Sunday, 20 January
Last night, after a fun show and a beautiful afternoon, the wind whipped up as darkness fell and it began to rain.
Hard not to take that as a sign.
The show went pretty well; there was some comedy at the beginning as the show was in the main plaza of San Cristóbal, in front of the cathedral. As we were setting up, a "security guard" of some sort wanted to know if we had "official permission" to do a show; the woman from Melel Xojobal, who had booked us, offered to go get some kind of permission, but since it was Saturday, the city offices weren't open. So we started the show anyway. The security guy then showed up with a cop, who looked nervous. They trued to stop the show but we already had a crown of 150 people who started jeering, and the forces of law and order stood down...
They stayed off to the side glaring at us until we left.
The music bit went OK; some people laughed and a couple of older ladies smiled and sang along. I guess "La Paloma" is a pretty old song... But Rudi said I was hiding. It's hurtful to think I still need to get commentary like that, but I suppose it's something I just have to deal with. I suppose the bit is still a bit opaque to me— I have an image of it but I guess I'm not really sure what it is yet. My first, instinctive thought about that is that Ferdinand is starring in his own personal musical, and he needs to be transported out of the ridiculousness of what he is actually doing...
So now it's time to move on.
Today will be about packing, calling Leila and trying to watch some futbol Americano, if possible. Tomorrow my van leaves for the Tuxtla airport at 5:30 am; I have an 8:30 flight to Mexico City, a 12:30 flight back to Houston, and a 9 pm flight to São Paulo. When I get there, I have to figure out how to get a bus to Recife, which promises to be pretty epic — that's a trip of more than three hours by air, so it's gotta be more than a day on the bus... And the fancy express busses that are apparently ubiquitous in Brazil are a little mysterious on the web. So I'll have to go straight to the bus station from Airport and hope for the best....
In any case, this is most likely the last blog entry until Friday, when I'm reasonably certain that I'll be safe in Recife.
So have a good week, y'all. I'll have more reflections on Chiapas by next weekend, when I start to gain some perspective...
Sunday, January 20, 2008
Saturday, January 19, 2008
Friday, 18 January
We had Tuesday and Wednesday off; later on tuesday I bought some enamel cookware for use in a music bit. I found a pot with a lid, and a large cup, that both have two different notes, if you strike them on the bottom or on the sides. The pot lid has a nice bell tone. Between the three things, I can come up with a convincing set of major triads over which I can sing "La Paloma" (!)
On Wednesday, I went to Chiapa de Corzo, the ancient pre-columbian capitol of the region. There is a festival there every January that is pretty legendary for street dancing, masks and even transvestites. I was told that my best chance to find a traditional mask would be there.
It turns out that this was not the best day to go, but it was my only chance; there was apparently less dancing and performance than other days this week. And while I found some masks, they were way out of my price range (the good ones were 3000 pesos, or just less than US$300.) Some not-so-good ones were 1200 pesos, which was still out of my price range... The main mask used in this festival is the Parachico, which is a bearded man's face, made with a fair amount of naturalism — it looks to me like a variant on the "Cristiano" mask that is common all over Mexico. There were some Jaguar masks and some bull masks also that were much cheaper (350 pesos), but I wasn't terribly taken with them; they were all made with careful attention to naturalism, and I suppose I wanted something rougher: the dangers of expectations! I almost bought a bull mask, but decided that for my purposes, I would do better to make one of my own this summer.
The bull mask was intriguing because right as I arrived at the Zócalo in Chiapa de Corzo, I heard snare drums and fife--and down the street came a parade of little girls and young women in bright, flowery dresses, accompanied by boys in sarapés and Parachico masks. Three drummers and one flutist were with them. But out in front was a boy with a bull puppet over him — exactly like the bumba-meu-boi puppets I saw in Brazil, and like the ones I will be working with in Cavalo Marinho! the puppet was a long half-cylinder representing the body, and at the front was attached one of the bull masks.
I had, just the day before, seen a video that Rudi had of Tsotsil indians doing such a dance, and wondered what the connection was with Bumba-meu-boi, and whether the dance was pre-contact or post-contact. If it was pre-contact, what were the indigenous cattle cultures in the Americas? If post-contact, what is the connection to Spanish bullfighting?
