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Roxana Pineda: Some Things
Should Remain Unsaid
Five days after the Magdalena Sin Fronteras II in Santa Clara had
ended, when I was awfully tired and mentally exhausted, somebody
stopped me in the street to tell me that Yoel, the event's driver,
had died of a heart attack. He was thirty-two years old and seemed
to be a healthy young man. The news saddened me a lot and I began
to review each meeting I had had with Yoel: each of his complaints,
of our objections; each of his absences or late arrivals; each scene
centred around the guagua (bus), which had become the evil
character of those days making many participants require a better
future organisation. I myself - who spoke very often with Yoel asking
him to be punctual - now felt empty of reasons. All our considerations
seemed quite repugnant since his death would prevent him from ever
driving a guagua again. With this bitterness I said goodbye
to ten intense, hard and beautiful days. Once again, amid difficulties,
imprecision, sacrifices, gruelling work and passion, we had been
able to achieve an encounter of undecipherable dimensions.
The first Festival in 2005 had the charm of
the unknown; advancing on precarious ground while trying to make
each step be the beginning of a coherent and nice promenade. The
first love can be remembered with generosity; the first gesture
has the value of opening a space: there is no level to be measured
against; it is up to us to validate the experience without knowing
if it will be successful. And it was. Being the first time, all
complaints related to organisation and logistics (a challenge to
the gods that we were able to overcome), despite the ever present
difficulties, passed in second line. The most important thing was
to defend a possible meeting in the middle of our island, outside
the capital, and to put the basis for an exchange carried on the
shoulders of a small theatre group whose members, not believing
in hierarchies or status, passed from being director to light technician
or porter, from actor to guide, translator, message bringer, toilet
cleaner, snack deliverer or the person running after a horse cart
so that everything should turn out well and on time.
I will never forget how I completely lost my
voice in that first event; nor Jill (Greenhalgh)'s arrival at La
Havana airport and her direct sudden question: why do you want
to make a Magdalena? Of the first time I remember the happiness
of walking in the streets with Deborah Hunt's giant masks; and
seeing Rosa Cuchillo in the Parque Vidal, forcing people to follow
her Indigenous woman painted in white. Of the first time I remember
Dr. Graziella Pogolotti at the Guiñol
Theatre thanking Julia Varley for her excellent translation; and
Julia preparing Doña Musica's flowers in the small room of
our theatre. And I remember with nostalgia the lunches in the Education
Visitor House, all the invited practitioners together, and how at
times the guests would take advantage of Cuba's strong sunshine.
Of the first time I retain many images, mostly generous and cheerful,
although some - like when Brigitte Cirla was forced to abandon Santa
Clara without presenting her performance and sang a farewell to me
- were loaded with tears. Sally Rodwell was there and, to the amazement
of many, she laughed and danced during the closing party.
After the first Festival I was left with many
small pieces of paper on which the participants had written down
their wishes. Most participants forgot about them afterwards. I
was left with the friendship of many women of the craft who I had
not met before except through the e-mails while preparing the Festival.
Most of all I was left with a sensation of fullness for having
been able, with my group, to plan, organise and defend a meeting
full of life that prepared us for future unforeseen trials.
I know that an encounter depends a lot on its
organisational structure. I believe that an arrangement is necessary
to develop a particular way of thinking and to guarantee that the
most important points - always hidden in details and never anticipated
- are not lost. This is why one has to be very protective when
organising an event. There is no justification for changes of schedule
or cancellations, for lights or props not being there on time,
for the transport complicating the intended logic or for the food
causing delays or for the stove breaking down. I have always believed
that an impeccable organisation is a priority that has to be guaranteed
in an event so that the unforeseen accidents that always happen
can be dealt with without betraying the intelligence of the meeting
or destabilising the balance between order and chaos. But at times
reality overtakes us and we have to fearlessly assume responsibilities
that guarantee that the essential is not lost. This enormous risk
is run by anyone organising such a festival (for those of us who
do not have influence over control mechanisms nor have the resources
to avoid disasters).
