Hugo Medrano

There is something that makes art lasting throughout the centuries, some fundamental characteristics that, despite technological developments, allow the art to subsist. In theater, all you need is an actor and a spectator to make possible the intrinsic quality of the art of performing: the action. Today, at the beginning of the 21st century, we still hold the same premise that artists like Aristotle and Brecht once expounded upon—that action, the chain of events, is the soul of the theatre. But not without asking ourselves what is new in the relationship between actor and spectator through the action, and what is new or innovative in our dramaturgy?

I think that what has been going on with our theatre since the beginning of the century is a series of attempts at expansion and contraction—looking back to past sources, playing with diverse and strange language schemes, but also engaging in genuine experimentation. I believe in the art of investigation, in experimentation, in searching (even to rummage in the past).

Regarding the spectator, the audience, I wonder myself as a theatre-worker: what level of receptiveness has the American spectator for the work of an artist confronted with today’s complex and disconcerting reality? Or what adjustments the artistic product must go through to effectively change the sensibility or the way of seeing of today’s audience?

Although it is not intended to change reality, art certainly changes society’s way of seeing. And the more substantial and profound that change is on social perception, the more valid and everlasting art will be in the future. On the other hand, if it only provokes mild or acceptable impacts, it becomes just an art tolerated by the establishment, and since it does not transform, it does not transcend.

It is on that audience that we must concentrate—we must move them and sensitize them towards other truths. It will force us to make a more complex art, a sharp one, and most importantly a richer one in strategies for receptivity.

I think that our theatre, and I refer specifically now to the Hispanic American theatre, must participate in the transformation of the American spectator by expressing shattering and innovative truths that will cause a revision and adjustment of its traditional ways of seeing and feeling. I believe in an entertainment that can deeply move the audience by swaying between the artist’s sensitivity and the spectator’s, a game in which one’s work transforms the other. I believe in an audience, our audience, that can be suspicious, nonconformist, skeptical but with a great disposition for believing. I envision audiences like those of Shakespeare’s time—where experts, like the fanatics of football or fervent pundits of the stage, mingle with vendors, farmers, day laborers and troublemakers—an audience capable of making the actor waiting to enter the stage feel like a bullfighter entering the ring.

We, at GALA, have resolutely turned our steps towards the encounter with the audience of the future.

Get Theatre News and Information

Login to post comments

Printer-friendly version