Nicola Correia-Damude, Carlos Gonzalez-Vio, and Heather Braaten working on Conservacion de Cortazar

In 2001, I began my training as a professional actor. Over the last eleven years, the importance of language has taken on a new meaning for me. The power of the word is such that from its written form it can take take shape in a physical gesture, a musical score or even be manifested in silence. I have been fortunate to travel to many different places with my theatre work, often performing in Spanish, both in Latin America and Europe. In these travels, I have met many people from all over the world and have been able to watch their work, in their language, and have always been fascinated to find how much- or little- one is able to perceive when the language being spoken is unfamiliar to the spectator. I have always found this to be an exciting challenge and experiment in communication through various languages and cultures.
Lastly, I live in Toronto. The diversity of cultures and languages in this city is among the deepest in the world; certainly compared to places I have travelled. The linguistic soundscape in Toronto is one of the joys of living in a mosaic. I sometimes like to challenge myself, when walking down the street, on the subway, etc., to identify a “foreign” language that I overhear and to understand what the person is saying; not just phonetically but often recognizing patterns of body language that have become or are inherently universal.

Aluna’s artistic creators Beatriz Pizano and Trevor Schwellnus are attending the 8th Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics in São Paulo. This year’s theme is Cities| Bodies| Action: the politics of Passion in Americas. The goal is to examine the link between performance and politics from the critical poetics of body art to the occupation of public space by social movements.

The Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics (New York) is a collaborative, multilingual and interdisciplinary network of institutions, artists, scholars, and activists throughout the Americas.

So what have we seen?

1) The award acceptance speech by Miguel Rubio and Teresa Ralli from Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru).

A potent reminder about how theatre speaks to a culture. The “Yuyachkani’s” reminded us that theatre is about actively engaging with a society from within…risking and always staying fresh. My favorite quote: “We call ourselves beginners with experience”.

2) The Brazilian companies:

Núcleo Bartolomeu de Depoimentos (Brazil) with Mestizo Orpheus: a Brazilian Hip-Hop.

Cegos / Ciegos / Blind – an urban intervention by Desvio Coletivo and Coletivo Pi.

The jaw-dropping site-specific romp through a mall, the streets, and an abandoned theatre in the superb Bom Retiro 958 Metros by Teatro da Vertigem.

The economical Potestad by Colectivo de teatro da Margem & ÁQIS (no picture).

These groups are innovative, original, bold and take incredible risks! I had never seen such committed and versatile performers. They really understand physical theatre and leave it all on the floor.

3) The Social Activists:

In the Streets:  Contemporary Social Movements in the Americas with Jade Percassi, “El Che de los Gays” Victor Hugo Robles,  Juan Marco Vaggione, Jaques Servin (of the Yes Men), Adriana Guzmán and Julieta Paredes (of Women Creating).

Adriana and Julieta from Mujeres Creando (Women Creating), our sisters from Bolivia, brought the house down with their passion: “We are enamored with our peoples. Is beautiful to be living at this moment in time. We are in love, passionately, with our utopia and with the hope for our peoples. Indigenous peoples are beyond resisting, we are in a time where we are building the worlds we imagine”.

4) The workshops:

Beatriz attended Teresa Ralli’s presentation of “Disassembling Antigona” about Yuyachkani’s creative process in the creation of this one woman show. It reminded us of the dream of having groups – permanent ensembles – in Canada where the work is not measured by imposed schedules. Where each artist commits with body and soul to the creation process.  Following this was Teresa’s workshop, “The Voice’s Body” – intensive voice practice where – as the tittle describes it – the work starts with the body. No talking heads.

Trevor joined the sandbox project, jamming with local and international artists on ways to work around/ transform the idea of ‘blockages’.  We created an intervention based on speaking the words of a language we don’t understand by auto-reciting on-the-street interviews.

Last but not least— we are very taken with São Paulo, a cosmopolitan city that does not hide its guts.  Raw and chaotic, with more rain than Vancouver, 20 million people make this place a vibrant centre of creativity. We look forward to the next few days of work, discussion, and performance here.

A group of artists from Colombia and Canada participated in this event as part the first phase of development of an artistic exchange between the two countries called Yako Sumayaska (Enchanted Water) led by Floresmiro Rodríguez Mazabel.  Pizano travelled with the talented percussionist Brandon Valdivia as part of the Canadian team.  Jorge Juan Reyes, one of the participants from our first international youth exchange in 2010 joined us on this trip.

The day of the ceremony.  Inside the Maloca, the Spiritual House…I felt complete.

Swimming with grey and pink dolphins.  The Amazon has no limits.

Zarin with her Abuela Alba Lucía the day before the big ceremony.

Zarin with drums.

Oh, monkeys!  This beautiful one was rescued from abuse by a generous soul.

The highway…the sounds, the birds, the plants and the inevitable jokes about the killer Anaconda.  ¨Thanks Spielberg¨!

Zarin after the piercing eating with her artist parents Ismenia Ahue Cuellar and Floresmiro Rodriguez Mazabel.

Trying to take it all in.

The dance with the shell of the turtle.

The community dances around the Maloca with Zarin after initiation.

The character of the Colibrí, the Hummingbird, enters the party.  He means business!

During the week a Colombian documentary crew took footage of the event.  Here, film-maker Felipe is giving a workshop in how to make a film with the kids from the community.

A vision painted by a Shaman.

The eagle of the South flirts with us.

Beautiful and talented Cantora (singer)  Ticuna, Alicia.

