2005 calendar).

International excursions were limited, as we decided early on to concentrate the anniversary year on the city that is our home base. There were two trips to Guatemala, and in December there will be another to Managua. Both Guatemala trips featured the Emergency Theatre Cuentos Infantiles; the two trips were directed to opposing poles of the socio-economic spectrum of Guatemala. The first, in May, was to the indigenous Mayan area of the Ixcán, where we have been working extensively the last couple of years; the second was to the capital, to the Liceo Javier, the Jesuit high school which produces the future professionals of the country, and in coordination with whom we are trying to build a theatre program that can serve as a model for all the Jesuit high schools of Central America.

Some people say that tonight is the night
When the bird will fly and eat away the light.

An anniversary is a strange thing, really: fictitious, a result of numerical constructs that rule our lives. It doesn't change anything, nothing special happens. We just feel it as a milestone and as a psychological cue to look back on how things have changed over the years. The extent of that change was brought home to me by a recent visit of Tim Kaine and his wife Ann. Tim had gotten to know the teatro back in 1980 - and was first of all surprised at how easy it was suddenly to have e-mail contact as opposed to those years of two week waits for a letter to arrive.

And there is a newer Honduras. Its fundamental flaws persist, but there has been improvement from the country I encountered for the first time almost 30 years ago. There are a few more jobs, a few more paved roads, a few more livable communities.

The teatro - in all its manifestations - has tried to speak for the souls of the people of Honduras, to counter the ever-greater influence of the bombardment of foreign images, to help people rediscover their unique cultural identity in the face of economic and cultural globalism.

And the teatro has changed. Its members have matured from street kids to family men and women; they own their own modest homes, and are respected as the working professionals they are. Their older children are now teenagers, confident and visible youth leaders in their churches, schools and communities.

The teatro as an enterprise suddenly finds itself being one of the most resilient and resourceful small businesses in Central America, a stable member of the local business community and one of El Progreso's most reliable employers, with a regular payroll of 24 people who are responsible for 72 dependents.

tlf has suffered innumerable crises in its 25 years of life. And each time we recovered to play again for the citizens of El Progreso, or to conduct workshops for rural peasants in Guatemala, or to share the magic of imagination with urban street kids in Mexico City. And the young people of Progreso write poetry and music.

An anniversary serves as a moment to take stock of those changes, and to be aware of the deep and significant evolution that has taken place in and out of the teatro - in large part because of the help of thousands of people in various parts of the world.

Thanks to all who have been part of our history, who have been celebrating with us, who have contributed their part in our survival these 25 years. And all the best for the celebration of this holiday season.

Some people say that today is the day
When the cold will come and never go away;
When the bird will fly, the wind will blow.
But something deep inside me says it can't be so.
I want to celebrate, I want to savour each sensation.
Something deep inside says beneath the snow
There's a tiny seed and it's gonna grow.
I want to celebrate every day.





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