Teatro Escambray: Toward the Cuban's Inner Being

Abstract

There have been many studies of Teatro Escambray's work since its founding in 1968. Most of these concentrate specifically on this experience as an artistic phenomenon within the Cuban movement, or confront it from a sociological perspective. In either case, an essential element is emphasized which has characterized the collective's work since its first efforts and become the primary topic of investigations of its artistic practice: the phenomenon of communication between art (theatre, in this case) and the public.' In general, the interpretations of this relationship have begun with a basic element of the group's working method: sociocultural investigation as a source or starting point of the creative process. In these studies, however, the social factor takes precedence over the cultural, perhaps because the social circumstances of the public were in themselves the focus of most of the collective's artistic endeavors, as outlined in its founding statement: theatre as a shaper of consciousness and a vehicle for the development of sensibility, thought, and individual judgment as indispensable stages in the formation of a complete human being (1968). The ideoartistic perspectives that were concretized in open-ended dramatic works which required the public's participation and evolved into a lively discussion forum, imbued both the collective's work and critical interpretations of that work with a definite sociological value, relegating its meaning as a cultural phenomenon to a secondary level. In the ten-year period between 1971, when La vitrina (The Showcase) was premiered, and 1981, with the staging of Nosotros, los campesinos (We Peasants), the nature of the communication between the group and the public was quite specific: it responded objectively to a certain type of public, which, whether viewed in terms of its class differences or as discrete social groupings, constituted above all a cultural community made up of the different sectors of the Escambray region's population. The relationship between group and public as essentially determined by this public's specific qualities as a cultural community, even when the meaning of the collective's work was directed toward promoting vigorous ethical-political discussion among the community. Consequently, Escambray's artistic work was at times discussed in terms of the themes of its earlier plays: the land question, the war and its repercussions in the life of the community, the political proselytizing of the Jehovah's Wit-