Imagine
Nations
The Hispanic theater festival is full of Cervantes
BY MIA LEONIN
Just think: the country's largest Hispanic theater
festival existing in a state that cuts major funding
for the arts in one fell swoop. Seven countries,
four continents, and multiple languages converging
on South Florida for two weeks despite orange-level
terror alerts, heightened airport security, and
indecipherable visa applications. Indeed it appears
that now more than ever, producing theater has become
a quixotic endeavor. It's logical, then, that the
eighteenth annual International Hispanic Theatre
Festival will honor Spain's greatest playwright:
Miguel De Cervantes, the man who dreamed up Don
Quixote de La Mancha and Sancho Panza, sending them
on an inimitable journey rife with political satire,
folly, and above all imagination.
The concept began this year when Mario Ernesto
Sanchez, artistic director of Teatro Avante and
of the festival, was invited to participate in a
worldwide Internet reading of Cervantes's masterpiece
Don Quixote in commemoration of the playwright's
death on April 22, 1616 (a little over a week after
Shakespeare's). "Teatro Avante wanted to pay
homage to this masterpiece by creating our own adaptation
of Don Quixote, but so much has been done, it had
to be something special and unique to our company,"
Sanchez explains. Enter Cuban playwright Raquel
Carrio and her former student, Cuban-born Lilliam
Vega, who had already co-authored two critically
acclaimed plays for Teatro Avante. Working with
Cervantes's original text, the duo created (via
e-mails from Miami to Cuba) their own adaptation,
El Vuelo del Quijote (The Flight of Don Quixote),
which incorporates music from Spain, a set designer
from Arizona, a poem by José Martí,
and allusions to a hot air balloon.
Sanchez then traveled to Chile, where he happened
to see Lasenkan Theatre, a Japanese company, perform
the original work Sancho Panza, inspired by Cervantes
and written by Yoko Tawada. Besides witnessing an
enigmatic multilingual tour de force (the play utilizes
Spanish, Japanese, and German), Sanchez saw an opportunity
to invite a Japanese company to the festival for
the first time. Add the Spanish company Plural Multimedia
y Ocio and its Defensa de Sancho Panza (written
by Fernando Fernán Gómez, one of Spain's
most well-known playwrights and actors), and a trilogy
of Cervantes-influenced pieces is complete.
But that's just a portion of what the consistently
ambitious and eclectic event has to offer. Eleven
plays from seven countries -- Argentina, Chile,
Japan, Mexico, Slovenia, Spain, and the United States
-- will be presented (non-Spanish speakers can enjoy
six of the works via English supertitles), as well
as discussions and workshops.
Miami-Dade Community College's Wolfson Campus's
own Prometeo theater troupe will perform Felix Lizarraga's
Matias y el Aviador, a tale for children of all
ages inspired by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's
The Little Prince and the legendary adventurer Matias
Perez, who while manning a hot-air balloon mysteriously
disappeared from the Caribbean sky.
Whether through delusion or idealism, the International
Hispanic Theatre Festival manages to keep itself
grounded and continues to offer South Florida audiences
eager for high-caliber theater a venerable annual
event.
miaminewtimes.com
Junio
2003 |