Anyway, here was a real live bull dance. Pretty cool. There were a few others throughout the late morning, all of which had the informal vibe of a Maracatu procession. And the fife-and-drum soundrack was a lot like Otha Turner's music from the American South... cool connections, all...
The afternoon wore on and the dances seemed to die away. I needed a siesta, myself, so I headed back to San Cristóbal.....
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On Thursday we had a gig in Rudi's neighborhood--the trendy new suburb of Huitepec las Palmas, three kilometers northwest of San Felipe, the last barrio of San Cristóbal proper along the Pan-American Highway. This was a show at the local elementary school for about 60 kids, all under the age of 10 or 11. The show itself was notable mainly for being kind of slow and lazy. Clearly we were out of practice and a little rusty after three days off. But I made the discovery that until I get completely out of costume, I can't act like a normal human being--the kids see a clown. I had put on the pink suit at Rudi's house and put clothes on over it; them I put on my nose, diaper and tutu behind the outhouse on the school grounds. But when the show was over, the kids chased me over to the outhouse, and while I got the nose, diaper and tutu off, and the other clothes on, the kids could still see the link suit and wouldn't stop taunting me. I was buzzing a bit from the performance and played along.... Rudi was talking with the faculty, so I had time to kill, and the kids were relentless (and apparently had nothing better to do than crowd around me and try to pull my pants down.) So I chased them some, but it was endless. I couldn't get them to stop. After a bit I tore off the outer clothes and chased them, which they enjoyed, but there was no way out until Rudi was done talking.... kind of uncomfortable. But nice to know that I can just play with a mob of kids. They're creeped out, but a little titillated by me; it's fun developing a scary-goofy relationship with them. But I have to have something to do to get out of it. They're relentless.
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Today, Friday, we had a gig at Melel Xojobal, a daycare-and-advocacy organization for homeless and indigent kids in San Cris. They are also sponsoring our show tomorrow in front of the Cathedral.
The kids here were between the ages of 1 and 4, which was very different. It was really hard to get audience volunteers who would stay onstage; one girl was actually really funny in that during the hat routine, when Rudi is trying to get her to pass a hat under her leg or around her back, she would just angrily throw it on the ground. Which was very funny. But she didn't get that she was supposed to imitate him, and she ended up crying and running offstage, as did two other kids. Very difficult. But the "slinky" routine, in which I put on a big piece of reflective, flexible tubing and move it like a Mummenshanz body mask, went really well; Rudi had encouraged me to really play it. And after 5 shows, I'm getting the hang of it. Too bad tomorrow is our last...
After the show we sat on tiny chairs and had lunch with the kids. They're all so young, and many will be below 5 feet tall when they're adults, so I felt like an absolute giant; they were also really hard to converse with — not that I have an easy time with that anyway. But I can usually exchange names with kids. I think some of these kids don't even speak Spanish at home--they speak Tsotsil. So it was weird, being this giant smiling stupidly at kids who just stared back curiously. I suppose they were also trying to process who I was, compared with the pink guy they'd been watching. Very strange.
Tomorrow I debut the music bit... Wish me luck.
We had Tuesday and Wednesday off; later on tuesday I bought some enamel cookware for use in a music bit. I found a pot with a lid, and a large cup, that both have two different notes, if you strike them on the bottom or on the sides. The pot lid has a nice bell tone. Between the three things, I can come up with a convincing set of major triads over which I can sing "La Paloma" (!)
On Wednesday, I went to Chiapa de Corzo, the ancient pre-columbian capitol of the region. There is a festival there every January that is pretty legendary for street dancing, masks and even transvestites. I was told that my best chance to find a traditional mask would be there.
It turns out that this was not the best day to go, but it was my only chance; there was apparently less dancing and performance than other days this week. And while I found some masks, they were way out of my price range (the good ones were 3000 pesos, or just less than US$300.) Some not-so-good ones were 1200 pesos, which was still out of my price range... The main mask used in this festival is the Parachico, which is a bearded man's face, made with a fair amount of naturalism — it looks to me like a variant on the "Cristiano" mask that is common all over Mexico. There were some Jaguar masks and some bull masks also that were much cheaper (350 pesos), but I wasn't terribly taken with them; they were all made with careful attention to naturalism, and I suppose I wanted something rougher: the dangers of expectations! I almost bought a bull mask, but decided that for my purposes, I would do better to make one of my own this summer.
