Buenos Aires, the Latin American capital of theatre

A new international annual gathering of playwrights and theatre makers is based in the city

Buenos Aires’ role as the Latin American capital of theatre got confirmed this week by the launch of the first edition of a brand new cultural project related to drama. Its name is Escena Sur, a collaboration between the Siemens Stiftung foundation and THE–Association for Latin American Theatre with the support of Argentina’s Siemens Foundation. The goal is to create a space in Latin America devoted to the promotion of learning and creation for playwrights and theatre makers, led by renowned theatre director and playwright Alejandro Tantanian as its artistic director. Another aim is to foster an exchange between theatre creators in Latin America and Europe. The intention of Escena Sur is to serve as a factory for theatre creation with an international outreach, where plays and performances of high artistic quality are produced.

The first set of activities started on July 19 and runs through August 13, and includes a series of Master Classes where ten well known playwrights from Latin America and Europe (but mostly from Argentina) are offering lectures at the auditorium of Latin American arts museum Malba. The talks revolve around specific aspects of the dramatic text from the author’s perspective. The speaker roster is impressive, to say the least: Eduardo Pavlovky, Ricardo Monti, Guillermo Calderón (Chile), Romina Paula, Ariel Farace, Horacio Banega, Rafael Spregelburd, Philipp Löhle (Germany), Emilio García Wehbi and Mauricio Kartun.

There will also be, at the Evita Museum auditorium, an Intensive Seminar for Playwrights taught by Tantanian and Cynthia Edul (both organizers of Escena Sur, together with Asuka Hatano and Joachim Gerstmeier), aimed at young playwrights up to 35 years old who are in the process of writing a play.

The programme also includes a research project, whose goal is to generate a space where artists and specialists from different fields meet and, in the creative exchange, produce new perspectives, reflections, plays, etc. Over five conferences of five hours each at Centro Cultural Recoleta, a critic (Daniel Link), a writer (Carlos Gamerro), a cinema director (Santiago Loza), a visual artist (Patricio Larrambebere), a playwright and a theatre director (Beatriz Catani) are working together on a ‘creative laboratory,’ reflecting on the current situation of the public sphere and its connection with art.

In the opening ceremony of Escena Sur at Malba lst Tuesday, Joachim Gerstmeier, the performing arts curator of Siemens Stiftung in Germany, said before a crowded auditorium that “with our projects we hope to encourage the cultural scenes through vivid dialogue and exchange. Our task is to make things possible, and our mission is to collaborate and to develop projects and programmes that really try not only to help people to exchange, but also to connect artists through discussion”. He also explained why this artistic project is divided into branches: “When Alejandro Tantanian and I met in Germany we both came to think of Escena Sur not just as a space for the mere transmission of knowledge but also, more deeply, for the generation of ideas. So that is why Escena Sur consists not of a cycle of master classes but also of a seminar of 17 authors that come from Mexico, Colombia, Spain and Argentina, and it comprises also an artistic research project where artists from different fields are invited to discuss how art is related to ‘the public’, in every sense of the world.”

Gerstmeier closed his speech saying that Escena Sur is now to be held annually, and hoping also to make possible that, for the next edition, more international artists can take part in the project, not only giving master classes but also being able to present their performances in Buenos Aires. So, good times ahead for theatre makers and lovers alike.

Further information
www.escenasur.com.ar
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SOURCE:
“Buenos Aires as a theatre hub”
23 de Julio, 2010
By Victoria Eandi
For the Herald
http://www.buenosairesherald.com
http://www.buenosairesherald.com/BreakingNews/View/40116