Street Theater in Cuba: Luxury or Necessity?
Text and Photos by Nester Nuñez (Joven Cuba)
HAVANA TIMES – The biggest, reddest lips in the world suddenly appear in the square. Their owner stands two meters tall, far too much for the children below who laugh at the absurdity. Photos rain down, video calls too. A girl points at the enormous hands, plastic nails, pitch-black skin, the pillow under the purple dress where the buttocks go. Before heading back to work, her father on the screen shares in his daughter’s joy for at least a couple of minutes. “Good thing they still do these activities,” he says to his wife—whom he hasn’t hugged in over two years. “After it’s over, go have lunch somewhere, at least a pizza—don’t be so frugal.” She nods, they share a virtual kiss, and she turns the phone so he can watch their daughter run toward a group of stilt walkers.
Yellow, purple, red, white, blue… the stilt walkers of the Noria Company are a riot of color. A relief from the daily smoke, the black of coal, the long shadows cast on walls during the nightly blackouts. The clowns from Mirón Cubano or Teatro Andante stumble over an invisible obstacle and fall, drawing easy laughs from girls in blue skirts whose mothers still have the resources—money, time, will, love—to take them to dance and grow with the cultural project Corcel de Esperanza. There are more mothers than fathers among the crowd, and light skin predominates. The differences are visible. Some people of mixed race enjoy from a distance, not fully joining in, seated on a bench. But then, as if a thousand hearts beat in unison, the ancestral sound of drums fills the air—and everything blends together.
Worn-out shoes with new ones, blond hair with brunette, dresses with pants, Colombians with Mexicans, people from Ciego de Ávila, Cienfuegos, Matanzas—artists and spectators—all walk in the street parade that opens the XIII International Street Theater Festival. At the next corner, a woman walks past me whispering:
“With the situation the way it is, the government spends money on this.”
She doesn’t sound hateful. Judging by the sweat on her brow, she looks like someone who walks home from work because there’s no public transport, or someone who makes magic with a 4,000-peso salary to buy medicine and food for a sick mother, or maybe she just left an ATM line without cash, or didn’t sleep well from the heat and mosquitoes. Physical and spiritual exhaustion accumulates day and night. One of those Cuban women who make up the majority.
Hearing her makes me see the party, the theater, the performance from a different angle. There’s no bread, but we can still give the people circus… Is that what the organizers think? Is the goal to contribute to collective escapism, to charm, deceive, sell the idea of normality? In today’s circumstances, is it necessary, useful, and beneficial to hold these kinds of events?
“I think it is,” Miguel Perez from Teatro de los Elementos answers without hesitation. “How many people enjoyed that parade? And not just those there—people came out to their doors and balconies. They were in blackout too. You should’ve seen their faces change as we passed. Another example: the writers from Ediciones Matanzas were in Parque de la Rueda writing love letters, poems, all kinds of messages. I promoted it, since I’m an actor and also a storyteller. Lots of people were waiting to get into the bank, standing in the sun, and they came over—they had different moments, some even got a hug. Because those are also things we need. The public needs that joy. I myself have three children, and none of them are here. They live in the US and I would’ve liked to bring my grandson, but I couldn’t.”
The theater community suffers the crisis’s effects like everyone else—in their homes, their skin, and their work. Creation is difficult when your mind is focused on immediate needs: today’s food, coal to cook, whether there’ll be electricity during rehearsal. Despite everything, they came in large numbers to this XIII Theater Festival. Since its beginnings in 2002, the aim was to bring good art to peripheral neighborhoods, even to other municipalities. This year, however, most activities are in the city center. Fuel shortages and blacked-out circuits forced some performances to be canceled and postponed the goal of bringing spirituality, fantasy, and dreams to the places where living conditions are likely the harshest.
“As artists, we don’t just bring laughs and surprises. I think we can also plant a message,” says Leandro Pere, an Argentine-Colombian who plays the clown Leleque. “In my shows, I talk about dreams, about facing fears. Each artist connects with the message they feel. I believe you can change someone’s life just by asking them one question: What are you doing for your dreams? We came into the world to contribute, and I do that through art. I was doing well in Argentina—a friend and I rented a small house, I had a car I barely used, and I worked Monday through Saturday. But I spent two hours going to work and two coming back. I had just one free day to see friends, family, my partner, go to a soccer game… Who was paying me for all that time? When I realized it, I decided to return to clowning as Leleque, which had started long before. Among the hundreds who come to my shows, who knows—maybe one person makes the right choice for their life when I ask them if they’re doing something for their dreams.”
A girl of about six crosses her arms in front of Leleque and asks, “Do you remember me?” Leleque opens his eyes wide, opens his mouth without saying a word, and scratches his head… Luckily, the girl’s mother comes to the clown’s rescue, showing him a photo. The same girl, younger, is next to Leleque with her arms crossed and cheeks puffed out. So, he simply strikes the same pose, and they take a new picture. “I told the kids at my school about you, and and and… I painted a picture of you coming out of a balloon,” the girl says.
There’s no need to ask those two whether the money spent on this festival is well invested. After almost normalizing all kinds of material shortages, it would be a form of suicide to let cultural events for the people—not for elites—be taken away as well. This time, and hopefully from now on, the Provincial Directorate of Culture provides the necessary funding. Money generated by the people and spent for the people, as it should be. Mercedes Fernández, founder and soul of these festivals, understands this clearly:
“If it were a waste, there wouldn’t be so much public here. Street theater is a mass art form. It’s the cultural event in Matanzas that reaches the most people in the city, despite limitations. This time we managed to bring in 25 national groups and five from abroad. That’s also thanks to the prestige built by El Mirón Cubano, both as a theater group and the main organizer of these festivals. In the 1980s, we used to go twice a year to each municipality in the province. Even though we didn’t call it street theater then, we performed in public, open places—in town squares and farm workers’ camps. We also did a national tour of sugar mills across the country with the play The Chinchilla Cat or Madness on Horseback, created especially to address and reinterpret issues faced by that population. That was all preparation for the 1990s, during the Special Period crisis, when Albio Paz—then director of El Mirón—decided to do street performances as a survival strategy, because doing dramatic theater indoors had become impossible.”
Just four colored spotlights illuminate a small park space—small, but enough for the night’s performance. Still, the darkness around us hurts. The millions of Cubans outside this circle of light hurt. The ones who, with good reason, have become bitter and stopped prioritizing laughter.
“All those kids sitting on the ground spend countless hours in their homes with no power, unable to watch cartoons, practically locked in… Getting them to laugh means a lot. And getting them away from their cellphones for one or two hours is a huge satisfaction,” says Mercedes. It’s not just about cheering them up. Art is about healing, about helping people keep their sensitivity, fall in love with what they see, feel, build new emotions. In the end, that’s what makes us human.”
First published in Spanish by Joven Cuba and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.