The bull mask was intriguing because right as I arrived at the Zócalo in Chiapa de Corzo, I heard snare drums and fife--and down the street came a parade of little girls and young women in bright, flowery dresses, accompanied by boys in sarapés and Parachico masks. Three drummers and one flutist were with them. But out in front was a boy with a bull puppet over him — exactly like the bumba-meu-boi puppets I saw in Brazil, and like the ones I will be working with in Cavalo Marinho! the puppet was a long half-cylinder representing the body, and at the front was attached one of the bull masks.
I had, just the day before, seen a video that Rudi had of Tsotsil indians doing such a dance, and wondered what the connection was with Bumba-meu-boi, and whether the dance was pre-contact or post-contact. If it was pre-contact, what were the indigenous cattle cultures in the Americas? If post-contact, what is the connection to Spanish bullfighting?
Anyway, here was a real live bull dance. Pretty cool. There were a few others throughout the late morning, all of which had the informal vibe of a Maracatu procession. And the fife-and-drum soundrack was a lot like Otha Turner's music from the American South... cool connections, all...
The afternoon wore on and the dances seemed to die away. I needed a siesta, myself, so I headed back to San Cristóbal.....
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On Thursday we had a gig in Rudi's neighborhood--the trendy new suburb of Huitepec las Palmas, three kilometers northwest of San Felipe, the last barrio of San Cristóbal proper along the Pan-American Highway. This was a show at the local elementary school for about 60 kids, all under the age of 10 or 11. The show itself was notable mainly for being kind of slow and lazy. Clearly we were out of practice and a little rusty after three days off. But I made the discovery that until I get completely out of costume, I can't act like a normal human being--the kids see a clown. I had put on the pink suit at Rudi's house and put clothes on over it; them I put on my nose, diaper and tutu behind the outhouse on the school grounds. But when the show was over, the kids chased me over to the outhouse, and while I got the nose, diaper and tutu off, and the other clothes on, the kids could still see the link suit and wouldn't stop taunting me. I was buzzing a bit from the performance and played along.... Rudi was talking with the faculty, so I had time to kill, and the kids were relentless (and apparently had nothing better to do than crowd around me and try to pull my pants down.) So I chased them some, but it was endless. I couldn't get them to stop. After a bit I tore off the outer clothes and chased them, which they enjoyed, but there was no way out until Rudi was done talking.... kind of uncomfortable. But nice to know that I can just play with a mob of kids. They're creeped out, but a little titillated by me; it's fun developing a scary-goofy relationship with them. But I have to have something to do to get out of it. They're relentless.
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Today, Friday, we had a gig at Melel Xojobal, a daycare-and-advocacy organization for homeless and indigent kids in San Cris. They are also sponsoring our show tomorrow in front of the Cathedral.
The kids here were between the ages of 1 and 4, which was very different. It was really hard to get audience volunteers who would stay onstage; one girl was actually really funny in that during the hat routine, when Rudi is trying to get her to pass a hat under her leg or around her back, she would just angrily throw it on the ground. Which was very funny. But she didn't get that she was supposed to imitate him, and she ended up crying and running offstage, as did two other kids. Very difficult. But the "slinky" routine, in which I put on a big piece of reflective, flexible tubing and move it like a Mummenshanz body mask, went really well; Rudi had encouraged me to really play it. And after 5 shows, I'm getting the hang of it. Too bad tomorrow is our last...
After the show we sat on tiny chairs and had lunch with the kids. They're all so young, and many will be below 5 feet tall when they're adults, so I felt like an absolute giant; they were also really hard to converse with — not that I have an easy time with that anyway. But I can usually exchange names with kids. I think some of these kids don't even speak Spanish at home--they speak Tsotsil. So it was weird, being this giant smiling stupidly at kids who just stared back curiously. I suppose they were also trying to process who I was, compared with the pink guy they'd been watching. Very strange.
Tomorrow I debut the music bit... Wish me luck.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
Problems with photos
Ostuacan: this is the temporary housing built for flood victims.
Outside Ostuacan, near Juan de Grijalva: This is the cut that workers made to drain the lake created by the landslide.
Rudi's Butt-binoculars routine! From the night gig, Saturday 12 January, Ostuacan Basketball Court.
OK, I'm having some issues publishing photos here. Sorry about that. So this post has most of the photos mentioned in the previous Jan. 15 post below....
