Photos: Cortesía de La Colmenita
“A day without La Colmenita is the most boring in the world.” Lili was categorical. It summed it all up for her. I couldn’t help but imagine what my childhood would have been like among their games, laughter and songs as one big happy family. Because that is how this children’s company works: like one big happy family.
Anyone who is unfamiliar with its venue at 13 and G streets in the Vedado district of Havana, or who has not chatted with one of its young members or at least enjoyed one of its shows — where even the most serious public laughs and ends up moving to the music — has no idea what I’m talking about. Cuba’s first children’s theater company, La Colmenita (“The Little Beehive”), is something you have to experience for yourself.
In its domain, all possible dreams and worlds come true. And the impossible, too, because the only rule is freedom to grow up happy. That is why Lili learned how to play the flute without being able to read music; Lilita infects everyone when she plays the paila and tumbadora drums so enthusiastically that she seems to break them; Marla does not know how to dance or sing, but has more than enough charisma to get others to do so, and Ernestico is a familiar figure even in the world of cinema, after starring in the film Habanastation, by Cuban director Ian Padrón. All four of these children joined the theater company when they were very young, and today they face life and theater with the same spirit as the thousands of other little ones who have been part of the company for the last twenty-three years.
According to the group’s architect and director Carlos Alberto “Tin” Cremata, when he created the group, he planned for it to have only twenty members, but once the enrollment exceeded one hundred, a second “little beehive” had to be formed. “And that’s been the case ever since. Today we have more than twenty all over the country,” he said.
The honey that these little bees leave wherever they go has made it possible to have various Colmenitas not only in Cuba, but also in other cities and countries around the world, including Sevilla in Spain, Venezuela, Mexico, Argentina, the Dominican Republic and Panama.
“In Argentina the experience has been fabulous. We sent a music teacher, and in three months they have formed a musical group with bass, violin, keyboard, drums, minor percussion instruments (güiro, cowbell…) and a repertory of five Cuban songs. These are children with no formal music training, but that is not the most important thing, because in La Colmenita you don’t learn music theory, you learn the songs. We’re more in interested in doing. We don’t train artists; we play at theater, dance and music. Above all, we play. It’s simply a question of deciding to do that, and in making that effort, of learning and giving our all with passion and energy. That is what we instill in our children, because of the many that have been part of this, only about five percent are artists today. The immense majority of them are economists, engineers, firefighters and police officers. As my teacher Bertha Martínez says, we don’t educate art makers, we educate art appreciators,” Tin says.
Lili, who played one of the mice in Cinderella according to the Beatles, says that she thinks La Colmenita teaches them to be “modest people who are good.” Lilita, who plays the bugler Pepito in Elpidio Valdés y los Van Van, has expanded her knowledge, and thinks that this is the only place where she can be herself: “as a ‘shortie,’” she smiles. Marla, the Little Red Riding Hood in A Medley of Dreams, has made her best friends in the group. And Ernestico, who plays Elpidio Valdés, asserts that La Colmenita is a necessity for him.
The company has staged plays like Abracadabra, written basically for children; Medley of Dreams, which features versions of children’s classics by Perrault; Alice in Wonderland, a Jaime Fort adaptation of the original by Lewis Carroll; Meñique, a short story by Frenchman De Laboulaye, adapted by José Martí for The Golden Age; Martina the Little Cockroach; Snow White and the Seven Dwarves; The Adventures of Captain Plin and And Yet It Moves, with songs by Silvio Rodríguez, among others.
“It’s a goal of mine to do everything Cuban-style,” Tin comments. “And it is also a credo to have the classics as a starting point. We very much base ourselves on improvisation by the children, who suggest what they want to see on the stage, as well as the language. They say to me, ‘No, Tin, that’s not how we say it, that’s from when you were little,’” he says with a smile.
They are happy – yes, all the time – and they put that enthusiasm into every project that they do, whether they are performing in prestigious theaters or in the smallest, most remote towns in the country. It is hard to find a place where La Colmenita has not been, arriving in buses and trucks or on mule, bicycle or foot.
“We have always done productions in the field. It is a principle of the group that our big shows also should be prepared without lights and with minimal audio. This makes it possible to stage them on any embankment, in the mountains, in the middle of the countryside, wherever. I have an anecdote. Once we went to a community called La Isabelita, in the eastern part of the country. It was 1994. I remember that no matter how hard we tried, we couldn’t get a response from the audience. When we finished the show, we were feeling a little bit sad, because we had felt useless. All of a sudden, I saw one of the children approach a megaphone that I had left behind, and when he said something his voice came out amplified. Everybody started laughing. Immediately, we repeated a number of scenes and songs with that little contraption, which helped the children from that very humble place to lose their shyness and introversion. What happened in La Isabelita was one of the most wonderful moments we have ever had. We realized that even though they were speechless and not reacting, something invisible but alive was abiding in their souls,” Cremata recalled.
These UNICEF Goodwill Ambassadors are an affirmation of the most beautiful, profound ideas expressed in José Martí’s Meñique, from The Golden Age: “To have talent is to have a good heart.” This is a statement to which Tin says he adheres, with the goal of La Colmenita being, as Lilita says, “a place isolated from everything that is bad, where happiness and harmony reign. It is our second family.”
“La Colmenita is the meaning of my life,” Cremata says, and along with it, the confidence of all of his children (as he calls them) to dream infinitely. Perhaps that is why Lili aspires to be foreign minister of Cuba, to show that olives (aceitunas) can be planted in the country and a business can be opened called Aceitunur Cuba Ltd. Lilita wants to study music, be a dentist and have a dentist’s chair with a drum set alongside to keep playing. Marla, who loves playing the bad guy, wants to be a lawyer and fight for justice without leaving acting. Ernestico doesn’t want to leave acting, either, but he wants to be a designer. And I believe them. Because La Colmenita — to paraphrase Silvio Rodríguez — is a game of dreams.
