MEXICO CITY (appro) .- The situation of the theater players is to mourn. The deception, the abandonment, the cuts, the irresponsibility of the cultural authorities. Nothing, nothing, just unemployment, theater closings, mock negotiations and support agreements.
It is incredible to believe that simply speaking, alternatives are given, fostered, and generated. There are no facts, just you. A few little money around here, a few calls, that do not add up, do not even add up to the budget designated for this year and that little was used. Where is the struggle of our cultural authorities to increase support? Not for projects in the style of the PRI (such as Cenart was at the time and which is now the Chapultepec Project), but to really fulfill its obligations towards the theater as a basic need of our society, now focusing on the makers of the theater.
Because culture is made by people, not institutions or good intentions. And the theaters are workers too, with precarious wages, with terrible working conditions, who by their dedication finance their own projects and are paid badly or well. Draw tables, it is thought; barely survive. And the dignity of the workers? And living from our work? We didn’t even get to the minimum wage. You have to check on other sides, compensate, look for him. And now with the pandemic, there is less and it does not seem that there will be.
They want to negotiate again after the insult and the abuse committed, who believes them? That they demonstrate their good intentions with deeds, with financing strategies; support to independent theaters and schools to stay alive, on hiatus and, above all, to well-paid virtual projects. Because everyone opened the doors of their houses, their rooms, their theaters, their creativity, and generously gave them to the community, to those who, without them, would have been shipwrecked. And first it was free, emergent, and then what? Who came out to recognize this generosity and give it back? Because the state of emergency is already a state that goes on for a long time and requires a present, active policy, also generous and just; because it is not a gift; The digital initiatives that are emerging and will continue are work that needs to be paid for until little by little presence finds a channel.
The workers of culture, the workers of the theater are not fifs, but survivors of a policy of hunger and doors that are closing. That are closed to open others, they say, better, more democratic. Yes, when ?, more democratic but pyramidal, concentrating power, decisions. Where will the collegiate bodies, the decisions between artists, the improvement of the operating rules to eradicate a privileged elite in the theater? Why so many meetings that collected the artists’ proposals if they barely considered them. It was not going backwards, but moving forward, solving, proposing and finding solutions.
It is urgent to increase the budget for the theater, and not for the theater in the abstract, but for the theater players, in order to continue doing our work, creating for others, for others, for those who now need that soul food that, although without presence, continues to exist.
We hope to lift our heads, come out afloat and stop swimming underwater, in the sea of virtuality, and return to the theater, as the hearts of the artists and the spectators beat in unison.
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