When Magdalena Sin Fronteras II ended I realised
that this second encounter had been much bigger than the first
one. In 2005 twenty-four international artists had participated;
in 2008 forty-six attended, without counting the twenty-three young
workshop participants who paid their full stay in Cuba adding up
to an overall number of sixty-nine people. I had anticipated the
size of the participation and assumed it as a challenge that would
allow a more open and fortuitous exchange for all: teachers and
students, actresses and directors. At the same time, more than
thirty women from theatres of different Cuban towns attended, besides
dozens of actresses, actors, directors, teachers, journalists and
theatre students from Santa Clara who made up the regular audience
of the event.
Once again I was astonished by the generosity of the women who decided
to return to Cuba assuming the cost of their flights to offer their
constantly bewildering work without charging a cent and make it possible
during ten days for our small town to become the capital of theatre
made by women. I know how difficult it is for many of the women to
find economic support to come to Cuba from so far away and for them
to adjust their work programmes and plan a ten day stay in Santa
Clara. I know how hard it is to make such a long trip and only present
one performance and work for three scarce days with about ten or
twelve people who they will not meet again for a long time. I know
how complex it is to accept a way of behaving which often is very
distant from the everyday life of their countries. And I also know
that, in spite of everything, something essential can be experienced
at the moment of the encounter.
Two preoccupations always accompany me during Magdalena Sin Fronteras:
to guarantee worthy living conditions and an accurate organisation,
and to present an artistic reality that reflects who we are in Cuba
to our guests. For ourselves, I wish to introduce a theatre reference
made by women that I believe can stimulate, provoke and, why not,
amaze us while facing the distance or proximity of these unknown
worlds. Beyond these professional and indispensable principles, appears
the particular human being that I am, with my preferences and vision
of the world. Without this selfish perspective I would not be able
to commit all my energy to what I do and it would be impossible for
me to conceive and support a meeting of this kind. Starting from
this selfish perspective I try to create spaces where people I like,
because of their work and particular way of defending what they defend,
can come all the way to my town.
The Magdalena Project attracts me because I
feel it has a rebellious energy and a solidarity that goes beyond
good manners. I have experienced, in many of its meetings, how
frank dialogues take place and new projects are protected without
expressions of altruism or paternalism. I have felt part of the
fighting, critical, rigorous, loving, dreaming and plotting spirit
of this circle of women who try to build a language from within
theatre to preserve their need to be present.
On the surface we see the meetings, performances, work demonstrations,
forums and discussions. On the surface are the topics that we establish
so that the women can speak of their experiences and find a particular
way of doing so. Underneath lie the silences, the unspoken questions,
the dreams, the fragility we shelter, impulses born out of the force
of solitude, of being on the periphery, of being aware of our separate
position. On the surface we see the programme I have designed so
that the performances can be experienced in equal conditions and
so that the criteria jumps from one side to the other following an
almost visceral logic.
There are performances that rouse a lot of
energy and others that leave us indifferent. There are performances
that mobilise our minds reaching towards something inaccessible
that words cannot capture completely and others that leave us speechless.
There are performances we would like to comment, others that mark
a beginning and others still that are of the kind we would like
to run away from.
Right now I am faced with a dilemma: we are
women theatre practitioners and the performances condense a human
and professional experience; how should we protect the quality
of the festival without betraying the space of promotion and protection
that Magdalena is? Dealing with theatre, we are forced to define
what kind of theatre or theatres we wish to promote or confront.
Our proposals should have a strong artistic profile, a rebel vocation
and a deep structural beauty maintaining the performances' intention
of research, their opposition to complacency, banality and all
kinds of domineering discourses. My own selfish self could put
it simply: I would like to invite beautiful and transgressive performances
that should never leave me indifferent. But I don't want the logic
of 'critical intelligence' that we have inherited
in Cuba to decide what to discard or applaud in my festival. While
recognising that as theatre practitioners we must find a way to dialogue
and confront the processes, even to discuss about the performances,
I refuse to create spaces where some are the judges and others the
accused. This is not the Magdalena Project's logic and this I want
to defend. Cristina Castrillo always insists that we have to speak
of theatre. Patricia Ariza refuses a process of selection of work
because then no-one will protect the young people who work in particularly
difficult conditions.