A woman said to me:  the first time you go you’re overwhelmed.  After the second time you never want to stop going back.  Hasta muy pronto Amazona.

So how do I come to terms with the fact that our country stands behind a new generation of Canadian companies that are rushing into the most unstable parts of Latin America to extract oil, gold, and other minerals as fast as possible while the prices are up?  How do I understand them as Canadian when they pay off illegal armed groups for ‘protection’, monies which directly fund the ongoing violence in places like Colombia?  Or when they hire local ‘security’ forces to treat local protesters as criminals who should be punished for refusing to sell their homes, as in Guatemala?

We cannot claim to be surprised by these developments – our history of mistreating the indigenous peoples of Canada is an undying tumour on our collective soul.  Even now, Cancer rates in the reserve lands of Fort Chipeweyan, downriver from the Alberta Tar sands, are hundreds of times higher than the national average, while the Alberta and Federal governments are reluctant to sanction a health survey of the area.

When we began our piece Nohayquiensepa (No one knows), we asked ourselves about our relationship to the deaths of strangers. Without question, we feel sympathy for others in their time of loss.  Tsunamis in Indonesia and Japan have brought that out.  But in other parts of the world the disasters are man-made.  In such cases we need to go further, and ensure that the price of our comfort is never someone else’s misery.

Panamerican Routes / Rutas Panamericanas brings voices from across the Americas together in a festival that combines performance with a conversation on pressing social issues.  I believe that the sensitivity to hear the softer voices that don’t cut through the daily noise of our over-mediated lives is a strength of the Arts.  And that the next step, of moving from the galvanizing anger that we feel when we recognize injustice, and turn it into sympathy and empowerment, is a contribution that theatre can make – through strong artistic choices that risk sanction – that can lead to action.  Positive, intelligent, considered, healing action.

We invite you to Theatre Passe Muraille this month to explore with us what that could mean.

(updated from Director Trevor Schwellnus’ program notes to Nohayquiensepa (No one knows), 2011)

Optional caption goes here.

This was not planned – just before we go on stage, the festival organizers asked me if we would mind if these groups came in to see the show.  They didn’t have any money to pay for the tickets.  There were also concerns about how so many children would behave during the performance.

We were honoured to have them be part of our first ever international performance of Nohayquiensepa, a piece that questions our relationship to the death of strangers and how we react in the face of human rights violations in places far away from “home”.   We wanted them to see the show no matter what.  It was also a reminder that many people there and in our own Toronto can’t see theatre because they simply can’t afford it.  Secondly, Patricia Ariza taught us a long time ago that the best audiences for young works are children, as they are completely honest in their response.  She often has an invited audience of children before she opens a new work.

The significance and our relationship to these groups went beyond “bums on seats”, an expression that usually makes me cringe anyway.  Many even in Colombia do not know who these victims are.  Here is a short list:

The Union Patriotica or UP was a leftist political party founded by the FARC and the Colombian Communist Party in 1985, as part of the peace negotiations that the guerrillas held with the Conservative Party and its leader Belisario Betancur.  This was an unprecedented move in Colombia and a time of hope.  Peace had a chance.  Then drug lords, paramilitaries, and military agents led a campaign of violence against the UP massacring more than four thousand leaders of the party, and initiating more decades of atrocious human rights violations.

False Positives: the army’s extrajudicial killing of civilians who are later presented as guerrillas to increase the battle count.  Yet another atrocity against humanity and the Colombian people committed during the presidency of Alvaro Uribe. Soldiers and officers were offered vacations, promotions, and trips abroad as a reward for high quotas of rebels eliminated.  This scandal broke in 2008, and since then approximately 2,600 ‘false positive’ cases have been reported.  A number of army officers and soldiers have been brought to trail.  Many of those killed were of course poor people who were promised jobs by these murderers only to end in mass graves. For the recruiters, each victim was worth about $300.

Back in Bogotá, as the play is about to begin, the performers (myself among them) are behind a screen.  I can hear the youngsters, the bustling crowd.  Then it all goes silent – and remains like that for the entirety of the performance, except for those moments of comic relief in Nohayquiensepa, where we are reminded of the beauty and resilience of the people who have endured violence but continue to fight for peace.

As the curtain falls the audience rises to its feet.  What an emotional moment, and such a special one for an artist!  As Patricia introduced Aluna and the play to the audience she also reminded everyone that The Festival de Mujeres en Escena por La Paz was not a “window shopping” festival; an event about egos, but a gathering of artists and audiences; an opportunity to reflect on the work with other invited artists, and a chance to experience the real impact of the work on our society at large.  Always thinking about the possibility for change.

Working in our studio in anticipation of the festival, we could not all see beyond the artistic anxiety of presenting a new work.  In the weeks before we flew to Colombia we began to introduce our investigations of the impact of Canadian mining interests in Colombia into the show.  What we learned blew our minds – not only for the scale of negative impact that common mining practices have on the environment, but also its connection to violence, displacement, and human rights violations at the hand of third party ‘security’ forces.

Foreign interest and investment in Colombia has been a major factor in the violence and human rights violations committed throughout the modern history of the country.  Nohayquiensepa attempts to bring some awareness of our own responsibility as Canadians for this violence.  Our foreign investments have the potential to affect many people around the world for better or worse.  We need to know what happens far away from home and how we are directly connected to it.

‘Aluna’ is a Kogi word that refers to an inner world of spirit and memory through which the world around and outside of us is kept in balance.