Havana is the capital of theater. Walking down the central Linea Street may hold you meetings with actresses and actors-the most visible, as well as directors, playwrights, technicians …, from around the world and Cubans living overseas.
No missing rehearsals, readings and theatrical releases, the latter apparently a requirement imposed for those born here, wherever they come from, can access the biennial festival program.
As one cannot evade the spirit of the city that comes in waves of festivals, I escaped to the general rehearsal of The other voice, a text by Spanish Manuel De, who took only a little of the work The human voice, written in 1930 by Frenchman Jean Cocteau.
Manuel has reinvented everything to create, on the set which he also runs, his own language. Here he takes hold on photography and performance recorded as a video art. It even includes a fragment of one of the representations of Gunter Brus, an Austrian Avant Garde artist I only had references of.
The playwright, 35, who has confessed to wanting to provoke rejection like Brus or German Joseph Beuys or the famous Serbian Marina Abramović, all with their cutting-edge performances; also uses visual language resources such as the blackout, which made me , sometimes, to think I was watching a film that dissolves to black.
To achieve his voice Manuel uses Cuban actor living in Spain, Georbis Martinez, which lies on a minimalist set design, dim red light, which give more privacy.
Martinez ( for Cubans the photographer in the short film by Pavel Giroud Tres veces dos and the Icarus-Pinocchio en Icaros by The Public Theater ), returns to his island as Antonio , a young performance artist who has been abandoned by Caesar (Gabriel Moreno ), which here is just another voice in off.
Through Antonio, playwright, musician, performance artist (also may be making light design at some shows in the Iberian Peninsula, as he told me later) rethinks romantic love, the couple as ‘ institutional formula unions … at least the way we were taught.
Manuel dares not to justify Caesar’s escape with infidelity or any other hackneyed resource of melodrama, but only with the loss of love, we who need major reasons for abandonment.
Martinez, meanwhile, does it well. With precise timing with a voice in off and some improved acting skills, since his days in the Cuban stage, when he was already a resourceful performer.
I confess that I felt like a voyeur, like looking through the opening of the lock to a man suffering heartbreak, while rehearsing or imagining farewell conversations with his lover, when she comes to pick up her suitcase. However, I was, at the same time, the protagonist who smiled and twisted her memories, with their questions and cried, cried of impotence and made his own nauseating performance.
Ladies and gentlemen, girls and boys, humans, love, heartbreak, abandonment, loss of a loved one have voices that do not discriminate on sexual orientation or gender identity or national origin or culture. These feelings bring out the real human voices. If they are close, enjoy the luxury of listening to Manuel De, through Georbis Martinez. They have something to tell you.
