Following successful CASA Theatre Festivals in 2007 and 2008, CASA returned with its most ambitious festival yet to celebrate the very best of contemporary Latin American theatre. With a one week festival programme that boasted original performances from four brilliant award-winning companies from Argentina, Colombia, El Salvador and Uruguay all making their UK premieres, CASA offered Londoners a unique opportunity to discover the incredible riches of Latin American theatre. The main programme was supplemented by CASA Nuestra, a scratch mini-festival to discover the best Latin American talent working in the UK today as well as free live music every night, playreadings, spoken word events, a visual arts exhibition of great young Latin American artists based in London and much more.
Five lives. Five lonely people. All of them looking for love. One day will bring them together in a way that will force them to face the lies they live with. Timbre4, one of Argentina’s most respected theatre companies, are led by playwright/director/actor Claudio Tolcachir and operate out of one of the smallest theatre spaces in Buenos Aires: Tolcachir’s own home. Though their resources are limited, their reputation isn’t. Written as a follow up to his breakthrough hit play, The Omission of the Coleman Family, Tercer Cuerpo has been performed over 300 times, including performances at major theatre festivals across Latin America, Europe and the USA. First performed in 2008, Tercer Cuerpo has since won Best Production at the National Theatre Awards and the Maria Guerrero award for Best Play, as well as Best Actor, Best Writer and Best Lighting at the Teatro del Mundo Festival.
Starring award-winning actor Carlos Rodriguez, Cabrerita tells the uplifting story of the life of Raúl Javiel Cabrera, mythical Montevidean character and noted watercolourist, who was committed to a mental asylum for thirty years under the most terrible conditions a man can be expected to bear, mostly due to bad luck. Teatro de la Alhambra is an independent theatre company formed in 1995 when a group of actors that had studied under Jorge Triador contacted director Eduardo Cervieri and decided to form their own company. They have produced a number of critically acclaimed shows including ..tuyo, Federico, Tierra Gitana, Sepia by Eduardo Cervieri, Montevicuentos and Sexo en la cabeza. Cabrerita is their biggest success to date and has been performed to great acclaim across Latin America and Spain. It won Best Actor and Best Uruguayan Play at the Florencio Awards (Uruguay’s National Theatre Critics Awards).ost important 20th Century visual artist and intellectual. “Cabrerita” won Uruguay’s National Theatre Critic’s “Florencio” Awards for Best Actor and Best Play.
“Acéfalos doesn’t aim to tell you a story… It’s a theatrical gamble… We wanted to challenge the audience’s need to “understand” what they’re watching. We wanted to play a game that only made sense to us. We wanted to see how far you could go before your aesthetic slipped away and disappeared into chaos… But none of it worked. The audience came and, sitting huddled in the darkness waiting for, hoping for something, who knows what, they understood. They understood our show with their hearts and their minds and their souls. They defeated us. We’re happy.” Teatro del Presagio, founded in Cali in 2005, are regarded as one of the most exciting theatre companies making work in Colombia today. Always striving to push theatrical boundaries to the maximum, Acéfalos was created in 2008. It premiered at the VIth Cali National Theatre Festival where Diego Fernando Montoya received the Best Director Award for the piece. Acefalos was generously supported by the Colombian Embassy.
A new version of Eduardo Pavlovsky’s Argentine masterpiece Potestad, this powerful monologue explores the kidnapping of children during a Latin American dictatorship. According to René Lovo, director and performer, it is a play that confronts the socio-political and profoundly human truth of a country that, at some point in its recent past, has engaged in the disappearing of unwanted elements of society for political reasons. La Galera Teatro (originally La Cocina Teatro) was founded in 2006 to investigate and develop the autonomy of the actor while creating works that challenge the social and cultural contexts in which they are made. El secreto más terrible has been performed in El Salvador and at the Festival Internacional Teatro del Carmen in Mexico. In April of this year La Galera Teatro became the first El Salvadorian company to perform in Spain.
Tell us who YOU want to see at next year’s CASA 2011 Latin American Theatre Festival. We’re giving six Latin American companies and artists who make theatre work in the UK the chance to share a new project with you. Each company has up to 15 minutes to inspire you, to delight you, to move you. Then it’s your turn as we all move to the Cafe Bar, where you’ll have a chance to tell them exactly what you thought over a FREE Cusqueña beer. For the shy (or very critical) amongst you, you can of course offer feedback anonymously through secret paper forms. Once we’ve had a good chance to read all your comments and had a good think ourselves we’ll pick one company who we will work with in the hope we can all see the full length show at CASA 2011. Nuestra CASA Scratch Festival was generously supported by Cusquena Beer.