11 January
Not much to report today; we had no performance gigs. There had been a possibility of one at a school opening somewhere around San Cristóbal, but the guy never got back to Rudi about it. Kind of mysterious.
On the way into town this morning, walking down the hill from Rudi's house to where we catch the Colectivo minibus, we saw some workers in the woods; they had cut down a large tree and were hewing it, on the spot, into boards with a chainsaw! This must be how the rough beams I see holding up peoples' ceilings are made.
My first thought was, "now, that's a skill!" A good example of skill coming from necessity and subsistence. It was a far cry from the giant tin shack that we call a sawmill back in Eureka; these were workers getting and cutting the wood they needed for a job. Not cutting down a forest and selling it later.
After lunch I sat around in the Zócalo thinking about how to approach the music number that Rudy suggested at the end of our show; the problem is that my guitar is too big to fit into his trunk, and it's kind of random to just grab a guitar and start singing. I wish I had brought my ukelele. I looked for one at a music store here, but they didn't have one; if there had been a cheap one, I probably would have bought it and given it to Rudi. I was already planning on getting a Cavaquinho (the Brazilian version of the uke) later in my trip, so there was little point, really, in getting one now unless I could get rid of it — because I don't want to travel with one, and if I did, I should have brought the one I already own!
So I started thinking about ways to contrive an instrument out of junk--perhaps a washtub bass made with a 5-gallon bucket and a broomstick. This lead to a bunch of dramaturgical ideas, naturally, about building a story by which Ferdinand discovers music in the junk. It's an old idea, really, a classic bit that could be really cliché. But it turned out later on that Rudi had the same idea--maybe that I could contrive and play a glass marimba. This is very much in line with Bruce Marrs' observation that music is more within my skill set than juggling or other standard circus skills.
The problem is that we have four show this weekend with a lot of travel in between and little time to work up such a routine. I suppose it'll have to evolve onstage....
Music can also contribute to the balloon bit; I can easily "discover" the sound of a balloon squeaking and be inspired to perform the Blue Danube Waltz. I have no idea if there's enough familiarity with that music around here for people to get the joke, but the music itself is pretty funny so I'll start by playing with that!
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Tuesday, 15 January
Gat back late Sunday night from our trip to Ostuacan; yesterday was spent recovering and running errands in the centro of San Cirstóbal.
Saturday, we loaded up and drove down to Ostuacan. In our convoy were the seven clowns from CHISPA, and some CHISPA staffers to take care of us. One of the clowns brought her husband, three children and one of her teenage son's friends. There were about 17 in all, in four vehicles. I rode in the pickup truck with four others who spoke no English; the trip had a lot of silence! WE did manage to have one conversation about sports, drugs and the recent steroid scandals in the US. I got about one sentence out every kilometer.
I'm having to think pretty hard to say anything properly. When I just start talking, what comes out is a mixture of Spanish, Portuguese and French. Often the Portuguese version of a word is the first to come to my mouth, and I tend to glue everything together with French conjunctions and prepositions. It's kind of funny, but frustrating. I'm discovering that my French vocabulary is starting to disappear. Scary.
We drove down past a couple of the Zapatista "Autonomous" zones--villages and valleys that the Zapatistas control and that the Mexican government allows some peace. They have built their own schools in there, and apparently there's no such thing as property taxes in this part of the world, so they really have their own governments in there.
The landscape transitioned from the piney hills near San Cristóbal to misty cloud forests to the incredibly dense green rain forest of the flat lowlands. The flooding and road blockage was so intense that we had to drive way north of Ostuacan to get to it; the easier routes were blocked. Along the way, the road was plagued with collapsed shoulders, landslides from above, and outright faulting down the middle of the pavement! To some extent, this is pretty common on mountain roads; roads themselves tend to destabilize hillslopes and if the surrounding cuts aren't stabilized when the road is built, there's trouble. And it looks to me like the highway department here didn't invest much in the hillsopes and cuts when they built the roads.