I had not planned to write about Magdalena Sin Fronteras. I wanted
others to do so in order to observe how the meeting was perceived
and what questions arose more interest. On the last day, during the
final round, I asked all the participants to write a page about their
experience in Santa Clara. I wanted to force them to write. Very
few did so. I also asked them to give a short opinion about the event.
Everyone wanted more time for the workshops, more time to meet and
talk outside the work, to discuss about the performances. Everyone
requested rigor in the schedules; some were very hard in evaluating
the organisation.
Sitting beside Jill, I wondered if I would
be able to make another Magdalena Sin Fronteras in 2011. And I
thought of my group, of my combat partners of the Estudio Teatral
de Santa Clara who, without being able to participate in the workshops
or enjoy the company of the teachers, had remained day in and day
out at the theatre or running around so that everything functioned
without mishaps. My colleagues - actors and director - a small
troop of seven people willing to do everything for Magdalena Sin
Fronteras: Joël Sáez,
Gretzy Fuentes, Leyza Clavelo, Eylen de León, Alexis González,
Raúl Acosta, Katia Alonso and Alejandro Marrero. They carried
the enormous weight of an organisation that, despite the difficulties,
managed that the Festival flowed and reached the last day with a
feeling of happiness and dignity. Once we were alone in our town
again, they also spoke in a round. They all acknowledged that they
had worked much harder than the previous time but that they had felt
that the festival belonged to them because, besides the intense work,
they had been able to show their own artistic work. Listening to
them, I felt as if I was looking at them for the first time and I
felt proud of all of them.
For the selfish human being that I am, the
fact that my small group is able to sustain and organise such a
festival is significant. Taking into account a tradition that teaches
us to be guided - to be consumers of ideas rather than creators
- and that we are a small ensemble decidedly interested in defending
the theatre group as a space of research and as an oasis of artistic
confrontation, the fact of leading an event like Magdalena Sin
Fronteras, without concessions and in complete freedom to decide
how and with whom, is reason for satisfaction.
I could say that my impulse to organise the Magdalena meeting in
Cuba also comes from the imperious necessity of circulating my experience
and that of my group, to give our theatre other environments to move
in. It comes from my obsession to pursue spaces of intensity where
the secrets of the craft can be put on trial and from my eagerness
to have the people I love and respect close. It comes from the pleasure
of organising spaces where others can meet and exchange with a different
quality than usual because of how the relationships are prioritised,
regardless the performances being good or bad (even if I always take
care of the quality of the performances). It comes from many postponed
dreams, from many conversations with mute masters, from an almost
twenty year-old history of working in the province against the tendencies
of the fashions of the moment, against the opinions of those who
ignore us, against the magnanimous and sordid charitable gestures
of those who understand us and against the silence that has always
accompanied us. It comes from a dark force that transforms into wisdom
and no longer feels the pain of so much apathy. It comes from the
light of an acceptance of what we are and from the energy that we
retain from our birth in 1989, when three of us decided to create
a research group in Santa Clara wanting to change the world.
Now we know that the world is really only our own world and this
knowledge is not bitter. Looking back I am surprised that, almost
twenty years later and in spite of a biography full of black holes,
we can feel happy of organising work encounters with the seriousness
and rigour of Magdalena Sin Fronteras.
I am moved by the fact that my group, in exchange for working as
beasts expects to have a live contact with people that embody for
us both the innocence and passion of our first days, to see and hear
an artist in first person, to experience the confrontation or enjoyment
of their performances in our home, to be able to welcome a group
of women who make theatre, to be able to serve trusting
that this service has a value in itself. I am moved because,
after all, all my colleagues, including my director, have no reason
to share this selfish part of mine.
