CASES AND THINGS OF THEATER IN THIS CITY

By Cristóbal Peláez González

Published by EL MUNDO newspaper, 1999.

Translated by Juan Felipe Cano

• I saw an actor (lets call him so for semantic comfort) made conceited, with affected voice, enlarged, supertenacious and I urgently remembered the information about a galaxy that is composed of one hundred thousand million stars (one hundred thousand million!) whose diameter is one hundred thousand light years (one hundred thousand light years!) and meanwhile this little dumb moved and twisted trying to convince us that he was a cosmic marvel.

• In Medellín theater begins to back off, production teams start to show big weaknesses. If you want to survive as group and entity, theater must look for help in cinema, seminars, paintings exhibition, musical, and videos programming; the theaters of Medellin will all end turned into Culture Houses: French art, decoration, florist's, hairdresser's joined to the sale of flowerpots, avocados and doing ‘hojales’ and zig-zag (we transcribe writings with typewriter, photocopies, injections are applied, here are wafers, ice creams sales, umbrella repair)

• There could be another alternative: that all the actors retire from theater and devote themselves to redeem in communes and neighborhoods with teachings to make people and to rehabilitate.

• And what about research?

• And what about the production of theatrical plays of good performance?

• And what about the time of the artist?

• (“In the artist leisure is a work and his work is a rest”)

• The group of teachers, seminarists, inductionists, people that aware, creatives and the didactic and pedagogic piecework are producing a lot of sensitive people, a lot of studied, qualified persons and theater... downwards.

• What to do?

• First phone call: “We need you to represent a play for us, a play that a) should not be very long b) that should be very “funny” c) that should not be very “technological,” since it would be represented in a playground at noon. d) it should be instructive in order to teach children and adults not to contaminate rivers, to save water, not to activate fireworks, not to step on the grass, to preserve nature; we need that the play makes people aware about the drug addiction, alcoholism and bad friends risks; we hope the play to fully refers to the civil coexistence and that finally, and most important, talks about peace, since in the place where you are going there are many gunfights. Ah, and most importantly, that it is not a very costly representation, because as you well know we are in austerity due to the fact that the outgoing president left the country in the economic ruin.”

• Reaction at this side of the telephone line: Plof!

• The Festival de Teatro Juvenil de Envigado, an event supported and organized by El Agora, is over. There a hundred of young persons met to put theater on stage, taking part in a party of the senses. Boys and girls, on behalf of their respective high schools, were coming annually desirous of showing their point of view through plays created by themselves and sometimes with decent montages with authors of the universal repertory.

• The work was stimulated through scholarships and prizes. For us, this festival represented one of the most recreative, educational, and creative contests, of the Department. But no! Suddenly the Municipality, which backed up several editions, considered it useless, thought that it was just a waste of time and money and withdrew all the support. Typical. What does all these boisterous, excited youngsters matter! Get a job!

• Land of barbarous, little town of my griefs, you deserve neither Fernando González nor Débora!

• The “HORA 25” Theater, directed by Farley Velásquez, is one of the rare cases in the middle of the critical situation. It increases its artistic level every day, it invigorates as a group, as a talent and discipline meeting and organization; it remains, like rats (faith of rats) —on the verge of no energy, no water, no telephone—, surviving and, miracle!, creating. They have concerted with the Mayoralty for two million pesos per year. (No comment). They are 12 young persons desiring to live in the fullness of the artistic creation, to shape a good offer of art and reflection. And not the quiet, mute, inert, stiff city, without response.

• That is the way the young people of my city live and die.

• But now, in Medellin among people of theater, it has come into fashion and (please read it in a low voice): “We cannot talk, man, because they, the people of the government, get angry and then annoyed and, as they are when they are angry, they disconcert us. Better shut up.”

• And the government: “You, the people of theater, are very lucky, because there was not going to be money for anybody but we made an effort, and see, there is some.”

• (I remember the millionaire lady who “supports” the convent of “Dark Habits”, an Almodovar’s film, a philanthropist to whom “heartaches cannot be given”, a kind of meringue that falls apart with the smallest wet caress.)

