There are adults who do not know how to listen to children’s voices, who do not respect the definitive call of vocation and talent, unable to reconnect with their inner child, to be empathic with the infants under their care; old people so foolish as to perceive that it is not necessary to grow up to know what we want to be and how. Nelson Beatón, winner of the Dramaturgy Prize for children and puppets, talks about this Dora alonso, in 2020 and does so from his theater piece White.
The young Holguin student from the University of the Arts, appropriates a text by Hans Cristian Andersen to make it back, not the painful metaphor or the terrible moral, like those we usually find in the texts of the iconic Danish, but the presence of the child , his expressive need, the helplessness of the dream repressed by the disparate power relations exercised within the family, the violence as a gag to keep him from being.
The young man from Holguin reveals to us about the birth of his play and the paths he has traveled until today, who asserts that White is a text born in the Dramaturgy Seminar in a three-person classroom, under the supervision of Professor Yerandy Fleites Pérez. It is a piece of music, a kind of requiem for the disagreements that end up changing our shape, our mind.
“I started with various exercises that enhanced the dynamics of writing, such as characterizations of the characters from monologues and then trying to place them on stage.
“Andersen’s story tells the story of a pine that lives in a forest and always had an air of superiority. At Christmas he is cut up and taken to a residence. That night is full of gifts and you feel part of the celebration, king. The presents are then taken from him and he is taken to the attic, where he begins to dry. There he meets some mice and tells them his story, later he is taken out of the attic, they make it firewood and end up throwing it into the fire.
“In my version, I was interested in touching topics such as loneliness, nostalgia, misunderstanding towards the world of infants, that problem of trying to choose what and how you want to be when the family imposes a way of being and behaving.
“I was not interested in it being for puppets. There is something about theater for children, that unfortunately when you talk about it to people, they think or go to the theater for puppets, and I was not particularly interested, it is for actors. Although some kind of grotesque can also be put on, puppets will all have to do with the director’s staging. “
Regarding the structure, the author explains that “it is supported by two acts, two parts. The first takes place in the White Forest where Hans el pino lives, which was not yet called that, and the second is in the house of the people of the town.
The work has a musical motif that is Moonlight or Quasi a fantasy, from Beethoven, I take the sonata structure. “
Although theater for children may be understood by some experts or part of the public as a kind of poor brother of theater that is made for adults. There is an equal share of talent and ingenuity in him and his exercise, and this is what Beatón makes clear:
“You have to bet on theater for children, although there are those who undervalue it, but what better way to start structuring a way of thinking than from childhood? What better way to contribute, to try to teach? And what better resource than the theater, which moves in that spectacular world and in those dynamics, not only entertainment, but also didactic?
“I think that the theater for children gains a lot in that the public that attends the plays is also a heterogeneous public, because the adults who go to the theater with them also receive it from other perspectives.”
White has already been on the scene. “The play had a kind of stage reading and gave us the chance to experience the text from a dramatized reading that allowed us to confront the audience. This was done with the Medea Teatro group, from Havana, which we integrate ISA students, and was put on at the Festival of the Arts, in 2019.
“Also in Mexico, by the group La Jauría Teatro, at the University of Veracruz, it was put on as a dramatized reading, thanks to Pepe García, the same one who directed it here, to whom I thank him.
“I want to highlight the designs of Massiel Teresa Borges, a third-year design student at ISA, who also interpreted Pino in reading, and the help of the people from the Adolfo Llauradó room, the University of the Arts, to Professor Yerandis Fleites , for having prompted us to write this type of texts and supported in writing, Iván Fernández, the composer who from the second movement of Quasi a fantasy did a reinterpretation.
“In addition, to Yudd Favier who also opened the door to that world of puppet theater and for children, and especially the Cuban who has a huge niche in the 90s after the work of the Camejo brothers was banned.”
Nelson Beatón provides with his text a resource to bring to the scene the look of the creator who sees the child from a horizontal relationship as an individual. The cultivation of harmonious relationships and cultivating sensitivity from respect.
Of White The jury has said it is a “scenic metaphor that, from its eminently poetic construction, proposes a look at themes that validate the power of the human being and his existence. Full of symbols, effectively structured, and with a language provided with dramatic force, it is a beautiful text (…) it tells us about creation, about faith and persistence, about another type of relationship between father and son, about defense of dreams. It is a complex text that imposes new avenues of exploration in theater for children and young people in Cuba. “
Related article:
Young Holguin author wins Dramaturgy Prize
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Author: Liset Prego Díaz.
I live by asking … because knowing cannot be a luxury. This journalist shows the everyday reality, how she perceives or feels it, perhaps disrupted by a vice of graphing experiences as seen with particular lenses
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