We may only be halfway through Kunstenfestivaldesarts, an annual arts festival that takes place across Brussels, but I’m pretty sure I saw one of its overall highlights this last week: the Mexican documentary theatre piece El Rumor Del Incendio (The Sound Of Fire).
The play explores a period of Mexican history, the guerrilla movements that sprang up in the country during the 1960s and 1970s and the subsequent deaths, political prisoners and forced disappearances. The subject is approached through the life of one former guerrilla: historian and teacher Margarita Urias Hermosillo.
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| © Carlos Somonte |
The three actors, all in their mid-twenties, bring the period to life in an intelligent and thought-provoking way. They incorporate into their performance archive audiovisual footage, old tapes being played on cassette recorder and documents and film clips projected onto a screen, all of which remind us that this theatre production is based on real events.
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| © Carlos Somonte |
It’s not simply a history lesson though. There is a strong narrative that is brought out by strong performances from the actors, particularly Luisa Pardo playing the role of Margarita Urias Hermosillo. There’s also a playful element as they use toy soldiers and a children’s train set to re-enact historical scenes. And moments of brilliant production, for example when a lit match is thrown towards a large screen projecting an image of a forest that at that moment switches to an image of a forest bursting into flames.
The play’s relevance to today is also highlighted as the actors ask questions such as: can a critical look at the past change the future?; what battles were fought before we were born?; how can we build a better country?; are there other systems for running things?; and why is it so difficult to criticise the present system?
While acknowledging the differences between then and now, the theatre group says in its notes about the play that they feel as if they live in a country where people have become insensitive to inequality and are incapable of shaping political projects bearing hope. “We feel straitjacketed faced with the very widespread opinion that the world is shut for good and only one system of political, social and cultural organisation now exists. A system which proves moreover to be very difficult to criticise, even though we are brought face to face with its enormous flaws and its terrible drawbacks in our everyday lives,” the group writes.
The project, which comprises this documentary theatre piece as well as a blog and a book, is not a call to take up arms. Rather it is what the theatre group calls “an attempt to restore the idea of utopia and the possibility of creating new thinking, making it possible for us to imagine fairer worlds.”
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| © Carlos Somonte |
The Brussels shows are the first time that the theatre group, ‘Lagartijas tiradas al sol’ (‘Lizards stretching in the sun’), has performed in Europe. It won’t be the actors' last though. A list of other cities where they will be performing this year can be found on the theatre group’s website.
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