• The weekend nights without the plays of El Pequeño Teatro, Fanfarria, Exfanfarria, Casa del Teatro, Hora 25, Teatro Popular de Medellin, Oficina Central de los Sueños, Manicomio de Muñecos, Matacandelas, Teatro de Seda, La Casa del Cuento, Nuestra Gente, la Polilla, El Fisgón... would be unfortunate nights, suspicious nights.

• But someone of theater lifted up the voice and said: “Let's stop the theatrical activity; and wait to see how the nights of Medellin become without anything of theater.”

• Another one said: “A strike of theater would be as effective as a pensioners’ strike”.

• Another one said: “To arms”. And they were just prop guns.

• What to do?

• People of theater of Medellin: Let’s join to play the lottery!

• Second phone call: “I need a good, nice and cheap theater group to entertain a popular party in a park. How much does it cost?” “It costs...” “Oh, Damn!, with one third of that I better contract a group of vallenato that plays for me almost four hours, makes people happy and leads them to drink beer, which is what I need.”

• Reaction: the beers seller is right. (If he were not a beers seller he would be a Modigliani.)

• (Parenthesis: In Bogotá there is a graffitti on a wall of the T.P.B, which is for sale: look darling, there is one dream less.”)

• But, well, is theater really important? Is it useful for anything?

• Imagine Medellín full of gadgets-stores, full of successful stores, full of itinerant peddlings, full of places for the sale of cracklings, just tobacconist's shops, just fried snacks, just purchases and sales, just cars, just motorcycles.

• Is not it necessary to have a small corner for dreams, for madness, to share distresses, to watch somebody performing as another one, a little cubicle for symbol, small places to pursue beauty? Indicate it with one x ( ) Yes. ( ) No. ( ) Maybe. ( ) No opinion.

• Third phone call: “I would like your group to be with such and such play in our cultural programming, but we just have so much of budget,” “This budget is very low.” “Yes, I know it, and I know that this amount is an insult for your career and your quality, but regretfully we only have so much because we must programme many things. In this case I will contract something over there that adjusts to this budget.”

• Reaction of response: you’d better wait for the special supermarket chains offers.

• Programming videos one after another and repetitively is too much cheaper. And there goes the inevitable short script: “This way the X institution fulfils the cultural activity, cha, cha, chan!”

• And friends ask: How is it “to sell” theater? Answer: it is like offering epidemics.

• Nevertheless Medellin reaches already two million inhabitants; it already is a big city. It does not have, it will never have a great theater company. Only little projects.

• A Spanish producer of theater, Manu Aguilar, told me sometime: “It is incredible your incompetence to develop some aspects of the culture, tourism, in this case. For example: why did not you have the brilliancy of turning ‘La Catedral’ Jail into a great attraction center for tourism? It has been very interesting that Colombia and the world had access to a place where this great legend who is Pablo Escobar was imprisoned. And mainly because Medellin has few things to show.”

• I agreed and answered: it is true, we do not have as you, the Spaniards, an aqueduct of Segovia built by the Romans, we do not have buildings of the 12th century, a Fortress, a Toledo; instead we have, certainly, cultural institutions of the Middel Ages, persons and leaders with a 16th century mentality.

• By the way, there is a little word left in the Medellin next-15-year- strategic plan: THEATER. Some establishments are mentioned (establishments are not art) and this is said about culture: “The paisas, as they traditionally are known, are characterized by their hospitable spirit, and their recognized ethics of work, they constitute one of the groups of major regional identity and, owing to this, they present a great potential of congregation concerning causes of collective interest.” And nothing more.

• What was there said? Ready with culture matter, nothing about the artistic expression. “An eye in white does not say anything to me.” (Nicanor Parra)

• Culture and artistic expression: etiquette and good manners.

• In Medellin it is believed that the only thing that can be offered to the foreign tourist is to put him in a bus called ‘escalera’, full of drunkards for playing music and drinking brandy. Delightful Medellin at night. I just go bright red.

• Men and women of theater, it is time to look at our face in the mirror: a beggar starts to appear.

• What to do?

• We are in the hinge of a next millenium, is not it time to speak? Will we have in the next millenium so much tonnage of stupidity as in the past? (“We have kept a silence similar enough to stupidity.”)

• “It is necessary to beat poor people in order that they rebel (Baudelaire).”