That said, the effects of deforestation, overgrazing and monocultural farming have never been clearer to me. Ostuacan is a little backwater town, a market-node for a vast region of coffee plantations, cacao farms and cattle ranches. It lies at the foot of the northernmost range of the Chiapas Highlands, along a riverbed, with a plateau of gently rolling hills to the north. Every slope nearby that is less than 35-40 degrees has been deforested for plantation or ranching. And every inch of that land is eroding away. One of the photos here shows just a green hillside; if you look closely, you'll see linear formations in the surface of the hill that run in roughly horizontal lines; these are literally waves of topsoil that are flowing off of the mountain. The soil is deep and rich, but it depends on the root systems of forests to hold it there; the grasses and herbs that dominate after deforestation are not enough to hold it. Further, when the cattle diminish the grass and loosen the soil with their hooves, the situation is exacerbated. The torrential rains that come twice a year then just wash the whole place away. Eventually only bedrock will remain here, muddy badlands where nothing will be able to grow, and the soil will not have the years that it takes to develop. Then even ranching will be impossible. The rivers fill with mud and choke out the fish; the people will most likely leave and crowd into cites somewhere. They've mortgaged their future for a few years' profits--or, more likely, corporate or governmental farming programs have.
The floods that have devastated Ostuacan and the surrounding communities are not a natural disaster: downstream from the town, the deforestation allowed an entire hillside to collapse, damming the river. The resulting lake drowned several communities and blocked roads, which is why we had to drive so far north. I don't know how many people, if any, were killed. The lake is now being drained into another stretch of river via a cut that the authorities have made (see photos). Unfortunately, of course, the maps available of this area are rare, of too small a scale to show much detail, and probably wildly inaccurate. If I could map this for you, I would.
In the town of Ostuacan itself, the refugees who did not flee to the sports complex in Tuxtla were moved into plywood cabins built on concrete pads in the middle of town (see photos.) Kitchens are communal and there is no running water. Food stores are kept in fenced-in areas of schools and administrative buildings, and are guarded by armed security guards. A school outside of town has been taken over as a camp, where people sleep in gender-segregated "dormitorios" (classrooms) and the whole place is operated and guarded by the army.
When we drove down, we were told that we'd do four shows here--two on Saturday and two on Sunday. But the local authorities, with whom CHISPA had made the arrangements, weren't too clear on things, apparently, and when we arrived they were surprised and had no idea where we were to perform. It was getting close to sundown, so the venue was going to have to be lit; we ended up doing only one show that night on a basketball court (that was being used as a soccer pitch) with a pavilion roof and big lights. The show went pretty well. It started slowly — The CHISPA clowns don't really understand that you can't keep an audience waiting — and the energy was pretty low by the time Rudi and I were to start. We started pretty quickly and then settled into an even-paced rhythm which Rudi later said was a little slow and unvaried. But we have a relaxed groove together, one that keeps the show moving, at least, and allows for some play.
I can't stress enough how lucky I feel to be working with a such a seasoned pro who knows his routines, knows how to change them according to the situation and when to cut them, extend them, or modify them on the fly. He knows how to make room for me in his show; can play either part in a routine and can change roles or actions as necessary.
He knows how to work an audience and get kids to participate onstage. he knows how to develop a silent dialogue with a kid in order to, say, get the kid to do a hat routine or some acro — without forcing the kid to do anything. He's open to kids and their impulses. And he loves to play with them.
He also demonstrates the thinking-process of creating or developing a bit according to character. When we were decompressing Sunday night, we debriefed the shows a little bit and ended up rehearsing a new routine for two hats. He knows how to look for (and find!) the comedy in a situation.
He thinks like a clown, and it's fascinating to see the process outside of the context of Ronlin Foreman's classes.
There's a lot I can learn from him. I wish I had more time as his apprentice.
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Our show on Sunday was at the school outside of town, because we woke up that day to torrential rain and the outdoor venue that had been proposed was unusable. We crowded into one of the classrooms, which was maybe five meters square, and the people sat tightly around the periphery or looked in the windows. The CHISPA clowns' part of the show was cut drastically; they did one clown/folk dance and a song. Then Rudi and I started. Our show had to be cut down, too, partly because of time and space, and partly because one of our essential props is a newspaper, which can actually be very difficult to find down here.
All in all, the four shows that were planned for the weekend were cut down to two, and the show that we were supposed to do on Friday never materialized; so out of six planned gigs so far, only three have happened, and the last two we had to really fight to do at all. This is apparently par for the course in Clowns Without Borders; in these parts of the world where resources are few and everything is improvised, life has a nasty habit of coming up short.
