tlf news

Vol. xxx #2

September, 2009



Learning New Words
in my own First Language

--Ariel Hudes




El Progreso is a city. teatro la fragua is a professional theatre company. Actors from the company travel in a van on highways and over bridges to their off-site performances.

How easy it was from my American perspective, preparing for months for my summer in Progreso, to think "city" and "professional theatre company" and even "van" and "highway" and "bridge", to throw in a few banana trees, and to have for myself a quaint picture of this utopian theatre which thrives amidst the impoverished landscape of Honduras.

But these words, which have such codified meanings in the United States, take on completely new ones in Honduras. Understanding them means inverting every definition we understand.

City. Yes, El Progreso is a city. But there are no high-rises here. No sleek modern buildings. Nothing much that reaches above three stories in fact -- and that's the rare building. Most houses are stucco and one story. Buildings in the center of town aren't too different. Only the small percentage of roads that run through the center of town are paved; residential areas are almost all "calles de tierra" -- dirt roads. Bumpy, rocky, dirt roads which cars have to travel down at staggeringly slow speeds to keep from self-destructing. Traffic rules are almost non-existent -- cars and motorcycles buzz past stop signs and down roads and highways at unregulated speeds. It makes it a scary place for bikers and pedestrians, trying to weave their way through crowded streets. And it's not just cars they have to be wary of - - there's also the occasional roving horse. This is what city means in Honduras.

A full time company of actors. teatro la fragua employs eight full-time actors -- in my mind, their greatest feat. But how different this company of actors is from a U.S counterpart. Here, there are no Equity rules governing the daily routines of the actors - no regulated break schedule, no enforced limitations on the work the actors can do. At tlf actors do it all -- they build the sets, they build the building, they sweep, they mop, they teachà and after a full day of doing all of those things, they may go on to do an evening performance. They are at once actor, writer, carpenter, mechanic. Their lives are not the stuff of Hollywood tabloids. This is what it means to be a profesional actor in Honduras.

And then there are the overarching words I might use to describe teatro la fragua -- "success" is one of the first that comes to mind. teatro la fragua is a smashing success -- what they are doing amazed me every day. And I could easily sum them up with that simple word -- "success". But as I write -- as I try to paint a real picture of the world of tlf, I realize that like "city", and "professional actor", and even "highway", "success" has a different meaning in Honduras. And to understand this definition is to understand a reality more challenging and flawed, but so much more interesting and inspiring than the utopian success I had imagined from the United States.

We traveled four hours to get to Olanchito for a performance of Harold Pinter's El Montaplatos (The Dumb Waiter). One van, four hours, seven male actors, a gringa, and a set that took up seventy-five percent of the space in the twenty year old van. Took up enough space that combined with the gringa (yo) who carefully plotted a fifteen-minutes-early entry into the van to ensure she would have a seat, left Chito sitting on a 6 by 3 inch wood block, hunched over at the waist for the entirety of the four hour drive -- and just a few hours before he took the stage as one of only two actors in El Montaplatos. It was a rough situation.

But then there was a full house. Full house. There was conversation as people left the theatre. Little kids -- for whom it was late at night and for whom Pinter could not have been easy -- buzzed around the auditorium space energized by the play they had seen, and the actors, and the whole scene. We went to an outdoor bar after deconstructing the set, and it was so packed with people I recognized from the audience that it seemed as if the whole town was running on the electricity of the show.

Cramped van ride and all, this was a huge success.

The actors go into schools one day a week to teach theatre classes to students. And I can tell you, it's not a utopia. It's not kids standing in awe of actors and thinking theatre is the greatest thing ever. They're tough city kids who have become jaded to all things performative by the TV reality they've grown up in. Kids fidget and daydream and talk and make immature jokes during the classes. They have trouble reading, they don't do their homework, it's "cool" to act totally nonplused by scripts and actors and theatre. The actors become visibly frustrated by how hard it is to 'make a difference'.

But then there was one time Tony asked for volunteers to play the lead role in a Pinter skit -- and the "cool boy" in class shot his hand into the air, unencumbered, and fought for the part. He checked in with Tony after class about what his homework was; he stopped fidgeting and having side conversations; his friends visibly considered their own role in the skit and in the class in general.

A small thing. But this -- this real and gritty and beautiful moment that would never have the opportunity to exist in a utopia -- is what success means in Honduras.

Despite the pictures we might have in our minds (that I had in my mind), in the reality of tlf not every audience member walks away with a smile on his face and a life-changing message in his heart. People walk out in the middle of performances, cell phones light up audience members' faces, vans break down on shadeless highways on the way to shows. It's not all the utopian success it had been so convenient for me to picture.

But utopias are boring. In the real world there are problems. And where there are problems, every little success is surprising and interesting and has the ability to blossom into real inspiration. Because in Honduras, at teatro la fragua, 'success' isn't taken for granted. Each small success is worked for. Each one is fought for and earned. So yes, I could have taken my opportunity to write this newsletter to show you pictures of mango trees and horses, of me with my new Honduran friends at the theatre, of a group of smiling faces walking out of a play. But this is generic; this is the stuff of tourist brochures -- and teatro la fragua is worthy of so much more.

Ariel Hudes is a junior at Brown University. She traveled to teatro la fragua on a grant from the Watson Institute for International Studies to study the function of political theatre in developing nations during the age of globalization. She can be reached at Ariel_Hudes@Brown.edu.





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