Drive-by Skits: Mexico City theater group brings theater to the people

BY MARIA GALLUCCI
The News
Friday, Dec. 18

Imagine sitting at home one evening, loafing on the couch and flipping through the channels, when a knock raps on the door. Curious, you turn the knob, opening up to a group of eager-faced actors asking to come inside. And to use your living room for a rehearsal.

The concept of such spontaneous and unexpected performances is the brainchild of Seres Comunes (Common Beings), a Mexico City-based theater collective that coordinates the at-home shows through its Salas de Urgencias (Emergency Room) project.

After wrapping up its second year with the impromptu theatrics, the group is preparing to bring rehearsals to more homes and other unconventional spaces, such as cantinas and cafeterias, in 2010. “The idea is that this creative laboratory can serve to make the spectator an accomplice,” Alfonso Cárcamo, artistic director for Salas de Urgencias, said from his home office in the Centro Histórico.

The project essentially works like this: During a two-month period, a group of actors, directors and playwrights will walk around knocking on between 20 to 30 doors around the Santa María la Ribera neighborhood.

In each living room, rooftop or café, the group will perform various stages of the play, from rudimentary readings to a complete run-through. After each performance, the crew engages the viewers and collects feedback to add to the play. Hosts are invited to view the final production at the nearby Sergio Magaña Theater.

“It is the perfect strategy to draw in the public and convince people that the theater is accessible, both economically and thematically,” Cárcamo said.

Seres Comunes actress Naomy Romo added, “It's no longer a piece of theater that's shown behind this velvet curtain. It becomes much more accessible and personal.”

The idea for the grassroots project began in 2007 in Cárcamo's apartment, when his Seres Comunes colleague Luis Ayhllón presented an informal reading of his play “Los caracoles estresados” (“The Stressed Snails”) to a group inside the home.

After fielding comments from the audience, Ayhllón showed his progressing rehearsals inside 15 random spaces in the Federal District, the State of Mexico and in Veracruz. A final performance debuted in a summer theater festival in La Paz, Bolivia.

By summer 2008, Mexico City's Secretariat of Culture adopted the concept as a pilot program to implement in the communities surrounding the Sergio Magaña Theater, a centrally located stage with a low turnout rate.

“People around the theater just stopped going, for various reasons. They didn't like the play, they thought it was too expensive, they didn't know the lineup,” said Romo.

Through Salas de Urgencias, however, the program managed to draw in more than a thousand viewers to the theater in 2009 alone, with a set of 21 “interventions,” or in-home rehearsals, and eight final shows from February to March, and an additional 32 interventions and four shows in July and August.

The roster also included widely known Mexican choreographer Antonio Salinas, who carried out a series of dance performances throughout the year. Next year, the program will expand to include cycles from February to March, June to July, and October to November. In addition to theater and dance, interventions in 2010 will include a musical component as well, and final performances will also be shown in the Centro-area Teatro del Pueblo (Community Theater) and the Tlatelolco Cultural Center.

Cárcamo said that while many times people refuse to let a bunch of strangers into the privacy of their homes, those that do welcome the theater group inside become very excited and energized as they take part in the creative process.

“The key word here is 'complicity,'” he said. “The idea is that when a movie or TV show ends, you can no longer see the actors. But with theater, when the play is over, you can converse, share ideas or have a drink with the actors.”

The artistic director added that by visiting more humble homes and meeting residents with lower levels of education, both the hosts and Salas de Urgencias members have learned that quality theater is not just a pastime of profound intellectuals or high-income viewers.

“In Mexico, people keep their distance from the theater, because many times it feels untouchable, and so the audience is left with nativity plays or grade school shows,” he said.

“The solution that we've found is to present contemporary texts with professional actors to the public, and we have reached around 3,000 people [through these shows] in our two years of work.”

For more details, visit http://salasdeurgencia.blogspot.com, or www.serescomunes.com