Cervantino 2014: Great Ride While It Lasted

I have to admit I was pessimistic beforehand about this one, but I am already full of memories of even more events than I wrote about. One of my favorite FIC junkies feels the same way and so did people who knew the one or two events that would make them happy.

Jorge Volpi, the director of this year's Cervantino, opened the Festival in the presence of the Crown Prince and Princess of Japan, expressing grief about the traagedy of the Normal School students. As director, Volpi made sure that FIC 42 would fertilize culture in Mexico: Not only Proyecto Ruelas, which developed actors and drew large audiences, but the Critics workshop and the Academia orchestra, both providing opportunities for talented Mexicans and others to hone their skills. And, once again, the FIC commissioned an opera and a dance work.

Here's a heartwarming story I heard: A friend took a retarded teenage girl she knows to the Butoh performance at the State Auditorium. The young woman was entranced, responded appropriately according to my friend. Maybe there's a lesson here. Maybe more of us should think of inviting someone we know who says"I'm not going to anything." a common response around here.

Grumbles: The untimely closing of most art exhibits the principal one, especially from people who work. And as always to select photos to download akes a long time because a slideshow is lacking.

Scene from Rasgado's opera Paso del Norte

When the new agenda booklet arrived, Ii found it practical. The sabana made planning easier, though.

An under-the-radar event I found very powerful:: the opera composed by Victor Rasgado of Oaxaca
based on a play that told the true story of twenty Mexicans who died of suffocation when the train car in which they were going clandestinely to the US was shunted onto a siding. Poetic lyrics, powerful acting and singing by Lourdes Ambriz and others. Supertitled even though it was in Spanish.

I kept finding that one FIC event played off another. Just one example, seeing the staging of the soldiers in Coriolanus and then in the scenes I saw in Mexiamora. Once again, I was fascinated by  how much the costume design contributes to the effect a work has. Hats off to the unsung hero(ines) who design and make these clothes.

We were lucky with the weather this year, although the one rainy day almost wiped out the Tea Ceremony.

Cervantino 2014: Shakespeare Two Ways [Proyecto Ruelas; Tiger Lillies/Theatre Republique]

Energetic, costumed actors in scene from HEnry V

I thought I was in heaven or at least in the Old Globe Theater as I watched scenes from Shakespeare performed without a set for the audience on all sides in Plaza Mexicamora. We were watching young actors from the Guanajuato neighborhoods Arboledas, Cupulas, Martires 22 de abril, Lomas del Padre and Cervera, directed by Luis Martin Solis (please forgive the lack of accents) put on scenes from Shakespeare. We saw scenes ranging from tragedy (Lear and Hamlet) to comedy Two Gentlemen from Verona)and the history play (Henry V) shown at the right.

I wish I had a photo of Lear's fool, but the creature in a teddy bear costume moved too fast for me or was facing away at strategic moments. The actors had been trained to act for an audience on two sides, my only quibble with the production. At any rate, I hope I'll be seeing more of this this budding actress.. .

By the way, this was my second time watching stripped-down Shakespeare in a Cervantino. Several years ago a Colombian company put on a colorful Hamlet originally prepared for high school audiences in their own country. At last, I could follow the plot.

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FIC Photo, Carlos Juica

Press tickets were limited, so I only entered Teatro Principal during the intermission of Tiger Lillies/Teatro Republique's production of Hamlet, notable in a different way from Proyecto Ruelas, but I soaked in enough to know I won't forget this emotionally complex, theatrically exciting evening at the Principal. .

The theater itself will never look the same to me again. The five person cast used the full depth of the stage with the three musicians in the foreground at either side. Unfortunately the Cervantino photographer focused on the characters instead showing them in front of the visually simple but technically complicated set that heightened the power of the production. I don't have a photo, either, of the projection of huge ocean waves against the back wall for Ophelia's death by water, imaginatively shifted to the open sea instead of the tranquil English Avon familiar to Shakespeare..

The dramatic intensity of the play came from the singing of the pianist-narrator who could have come from 1930s Berlin, from the actors (Hamlet spoke impeccable British English) and the Queen was perfectly cast,and from the musicians pounding out their sometimes punk, sometimes blues music, at the side of the stage.

For me, this Hamlet was a thoroughly satisfying evening in the theater with all facets reinforcing each other. Mercifully, Fortinbras wasn't brought in at the end to mitigate the sight of the corpses littering the stage. While Hamlet was dying, his pause before saying "The rest is silence" was perfect.

Note: by typing Theatre Republique into Youtube you can see a short clip that gives a visual sense of the production. Tiger Lillies Hamlet will take you to Tiger Lillies' whole Hamlet album.

Cervantino Fever 2014

As always, yesterday Guanajuato folks filled the main floor and first balcony of Teatro Juarez to be among the first to know this year's International Cervantino Festival program  And always, the speakers felt no need to hurry through their speeches. So here's a joke  I heard afterward:

Guanajuato hillscape behind , Japanese sun on both sides

"A good speech must be like a bikini, short, showing much but leaving something to the imagination." 

Waiting their turn

  Un buen discurso debe ser como un bikini, corto, enseñando mucho, pero dejando algo a la imaginacion.

Whoever made the exuberant video that followed   the speakers knew what what to do. It was short, showing much, but, yes, leaving parts uncovered.

The program is so full  the list that follows is almost like a Thanksgiving dinner described by the cranberries, but here goes:

The opener :Japanese taiko drummers

The closing: Ruben Blades (Panama by way of New York), known as the salsero intelectual.
:
In classical music, two performances by the Arditti Quartet (USA), seven by the Austrian pianist Rudolf Buchbinder playing all the Beethoven sonatas

Three nights of folklorico-the National Folklore Ballet of Amalia Hernandez, the: Nuevo Leon Dance Troupe; and the OSUG ballet folklorico + at least one night of ballet (from Bulgaria)

A concert version of West Side Story (Amor sin barreras)

Jazz and world music as always at the Ex-Hacienda Gabriel de Barrera

Movies, pantomime, acrobats, world class marionette shows

Guanajuato's own Capella Guanajuatense and Zephyrus

Spotlight on Shakespeare: somewhere between half a dozen and a dozen offerings of his plays during this 450th year from his birth, including a local project involving young people from four Guanajuato communities (El Proyecto Ruelas) alredy rehearsing scenes to present

At the Alhondiga, an African woman playing the kora

I'll stop here although I have probably skipped the event (possibly from Mexico) that will propel you to the box office (taquilla) tomorrow when tickets for individual events go on sale.

Despite this horn of plenty, people talk about what is not being done this year."What? only the Entremeses tis year when Cervantes was Shakespeare's contemporary?" (my translation)

A fraction of the audience pouring out of Teatro Juarez

On the other hand: much baroque music and music on Shakespearean themes, literary programs honoring the centennial of the nationally beloved poet Efrain Huerta born in Silao, and art exhibits including Guatemalan textiles and photos by Rodrigo Moya from an archive that has been closed for thirty years; and at the train station every night of the Festival, hip hop, vallenato and other dance music for young people. I always marvel at how the FIC offers something  for every age and taste.

Stay tuned for more on the nooks and crannies that make the Cervantino special.