#HastaEncontrarles
Julieta Casavantes is a theater director, but above all she is an artist committed to her time; For this reason, his productions “Absences” and “After the absences” speak about what it means to have and look for a loved one who has disappeared in Mexico.
She has found, from the theater, a particular way of undertaking and accompanying the search of the thousands of mothers, which she has done by co-creating with these works that seek to sensitize audiences about this serious violation of human rights.
By Darwin Franco / @DarwinFranco
Photos: Courtesy Longing Theater
Talking about disappearances is not easy. Representing what the families of the more than 94,000 people who have disappeared in Mexico live, it is not either; Therefore, Julieta Casavantes, director and producer of Yearning Theater, has opted for the construction of stagings where families participate actively.
His choice to make and produce documentary theater was born in his native Chihuahua, where her family decisively and constantly accompanied the protests carried out by the family of Alicia De Los Ríos, member of the Communist League September 23 that was disappeared more than 43 years ago by the counterinsurgency forces of the Mexican State.
Since then he has known what a disappearance was, but he also learned of the dignity of the families they seek. That was something that, according to his memoirs, he never forgot. and that it also accompanied their incorporation into the demonstrations that, since 2013, the families of the disappeared from Jalisco began to carry out.
To learn about his work and his current work “After the Absences”, in ZonaDocs we talked with Julieta Casavantes, here the results of this interview.
Julieta, how is it that your interest in portraying the search made by the families of their loved ones arose in the theater?
When I came to live in Jalisco, I began to see that the problem of the disappeared was very strong here, that there were many, that caught my attention because I did not really know that in Jalisco there was so much violence and that it occupied the first places in index of disappearance of people.
Then I entered the master’s degree and I had you as a teacher, and well you talked a lot about the subject and I had a research topic that did not really motivate me, it did not make me vibrate and the subject of the missing; So it was that I decided to change direction and do my artistic degree project because of this problem.
This is how I made that first montage: “Absencias”, which was, rather, an academic project, with it I realized that there was a lot to say on the subject and that, furthermore, it was also impossible to think that we could also represent the pain of families.
And that then there was rather to find a format that would allow the families to speak, the ones to have the say and not us as artists wanting to be something with the pain of the families, trying to interpret it. So, there began the thorn of making documentary theater, this is how it was born: “After the absences.”
I am just interested in delving into it, in the creation of “After the absences”, and how the idea arose through documentary theater, because in this work you focus part of the narrative in the search for Antonio Reynoso Hernandez, who was disappeared on August 30, 2013 in Tlaquepaque, Jalisco, by state police.
How was for you the approach with your family, with Mayra, your mother and how do you invite the families, just so that they have a voice in a circumstance that is very painful?
The first approach that I had was through research, in articles that I found like the one you wrote about the three disappearances of Toño. So, I remember that this case, from the beginning, caught my attention; It seemed incredible to me that something like this had happened, that Mayra had been denied the possibility of reporting the events as they had happened.
I had no idea how to approach families, because you have to be so tactful. Then I found out that there was going to be a mass in the Guadalajara Cathedral, so I went to the mass and, then, I saw a little girl with Toño’s poster and I said: “no manches, it’s Toño’s family.”
So I approached and asked “Are you something from Toño?” and she told me “yes, I’m her sister”, I couldn’t help crying and then Mayra came and we hugged and cried. Later I understood that I could not do that again, that I could not cry with the families, because what they need is support.
After that, in “Absences” an installation was put together, outside in the lobby of the Vivian Blumenthal theater, and there I interviewed Mrs. Mayra. There a relationship with her arose.
Her search, for me, seemed paradigmatic, so I asked her if she would be willing to participate in this project (“After Absences”) and she just agreed that she had just retired, so she said yes. This is how we decided for her to be part of the project.
In your work, you not only point out that Toño is a victim of enforced disappearance, but also that he, unfortunately, has not been the only person who has suffered this. Hence, it seems important to me that the protagonists of the play are two young people who represent, precisely, the main victims of disappearance in Mexico.
One of the things that I tried to share is that disappearances have a history, a past. Hence, I documented myself and began to read a lot to be clear about the history of forced disappearance in Mexico; For this reason, the work portrays how it is that in the seventies, dozens of soldiers were trained by the CIA, and that after this, they have applied these techniques of violence and torture.
So it was important to understand what institutional violence is, where it comes from and how it evolved towards this other type of institutional violence, this one that is disguised as organized crime.
And about the actors, well I chose them because of that, because of the profile. There I was carefully casting, thinking which of the actresses I know who are very young is the type of girl who is disappeared, which of the actors I know has the profile of the type of guy who is disappeared; So it was that I chose Alex Morán and Adriana Palafox, the actors in the play.
In Mexico and Jalisco, the profile of the people who have been disappeared are: women between 14 and 24 years old, and men between 14 and 29 years old; these inhabitants of peripheral colonies.
In that sense, why do you consider it important for the theater to become more involved with the search for missing persons?
Now there are many artists who are speaking precisely on the subject; This is because I believe that many and many creators are committed to their time, but it takes a lot of work because of the harsh reality.
But it is complicated because many times, as audiences, what we want is to see things that take us away from reality, because there are issues that we do not want to see, but it is important that we know what is happening so that we can precisely influence it.
I wish art was a turning point where we can stop and look at the subject and no longer have the same point of view that we had, that we can understand it better and that we can sensitize ourselves, empathize more with the families.
But in the theater, the truth is, there are few efforts to talk about it, that’s why I decided to do it, and to do it I documented and prepared; Besides, I consulted with Luisa Pardo, co-director of the company Las Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, which is one of the most important documentary theater companies in Latin America and is an internationally recognized Mexican company; she advised me, so did Teofilo Guerrero in the dramaturgy part.
How, when and where can you see “After Absences”?
We have just had two performances at the Periplo Forum as part of the National Circuit of Performing Arts; there we will still have other presentations; Nevertheless, we will be on October 14 and 21 at the Alarife Theater at 8 pm.
Then we are going to go on a tour where we will be on October 23 and 24 in Tepic, Nayarit; on October 30 in Morelia, Michoacán, and then we return again to Guadalajara to the Foro El Venero, where we will perform on November 24 and 25.
And finally, we will perform again on December 5 in Colima; That’s where our 2021 presentations are over, and hopefully in 2022 we can continue managing presentations, but a lot depends a lot on the institutions and the budget.
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“After the Absences” is a play produced by Anhelo Teatro, if you want to know more about his work and staging, you can do it at https://www.facebook.com/anheloteatro/
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