DIARY OF THE THEATER FESTIVAL: Santiago on Stage

The thriving Santiago scene, so marked by the social and cultural dynamics of that city of historical convergences, is very well represented in this Havana Theater Festival. Teatro Macubá, under the direction of the tireless Fátima Patterson is offering at Trianón Theater, at 5:00 p.m., its most recent performance, De Moliére and other demons, in which the renowned and recognizable carnival of the city is a platform for a parade of typical characters, who evolve into the eternal shapes of comedy, in the manner of the famous Moliére, but sprinkling everything with popular grace and impulse.

Beyond the importance of the representation, on stage are the people of Santiago de Cuba, at least certain sectors of the social fabric, recreating conflicts of a demanding reality.

Fátima Patterson herself makes it explicit in the program notes: the show "is nothing more than a pretext to show the defects that surface among human beings in the face of great crises, anywhere in the world; diseases, famines, "economic crises and death. Carnival has an inner and external face, carnival outside and inside, good and evil confronted."

And she adds: “Carnival is the most important festival of popular classes, since its beginnings it was the moment to express confined emotions, to express in the most shameless way all the truths and disagreements, it’s the clearest expression of Cuban fun. A reading of what people sing in the Santiago congas will give a description of the moments and stages that our society lives and has lived.”

The actors live this party, at times bitter, in the theatrical environment. But here the borders are flexible...

The altarpieces and the crisis

And on the third day of the Festival's theoretical event, they talked about the ways in which figure theater and family theater companies faced the crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic... and the successive crises that have hit theater. Moderated by one of the leaders of this art in contemporary Cuba, puppeteer Rubén Darío Salazar, director of Las Estaciones Theater, the panel shared experiences, challenges and achievements of Cuban and foreign groups, such as Proa Theater; Retablos y Salamadra; Búho Theater, from Spain; and Tuyo Theater. Its directors and a good part of the cast were there. These are some of the companies present in this edition of the festival. Their proposals become the best response to the challenges posed by the current difficult panorama. In the session, emotional audiovisual material was presented about Ernesto Parra, leader of Tuyo Theater, directed by Dalgis Román. Román herself presented two texts by Parra, published by Tablas Alarcos publishing house; while the theater scientist Yudd Favier referred to the book Retablo vivo, notebook of notes of a puppeteer, by Rubén Darío Salazar, also by Tablas Alarcos.

Translated by Amilkal Labañino / CubaSí Translation Staff