I always wonder about what language is needed for me to continue
observing with curiosity and dialoguing without prejudices. I am
concerned about the meaning, so that the days don't just pass by
and so that the performances are not flattened by a daily habit of
consumption that our culture prevents us from discarding, or so that
a paternalistic or self-centred reaction does not distance us from
a dialogue that could reveal openings or at least questions. I don't
want to organise a meeting to aliment hierarchies, but one in which
those who have more experience can demonstrate this through performances,
work demonstrations and workshops. I want to be able to create a
space in which the whisper can become a living voice that doesn't
harm; to create a meeting that, after just ten days, is able to inundate
the habitat and get entangled in the future of those who have returned
home. I want the actors of my group to learn to see, to have opinions,
to defend their craft professionally. While looking at others, I
want them to understand that only the work is important and helps,
that without work nothing is possible.
But my wishes cannot be achieved in ten days: it is a chimera, an
illusion. Ten days are not enough to learn and let go, in that time
one can only shake the world : perhaps a participant will
face an important question or be able to recover her self-esteem
so as to confront indifference and rejection. If something like this
happens I feel calmer.
Dear Ju, I don't know if everyone knows that you were the first
person to propose to me to organise a Magdalena in Cuba taking advantage
of the EITALC meeting which should happen in the Escambray. Somehow
you imagined this possibility. You know as I do that many doubted
that we were able to organise such an event, but the doubts were
dispelled. Now the question is if we are capable or want to face
continuing the Festival. We will certainly try to. For my selfish
being the most difficult is to find the people. I find it more and
more difficult to work with people I don't believe in. It is not
a question of artistic talent, at least not only, but of humanity.
It is frustrating to work with people I don't believe in because
I am aware their perspective is to plunder; they do not believe in
me either, but they think they can use me. They would never move
a finger to support this kind of meetings, but they expect to receive
the benefits. But sadly I also know that it is important for the
Festival that these people are present. But I cannot be magnanimous
with my dignity. Therefore I am an actress: when I feel that my dignity
or that of the people that I love is being attacked, I revolt. Nobody
can be entitled to annul us or give us lessons. I cannot work beside
people who, even if talented, behave like slave traffickers. I will
never accept a relationship or experience that places me or my group
in a situation of humiliation, and this has happened to me abroad
in a way that would never be possible in Cuba.
I make Magdalena Sin Fronteras to continue
my struggle against humiliation and so that you all can continue
coming to Santa Clara: I know that you are artists who would never
accept humiliation as exchange currency. It is in my country where
I can be entirely free: despite the setbacks in the capacity of
thinking and participating, despite all kinds of hardships, the
indifference or the injustices that fall upon us. In spite of everything
I feel that it is here where I can fight and revolt strongest.
It is something I must do.
I was beside you when you asked the woman of
the INPUD factory if it was possible to give a coffee-pot to Eneyda
(Villalón).
You are right: perhaps it would have been nice for her and an expression
of generosity for what the factory workers had seen. But I know that
Eneyda didn't really care: her coffee-pot was concealed in her shining
eyes. Now I will tell you a story. While preparing for Magdalena
Sin Fronteras I began to think who to invite from Cuba. The most
obvious names were clear to me, but I wanted others as well. I wanted
to find somebody who needed to be at the Festival, somebody whose
life could be saved by this meeting. And I thought of Eneyda. She
had a performance that Gretzy and Joël had seen at a Monologue
Festival, a competitive kind of festival that people here like in
which the wise ones teach the unhappy. Eneyda was an unhappy one
and all the rest were the wise ones. They tore her work to shreds.
When I invited her she said "No! My performance has many problems,
I received lots of critics from important people and I have decided
not to make the performance anymore". It took me a week to convince
her, giving her time to think. Finally I succeeded over all her executioners.
Now I want you to read the letter that Eneyda
sent me when she arrived to Batabanó, a place on the coast,
burning of sun and salt on the southern tip of western Cuba, where
she has made theatre with her husband for many years.
My dear friend Roxana, how are you? I
thank you infinitely for having invited me to the Event that
you organise. As you told me, I was certainly able to confirm
how different it is from other theatre events in Cuba.
