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Raquel Carrió: The
Coffee Pot
and the Next Time
Dear Julia,
I have read your article with true nostalgia. How not to feel nostalgia
for those days of the Magdalena Sin Fronteras during which difficulties
and successes outlined, once again, the invisible bridges that bring
us together?
All that you say is true and has your particular way of looking
and selecting concrete facts or actions that turn into signs to interrogate
the reader. It is an actress' way of looking that makes us become
spectators, starting from the written letter and small scenes in
which the irony, the humour, the disturbance or the sadness interact
to provoke a third effect. It is this third effect that communicates
an experience. And it explains how your book Stones of water has
helped me exercise my own way of looking to discover in the small
things a live and changing universe.
In this context, I select another sequence:
that of the old cart, mounted on a motorcycle, (brought to Cuba
from Europe around the time of the 1950s 'after the war' - the old man said) and mysteriously
connected to an iron boxcar all welded together for public transportation.
I think that we were four Magdalena participants running after that 'thing',
to cross Santa Clara's streets and arrive on time for a lecture.
How did that old motorbike survive? How did it get all the way here
and in what way did it transform, with the years, into this strange
device, survivor of so many ages?
It is certain that the bike is a consequence of the absence of buses
or any other means of transport, and surely in the photograph that
Luciana took our faces will show astonishment, curiosity or sadness.
In fact the vision offered by a city where such different times
converge and where the destruction and poverty threaten to make everything
disappear is not cheerful. The river that crosses Santa Clara, with
stagnant water full of garbage, makes one think of the beautiful
and prosperous city that it doubtless was at some time. I remember
having crossed it several times as a child with my grandparents,
travelling from Havana to Camaguey. It was a very alive city of people
working and changing their surroundings.
I would have other tales to tell: the apagón (blackout)
in the small hotel, La Rivierita, almost in ruins in spite of the
attempt to rebuild it, in which Gema, Tomás and I tried very
hard, with matches, to go to rescue Iben and her actresses from the
most absolute darkness. When I found her she was seated, silent,
as if the darkness and the ramshackle scenario of the place took
her to another time. Strange as it might seem, I connected this image
of Iben with her own performance, Ester's Book : the dark
and difficult times in which, however, life is engendered.
Why do I think like this? Why doesn't the cart, the darkness or
the river of stagnant water provoke in me a bad memory of the Magdalena
days?
Maybe I have got used to the ruins, to the aging and progressive
deterioration of the buildings. Maybe my eyes have learned how to
search in the darkness. But also, in this hard job of living among
old and used things, and among rules and regulations that hamper
changes and personal initiatives, I have had to learn how to defend
the small, sometimes almost invisible, buds of life and beauty that
teaching and theatre have given me. I see them like this: they are
gifts; small and fleeting moments in which a performance - sometimes
poor or imperfect - bestows on me a gesture, a word, a tiny light
that illuminates something. Or a student who suddenly surprises me,
comes out of who knows where, with a language that doesn't exist,
a way of looking that she or he didn't learn in books, not even at
school, but in some place in themselves that I managed to awake.
You are right: there is a hidden and silent memory. It is hidden
in the objects, the streets, the deep rivers and the dust of the
forgotten cities. They are like imaginary eras that survive, strangely
survive, the voracity of change, the laws and destruction. They are
not clearly visible, but in some moments they become embodied; for
example, in The Taste of Oranges , your performance, when
Gabriella squeezes what could be the juice of love or nostalgia.
I think, as you do, that the difficult thing is to fix, and keep,
those small buds of life and food. How to learn to transform images
and objects that surprise, assail or sadden us every day, into something
that can be life and beauty.
Beauty is a word that I like and that makes me uncomfortable. It
has a terrifying aspect because I associate it with something that
I can't find and that I look for, desperately at times, amongst a
heap of stones and waste. I know it exists: I have seen it many times.
There are moments: fleeting instants of a performance, a painting,
a book, a sound, or pieces of life that one holds on to and protects.
Each meeting with the Magdalena Project (in Wales, in Denmark or
in Cuba) has left me different things: of the first one, in Wales,
I evoke the strength and the surprise; of the second last one, in
Denmark, a curious sensation of the passing of time in oneself and
the emotion of the night, between one performance and the other,
gradually encroaching on the sky; of Magdalena Sin Fronteras II,
in Santa Clara, the delicate light illuminating the faces of the
spectators like an act of faith.
It is not something mystic, but vital. It doesn't appeal to transcendence,
but to what is left of life: to the rooted necessity to find a space,
a place, inhabited by beauty for moments beyond the ruin, darkness
or incompletion.
I could speak of other reasons: historical,
socio-cultural, etc. But what moves me finally is not only Roxana's
or Joël's effort,
and that of the actors of the Estudio Teatral, or the support of
the cultural institutions in spite of the conceptual limitations
(for example, the absurd separation of foreigners, Cubans of the
island and residents abroad, which is deeply offensive, I believe
not only to those of us who live here), as well as the
difficulties of organisation and resources. I know all of this: I
live it and it hurts me daily. What moves me mainly is the real
necessity of this meeting.
Personally, I believe that where the landscape is more forlorn,
or colder, company is more necessary; and where it is dryer, poorer
or sadder, is where the delicate light of the stage can enrich and
illuminate life.
In general, I hate the fragile optimism of
the calculated politics that promise, as we very well know, that
next time will be better. I don't know if it will be better. I
don't know if there will be busses that drive around the town,
or more old carts, and not even if there will still be carts drawn
by horses, the Chinese bicycles, or the motorbikes of the 1950s.
Nor do I know if the water of the river will become a transparent
again or finally be only a repository for trash. I don't know if
the city will be buried by dust or - as now - one in front of other
in a bitter dialogue, the new Internet Café and the ruined
colonial house will coexist. I don't know how much light and darkness
the streets and the houses will have. But I do know that, in any
case, the necessity of theatre and the meeting of different stage
practices, will not disappear. As the affection and the gratitude
one feels for so many teachers and friends from all kinds of places
do not disappear.
For me, the Magdalena days in Santa Clara were prosperous, not for
the difficulties and not even for the efforts, but for their achievements:
the small flame that still burns in the eyes and heart of its actors
and spectators.
Dear friend, to the rivers that connect your stones of water this
one will always have to be added, with its black waters, because
the geography of your heart would not be complete if it was not so.
For you, for Jill, Geddy, Gilly, María, and all the Magdalenas,
teachers and pupils, a big hug and the gratefulness of sharing our
secret island once again. There will be next time in Santa Clara... but
bring the coffee pot, just in case! With all my love,
Raquel
RAQUEL CARRIÓ (Cuba), born in La Havana in
1951, is a professor, playwright and essayist. She is the founder
of the Institute of Scenic Arts of the University of Arts of Havana
and of EITALC (International School of Theatre of Latin American
and the Caribbean), and full time professor of Drama and Methodology
of Theatrical Research with a Ph.D in Dramatic Arts. She has received
numerous awards and honours for her essays and critical studies.
Raquel is dramaturgy consultant to Teatro Buendía Theatre
since its inception, working for productions like Circular Ruins , Another
Tempest , La Vie en Rose, Bacchae and Charenton ,
with which she has toured the world.
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