Memories in the making...

Monday, April 8th, we continued rehearsals first thing in the morning, working 8am to noon at the UNAH's newly inaugurated  Teatro Francisco Salvador.  We still need to find roles for all the students participating but slowly and surely we’re making our way through the piece.  We spent a good part of Thursday, last week, going through the text and creating new dialogue for a number of new characters. 

Friday I introduced the idea that the play start with a robbery and mugging perpetrated on Sueño, he’s been beaten up and that’s why he’s dying.  With all the talk about violence and murder in the country (I heard a statistic yesterday that someone is killed every 78 minutes) it seemed appropriate as well as dramatic.  

However, I can't help but wonder whether I’m overstepping boundaries, inadvertently imposing my ideas about Honduran society onto this play which a Honduran has written, and Hondurans will perform predominantly for Hondurans (and a few US Embassy folk.)  I check in with Blanca, the playwright, and the students ~ they like the idea of building upon her metaphoric characters with a theatricalized reality, such as this staged mugging.  

So we interrupted rehearsal for a mini makeshift stage combat workshop, many thanks to my recent work with fight choreographer Kristen Mun and also John Armour, who’ve kept my training fresh. I’ve been thinking about my teachers a lot this past week, very grateful for all the things I’ve been taught over the years.

This impromptu training is sort of the way things have been going in rehearsal, the needs of the play have inspired the opportunities to discuss movement, character, blocking, focus, dramatic arc, choreography, intention, projection, etc.…

I'm hoping to write more entries that fill in the gaps/memories from this week before they've faded.  

Today I met the students of the Proyecto Piloto 7-14, a pre and after-school program that is part of a larger federal initiative to combat urban poverty.  I was asked to start off by providing a motivational speech for 90 children aged 7 to 14 years old. This was an interesting challenge, 7 and 14 year-olds have much different tastes!  And I'm struck by the fact that a statement like "You can make it if you work hard enough!" isn't as motivating here as it might be to a Portland audience.  These children see people working plenty hard all around them, with little "success".  So we talk about what it means to be a hero (aka the protagonist, in dramatic structure) and how they can be heroes in their own communities... how strength is often found in knowing that your actions are meaningful to people around you.  I told the story of St. George, and they most enjoyed the part where I played the dragon...

After the speech I met with a group of about 15 who are focused on theatre, and we had a good time creating characters together...  These are bright, creative children, respectful and fun.

Each night of this week I attended a different event in the XXIII Festival Internacional de las Artes Escénicas Bambú 2013, a week of theatre, music, storytelling ~ Honduras' most important cultural festival of the year. The line-up is terrific, the music is especially wonderful and diverse, from jazz to rock to folk and grunge. Grupo Teatro Bambú has produced this festival for 23 years in a row!  

with the inspriing director Luisa Cruz,
one of the founders and leaders
of Grupo Teatro Bambú

Attending the festival, I got a sense of the strong feelings shared by the audience about their country.  There's great love and pride for Honduras, and the desire for change seems to be on everyone’s mind.  Musicians sang a number of political songs, such as 'La Huelga!' about an historic strike held against United Fruit in 1954, that in effect dismantled the exploitation by the banana growers, ending Honduras' status as a Banana Republic ~ and everyone in the audience sings along.  

There's also a great feeling of solidarity with its regional neighbors, as one after another performer urges us to work together to create a unified Central America.  A common refrain from the stages: ¡Que viva el Centro America!