You, a woman, artist and leader of the
Magdalenas in Cuba, in the space you have conquered, challenging
necessities, lacks, misunderstandings, but with a great spirit
that I know we all value in you.
For me Magdalena Sin Fronteras has meant
a lot. It is the first time that I have had the opportunity of
sharing a meeting with women who make theatre in different parts
of the world, and appreciate the great strength and will power,
the need of something to say that we all have starting from text,
space, gestures, voice, although we live at the end of the world.
The encounter allowed us to meditate, meet with different cultures,
know ourselves, value our context and the circumstances in which
we develop our artistic processes, our own codes, the freedom
of speech, and this liberates us from being critical: this is
what I do and need to say, that's all.
The event has given me strength in many
ways; it has reaffirmed my reasonf for dedicating myself to this
profession and how many paths exist to make good art.
Thanks to you Roxana for your impulse and
encouragement. Thanks to your husband who accompanies you, to
Gretzy, Alejandro, and to the whole team that helps you so that
Magdalenas in Cuba are possible. Finally lets remember Violeta
Parra when she says:
"Gracias a la vida, que me ha dado tanto
Me dio
dos luceros, que cuando los abro..."
(Thanks to life that has given me so much
it
gave me two starry eyes, and when I open them...)
A kiss from Eneyda and Chuchi.
Dear Ju, when Magdalena Sin Fronteras finished
I lost my voice. But not like the first time. Now it was a reaction
to my psychic state. I didn't want nor could I speak. You wrote
to me to know how I was, Cristina Castrillo reclaimed my messages
and Jill wondered from Wales why she didn't hear from me. One month
after you had all left I opened the letter that Jill had given
me on the condition that I would not read it until two weeks had
passed. She was afraid that I would be hurt by her always strong
questions. No, I was not hurt by her questions about the destiny
of Magdalena, about the sense of the meetings, about the need to
have a deep necessity to do what we do. She is right. I think I
will continue to imagine how to improve the visible structures
so that the invisible part is protected.
I always expect your questions Ju. I know that
with them comes the lucidity of a critical view that is never empty
of love and real commitment. Because of this I want you and your
work to always be in our house and that people who need protection
can collide with your spirit. Eneyda has her coffee-pot; of the
kind that no factory will be ever be able to give her. I gave it
to her forcing her to come and you gave it to her working with
her and seeing her work. This coffee-pot that Eneyda took with
her from Santa Clara will never be able to be built by any factory
in the world nor by any Italian designer. And besides, it is magic:
it has taught her to speak!
I will tell you another story. When I was a little girl I went through
a traumatic period because I began to wonder how it was that men
stopped walking barefoot to put shoes on, and then how it happened
that shoes went from being a precise useful object to becoming an
object of vanity. It is not poetry; I suffered a lot as a little
girl analysing the phenomenon. When I lost words after this Magdalena
everything got tangled in the same bag: the death of our driver Yoel,
the departure of all of you, my dissatisfactions with the organisation,
the fatigue, all the accumulated questions and the sensation of wanting
to retire a little to know how to continue. Perhaps it has nothing
to do with this; perhaps still many dark areas are left. But for
all of this and for some things that should remain unsaid, I want
to continue making Magdalena in Cuba.
A thousand kisses, Ro
Translated from Spanish by Julia Varley
Roxana
Pineda (Cuba) graduated in Theatre Studies and Dramaturgy at the
Instituto Superior de Arte de Cuba in 1985. She founded the Estudio
Teatral de Santa Clara in 1989 with Joel Sáez, and has performed
in all its productions. Roxana has toured festivals in Spain, Colombia,
France and Venezuela. She is also a theatre scholar and professor,
and as such she regularly gives workshops on improvisation and composition.
In 2004, she founded the Centro de Investigaciones Teatrales Odiseo
(CITO), a pedagogical theatre research project, which has organised
five international meetings. She is the director of Magdalena Sin
Fronteras (Magdalena without Borders), a triennial international
festival and meeting which held its first manifestation in January
2005 and second in January 2008.
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