February 2nd
1999: Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías becomes President of Venezuela
People are
happy. At last someone can bring about change and help the country move
forward.
The country
splits in half.
Half sees
the corruption.
Half does
not.
5th
of March 2013: Hugo Rafael Chávez Frías dies from cancer in Cuba.
Nicolás
Maduro assumes his position as the designated successor to the presidency.
The economy
crashes
The violence
rises
The people
are protesting
There’s no
food in markets
Healthcare
is rough
Everything
is too expensive
People die
People leave
But most of
all
People wait.
In the
recent “times of crisis” the Venezuelan people have been doing more waiting
than they are used to. They wait in lines for hours before the sun rises just
to get their basic needs from the supermarket. They wait to see the day when
everything will improve. They wait for the day they will be able to go back. “They
are waiting for a miracle,” some people say.
It seems
that right now, more than ever, Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot would
resonate more than ever with a Venezuelan audience. But Venezuela is a big
country; so where to stage the play?
I would
propose staging it in one of the “favela” areas in Caracas, the capital city.
These places have high concentrations of low income people in them; the
demographic from which most of the supporters of the current government came
from. But now they are no longer the privileged “pueblo mismo!” (“town/people
itself,” an expression unique to Chávez that does not really make much sense
grammatically) that Chávez would grant most of his attention to. They too are
now stuck in the limbo under a regime that does not know how to deal with the
current situation. They too are waiting.
The performance
would be free, a price that would not impede anyone from attending. A common
space where everyone would feel welcome, something like a plaza, a park, maybe
even a person’s house; but the play has to take place in one of the favelas so
that the local community will feel more as if the play is about them; meant for
them.
The
performers would ideally be people from the same favela where it is being
performed. This allows the audience to feel more easily connected to the
performance and avoids the cynicism that the government has implanted in people’s
minds when they see anything comes from the “bourgeoisie” (even if they are
only bourgeois by comparison).
They would
wear normal clothes instead of the costumes Beckett suggested; something like
jeans and T-shirts and baseball caps. This is because it will allow them to see
themselves in the play, rather than having to grasp a foreign story that does
not seem to be so related to their home.
The play
would be translated into Spanish and would include Venezuelan vernacular
vocabulary in order to better connect with the audience.
There is
still a question of what exactly would this play say to the Venezuelan people.
They would observe this play about waiting and then think about what? My
objective is not to get the lower income people from Venezuela to turn against
the government, but I simply want them to understand the situation they find
themselves in. I want to break the barrier of stubbornness that a lot of people
still cling onto. Instead of just ignoring the situation that is happening,
they should become self-aware of the condition that they are in; because it is
not that different from that of the rest of the people in the country. When
people wait in lines to buy food, they do so together. The next step beyond the
realization of their condition is the inquiry of what to do about that
condition. Will the people be compelled to go to the streets and protest? Or will
they simply keep waiting?
Hi Carlos,
ReplyDeleteThis response seems to be much like the situation of the prisoners in San Quentin prison when they saw Herbert Blau's production of Waiting For Godot. They understood the concept of time and waiting immediately. But the question you pose is a good one -- why stage it when everyone knows this situation deep down in their bones already? Bradby tells us -- and so does Paul Chan -- that the communal experience of waiting is significant. When a production is mounted we see who we are waiting with - the people around us who become the people who also recognize this situation and on whom we can depend. I also wonder if there is a way to connect the Pozzo and Lucky characters to some individuals in power or to the individuals who aren't privy to the suffering so that those who find themselves suffering and immobile because they just choose to wait can see that there is a doer to the deed -- that one can identify where pressure must be exerted in order to affect change. But I think the most important thing to do with this concept is to think about finding a specific location in the favelas that can support communal discussion and engender political action. Where do you think that would be?