Vol. xxviii #3

September, 2007

-- Willie Gould

My relationship with teatro la fragua began in 1987 when my dad Peter Gould and his performing partner Stephen Stearns came to Honduras as cultural ambassadors from the state of Vermont. They toured the country for a month with their clown and mime duet. Jack Warner had previously read their play A Peasant of El Salvador and arranged to bring them to El Progreso. As a kid I remember watching video footage of their performances in Honduras and hearing stories about their tour. My uncle, who accompanied the duo during the month, got sick and upon his return to the states passed his infection on to three-year-old me. So you could say that from a very young age I have carried a piece of Honduras and la fragua with me. I grew up seeing the annual calendar in our kitchen, always right around the corner from our telephone. I used to think that fragua was Spanish for frog. Luckily, before I reached Honduras, my dad explained to me that it actually means forge. That would have been embarrassing.

Finally, 20 years after my dad's visit, it was my turn to come to teatro la fragua. During my last year at Wesleyan University I was awarded the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship to pursue a year-long independent theater project across Europe and Central and South America. My dad contacted Jack who graciously invited me to come and join the group. I set out on my adventure in July 2006. Ten months and seven countries later I arrived in El Progreso.

I came to la fragua two days after they opened a new version of Cuentos Hondureños (Honduran Stories), a staple in their repertoire since the 80s. Cuentos is a secular piece centered on Central American culture and mythology. It features an indigenous myth about the origin of corn, an adaptation of the poem "Los Motivos del Lobo" (The Wolf's Motives) by Nicaraguan Ruben Dario, and a story about Tio Conejo and Tio Coyote (The Central American equivalents of Br'er Rabbit and Br'er Fox).

During this past year I have seen a lot of plays, from ampitheaters in Greece to the Royal Shakespeare Company in England to the Fringe Festival in Scotland to the great theaters and street performances of Santiago, Buenos Aires, and Rio de Janeiro. Yet to me, seeing Cuentos Hondureños for the first time was a breath of fresh air. With minimal costumes, no sets, few props, amazing corporal expression, and simple scripts the show seemed more alive than much of the theater that I have seen in my travels. But what struck me the most was the reaction from the audience, a group of local high school students. They yelled and whistled and cat-called and laughed and clapped. Cuentos is not some esoteric piece of art theater that nobody can understand. It is truly a play for the people. In its simple representation of Honduran and Central American culture and mythology, it is something that the average audience member here can easily identify with and delight in. Although--being a gringo--I did not understand all of the references and jokes, my first few days at la fragua were spent sitting in the audience laughing my head off at the work of my new friends. Luckily, I did not have to wait long to join in the fun.

After rehearsing the show once I was sent on tour with the company to a small town in the mountains. My part was not too difficult. I was only accompanying the cast on guitar in two of the stories. But I was still nervous. "Don't worry", Jack told me. "The critics in Yoro are not too tough. It's not New York." Indeed. The town did not even have a stoplight.

Early into my second week Jack called me into his office. They were restructuring Cuentos Hondureños. Could I entertain the crowd while the cast changed costumes between cuentos? I jumped at the chance. Two days later I appeared at la fragua for the first time as Tampico el Payaso (Tampico the Clown) and performed for a theater full of high school students. Little by little word of the gringo clown spread through town. I was interviewed on "Buenos Dias Progreso," a Friday morning television talk show, and by Friday night people were showing up to the theater who already knew the chorus to my original Spanish hip-hop version of the "Three Little Pigs" (Los Tres Chanchitos). Needless to say, with my pale skin, jew 'fro, and blue eyes I stand out quite a bit here. While biking through the streets people began to recognize me and yell "Tampico" at me from sidewalks and passing cars.

It did not take me long to settle in at la fragua. In addition to acting in Cuentos Hondureños, I started to teach clown and juggling workshops to the company and together we began to develop a clown piece based on more cuentos of Tio Conejo and Tio Coyote. My birthday, May 31, was a normal work day at the theater and I arrived at 8 a.m. as usual. No one wished me a happy birthday, not even my new housemate Esteban Canales. Yet everyone was acting really strange around me. We began to rehearse the first scene in our clown piece. Part way into the scene one of the actors has to carry a box out onto the stage. However, on this day the cast was adamant that it be on stage from the beginning. Rather than argue with them I acquiesced and it remained. A short while later the actors are supposed to look into the box. Yet this time they called me over to look into it as well, something that is not part of the cuento. I was slightly annoyed that they were diverging from my script. However, as I had recently been leading the cast in improvisation exercises, I decided to play along and let them run with their idea. I looked into the box and to my delight there was a giant tres leches cake with the words Felicidades Willie written on top. We ate cake and juggled together for the rest of the morning.

My dad had not been back to la fragua since his first visit. When he heard about all the fun I was having he bought a last minute ticket and flew down to join us for a week. We performed our duet show De tal palo, tal astilla ("Like Father, Like Son") for a packed crowd at la fragua. Let me describe the scene for you: my dad is dressed in a Hawaiian shirt, bathing cap, bicycle helmet, swimming goggles, and water wings. He stands on a twenty-foot metal ladder, explaining to the audience with his kazoo how he is about to high dive from the ladder onto the stage below. I enter and reprimand him: "Dad. What are you doing? We're performing in teatro la fragua. Does that mean anything to you? Nearly 30 years of socially responsible theatre within these wallsą. and you're clowning around on a ladder!"

As many of you know, the building that has housed teatro la fragua since 1979 is the former dance hall of United Fruit Company. Outside the theater, one wall of the swimming pool where United executives once bathed with their families is still visible above ground. On sunny afternoons the cast and I juggle together in the shade of palmeras planted by the Compañia. Every morning when I arrive I am filled with a great sense of justice, knowing that this building--once inhabited by men responsible for bringing down progressive governments and propping up dictators in the name of higher profits--is today home to teatro la fragua. In a country still very much politically, economically, and culturally dominated from the outside, teatro la fragua continues to be a driving force in the fight to preserve Honduran and Central American culture and history.