Teatro Travieso and Creación Colectiva: Challenging the “Devising” Paradigm through Intercultural Performance in Lima, Peru

Abstract

Teatro Travieso and Creación Colectiva: Challenging the “Devising” Paradigm through Intercultural Performance in Lima, Peru Jimmy A. Noriega (bio) Introduction In summer 2012, I undertook one of my most exciting (and riskiest) theatre projects to date: I traveled with six students from the United States to study and create theatre for five weeks in Lima, Peru. This essay draws on that experience and describes the processes, motivations, challenges, and forms used to create Encuentro: Peru!! (Encounter: Peru!! ), the one-hour production based on our collective investigation. It also engages with the notion of intercultural performance and the limits of working from primarily Anglo models of devised theatre. From my own perspective, precisely because we were working in Latin America, it was necessary to avoid the words devised or devising, as these descriptors carry with them a history and set of values forged from a colonial gaze that often sees the Global South as a receptor for European and US artistic innovation rather than as a joint creator/innovator in theatrical practice and theory. Instead, I turned to the Latin American process of creación colectiva (collective creation) as a method and aesthetic for creating cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary theatre work. This experience was more than just an international exchange. As Claudia Tatinge Nascimento notes, “the intercultural stage has served both as a mirror and as a laboratory where questions and new strategies for cultural border crossing are brought to the public’s attention. But before these possibilities are exposed to the spectators, two important phases in the creation of intercultural performance take place: training and rehearsals” (7). This essay recounts those phases as they took place in our process of creación colectiva and opens up avenues for rethinking how actor training and artistic collaboration can occur through an intercultural encounter. Within the field there is a long history of engagement with intercultural performance and theory. Both Bertolt Brecht and Jerzy Grotowski experimented with cross-cultural themes in their performance practices and philosophies. More specific to Latin America, Antonin Artaud visited Mexico in 1936 and became obsessed with the indigenous populations and the peyote ceremonies of the Tarahumara, which he wrote about in his book The Peyote Dance. It was the success of Peter Brook’s 1985 Mahabharata, however, that arguably propelled larger interest in intercultural theatre and opened up international networks and funding opportunities for more cross-cultural collaborations. Other well-known examples of interculturalism in theatre include the work of Ariane Mnouchkine and Theatre du Soleil, Eugenio Barba and Odin Teatret, and the work of Japanese director Tadashi Suzuki and US director Anne Bogart. Of course, none of these examples are without their criticisms. As Rustom Bharucha warns: “In the best of all possible worlds, interculturalism could be viewed as a ‘two-way street,’ based on a mutual reciprocity of needs. But in actuality, where it is the West that extends its domination to cultural matters, this ‘two-way street’ could more accurately be described as a ‘dead-end’” (2). Numerous scholars and artists have written about the dynamics involved in intercultural [End Page 207] theatre, offering praise and critique of the practice.1 Despite the challenges and opposition to these types of works, at least for the time being, it seems like intercultural theatre is here to stay. So how did I position myself, a Latino from the US–Mexico border, within this history and what motivated me to take on such a daunting task? I usually spend my summers in Latin America conducting research and working with artists. At the time, I was preparing for my fifth visit to Peru. As I made plans, one of my Peruvian collaborators asked: “Why don’t you direct a play for us this time instead of just coming to watch them?” She offered help finding me a stage and assisting with advertising, but said that I was responsible for everything else (including finding the actors). I knew immediately that I wanted to develop an original work, but the collaborative and open process of creating a new piece requires a dedicated group of performers willing to immerse themselves completely into the project. This would be essential for a...