I don’t recall the last time I attended a play that inspired me to write a review as much as Goldfish. I saw this highly moving play, co-authored by playwrights William Ruiz and Alejandro Arango, at Havana’s Trianon theatre, skillfully staged by the El Ingenio and De la Luna theatre companies.
I heard Cuba’s band Buena Fe for the first time when I was still in high school. The teacher assigned to our classroom, one of the best intensively-trained, multi-subject high school teachers I have ever know was fascinated with their songs. As I recall we were the first students he ever taught.
The melodies that renowned Cuban musician X Alfonso delighted us during a concert held at the steps of the University of Havana, still resonate in my mind. Numbers that are part of the soundtrack of the Cuban film Havana Blues, as well as some pieces from the albums X More, Civilizacion, Revoluxion and Reverse, were the songs performed by this impetuous artist.
A group of my friends and I recently got together with a former classmate of ours visiting Havana. During this get-together, we decided to spend a few days in the town of Remedios, which she is where she currently lives. We had to plan the trip so that it would coincide with our vacation time at work. We also had to plan it for a date after getting paid our puny salary.
The cultural venue Encuentro con (“Encounters”), which has been holding activities in Havana’s Pabellon Cuba every Thursday since the start of the holiday season, recently paid tribute to renowned critic, architect and urban planner Mario Coyula.
This year, Havana’s renowned cultural institution Casa de las Americas will celebrate the work of Latin American and Caribbean photographers through numerous exhibitions, workshops and conferences.
Today, I got a hold of a book by the Cuban comedy group Nos y Otros. Published by a Santa Clara publishing house in 1998, this “dirty book” (as the volume is titled) gathers a collection of stories driven by clever and scathing social critique. What prompted me to write about these stories is the fact they continue to reflect Cuban reality quite accurately.
The stage of Havana’s Trianon Theatre was recently taken up by acting students from Cuba’s National Institute for the Arts (ENA), who performed the play The Cherry Tree Garden (El jardin de los cerezos) as a graduation project.
As a way of illustrating this idea, it could be said I once belonged to that group of black women who straighten their hair. As I never did learn the art of hair styling, having straight hair was a way of saving time, which I would otherwise have spent in futile aesthetic experiments.
Recently I had the opportunity of attending a performance at Havana’s Raquel Revuelta theatre for the first time. The theatre opened a bit more than a year ago, in the locale that once housed the Olimpic cinema, at the intersection of Línea and B streets, in Vedado.