(ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/06)

By Dalia Acosta Reprint | | Print |

Dalia Acosta

HAVANA, Jul 23 1996 (IPS) - Cuban theatre, like virtually every sector of life in Cuba, is in crisis. Productions have been been limited to weekend showings, ticket prices have quadrupled, actors have been seeking contracts abroad and, for the first time in more than three decades, artists have had to think in commercial terms in order to obtain financing for their work.

Nevertheless, critics agree that the theatre has become the preferred arena of social dialogue and critical reflection.

Dissident for some, opportunistic for others and nostalgic for many, Cuban theatre today includes everything from lavish productions to mediocre shows that only seek to satisfy the demands of audiences in order to guarantee their success.

For Orlando Vigil, playwright and specialist in community culture, the theatre is more than “opportunistic”. He believes it is a reaffirmation of the artistic struggle to preserve the dreams born of the 1959 revolution – which many believe are now threatened.

The so-called “end of utopia” came to Cuba with the fall of the Berlin wall, the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the worst national crisis to hit the country of the second half of this century – which has affected all the sectors of the economy as well as culture.

The 50 theatre projects approved and subsidized by the Ministry of Culture in Havana have struggled to survive in a city of two million million inhabitants. Some 10 theatres operate on restricted hours and lack many essential facilities.

Yet critics agree the thratre leads the way in presenting Cuban society with “a human, social, ethic, and philosophical reflection on its own contradictions”.

“The hope for a better life – not nihilism or total desperation – is what emerges obsessively on stage,” observed reviewer Magaly Muguercia.

Back in 1994, Havana theatregoers flocked to see ‘She Looks White’, a piece in which Abelardo Estorino, one of Cuba’s best living playwrights, presented a very personal version of the novel by Cirilo Villaverde, ‘Cecilia Valdes or the Angel’s Hill’, considered almost a national myth.

Audiences, who experienced the daily exodus of “boat people” to the United States, immediately found references to the current crisis in this version of the 19th century story.

Two years later, Cuban theatre now seems to be undergoing a revival of sorts, similar to the earlier boom of the 1960s, which critic Rine Leal – in his book ‘In the First Person’ – characterized as the most important and vital artistic expression of the period.

Critic and playwright Amado del Pino says that “there are not enough elements to go that far, but theatre is the cultural expression that most motivates and unsettles because of its necessary dialogue with the audience”.

Del Pino adds, however, that “the editorial and press limitations that exist in the country since 1990” have prevented the diffusion of “the constant atmosphere of polemics that surround the scene”.

According to art critic Rufo Caballero “it is curious that a form of expression like drama is playing the critical role that figurative art had in the ’80s”.

Abel Prieto, president of National Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba, said at the beginning of this year that in Cuba “there was a growing maturity for understanding the critical role of art”. But in an interview in ‘Revolution and Culture’, the monthly magazine published by the Ministry of Culture, Prieto acknowledged that there were still “incidents and tensions”.

Those are the kinds of problems which come up in the so-called “puyas”, in which the more urgent issues in society are dealt with indirectly, by using humor and phrases with “double meaning”.

According to the experts, the main concern is not the criticism per se, but how it is done. In the words of Sergio Corrieri, actor and government official, “a work of art does not have an effect in the political or social debate if the artistic language is not competent”.

Some famous figures in Cuban theatre, like Alberto Pedro, as well as some of the younger ones, like Victor Varela and Carlos Diaz, have demonstrated through their work the existence of a movement that maintains diversity of expression and at the same time is able to insert itself in important international circuits and festivals.

In terms of the box office, after the first years of a financial crisis which has kept Cubans confined to their homes, there is now a gradual return to the theatre.

According to critics Vivian Martinez, Cuban audiences are seeking in the theatre a place “to share daily concerns” – something which cannot be found in television or in the press.