On the drive back, the group decided to go through Tuxtla since some of the CHISPA staff live there, and because on the map, it looks like an easier drive... Ha! We ended up on several tiny dirt roads (that were actually just mud, washing away like the rest of the place) and almost lost. Traffic lanes are only taken as suggestions, here, and in the country anything goes. The driver of my vehicle, Fredy, is a great guy but he drives with an almost religious conviction that the left side of the road has fewer potholes than the right, which made for some consternation among drivers heading in the opposite direction.
All in all, drivers here, while impulsive and unpredictable, are not aggressive and they keep a pretty light touch on the gas pedal; they're very aware of people or vehicles that might move in front of them. Small maneuvers that would cause wrecks in Denver are no problem here, and I think a lot about driving in Brooklyn, where people who learned to drive in places like this are sharing the road with aggressive Yanks and the relentless stress of the city. Brooklyn seems less random and insane in this context — but still worrisome and scary.
Friday, January 11, 2008
Tuesday, 8 January
Today I assisted Rudi in a clown workshop he's teaching at El Centro Porfirio E. Hernàndez La Albarrada, a local institute that teaches literacy, conflict resolution, peace culture, organic farming, and other worthy processes. The students are literacy specialists who are working on using Clown to promote literacy. Rudi is teaching them basic scenographic structure and principles for working with props and other characters. This was his second day working with this group.
He started with some basic warmups: follow-the-leader, Sun Salutations, joint articulation and isolation. Then he led an action-mirroring game in which the group forms a circle, one person steps to the center and each person around her, in turn, does an action that she must mirror. After everyone has had a turn in the center, the focus changes: the central person must do an action which is somehow the opposite of what the other is doing. This introduces the idea of partnership--the person initiating the action must, through their action, help and direct the central person. So actions must be simple and articulate.
Next we stood, five in a line, all facing the same direction. This is an improv where there must always be two people squatting and three standing, but people must change position frequently, and do it decisively. The person in front has the most freedom, and the people in back have the most responsibility to maintain the rules. AFter this is played for a few minutes, of course, we change direction and the roles are reversed.
We then improvised, in groups of four, a series of tableaux. One person would take a position, and the other three would then add to the image. Strength of image comes from physical connection to one another, direction of energy and clarity of focus. Rudi then would give us three seconds to change the tableau.
The students were then given five minutes to rehearse their homework from the previous class, which was to do a scene with an object, two minutes maximum, in which the object is somehow transformed. The exercise brings home the difficulty of trying to effect illusions in pantomime — it's easy to appear psychotic! One's perception of time onstage is also explored, as each scene was timed with a stopwatch.
Rudi then led the whole group in a scene that he's used on stage before: he has a recording of a buzzing fly that we must all see together as it flies around us. We have to react as a group, being sensitive to the dynamics of the recording, to the fly's actions — landing, taking off, dive-bombing the group, etc. How does the group listen together? How do we follow each others' visual focus and change leaders according to the dynamics of the scene? A difficult exercise, one that requires deep ensemble, I think, to be really successful.
We then split into pairs and worked on another of Rudi's comic routines, where a #1 is trying to read a newspaper and a #2 pesters him, eventually gaining his seat, his paper, and inducing the 1 to destroy his own hat.
For me, the challenge of the day was following the whole class in Spanish! Since I was familiar with the material, it wasn't too difficult to piece together the thoughts involved. But I have to pay very close attention, and consciously follow all the words.
I'm including all this info in the blog because I'm interested in the pedagogy; as I step away from my studies at Dell'Arte, and while I aim for a career as a performer (not a teacher), it'd be foolish to think I won't be teaching this stuff at some point. It's also interesting to see the approach to the work outside of the Dell'Arte context, and even outside the context of theatre as a profession.
In general the students here are enthusiastic and creative. A few of them have good instincts for comic timing and how they play their mask for the audience. But there's a general level of discomfort with their bodies, and the couple that do have a sense of physical plastique tend to try to act with their faces and hands--the classic pantomime conundrum. Nearly all (myself included) tried to effect difficult illusions in the two-minute object scenes, although one guy kept his scene very simple and real. He was only trying to pull a box with a cord, and even made the discovery of comedy when the cord failed. Rudi singled him out for being the one who came closest to fulfilling the exercise, and seemed most in tune with the work in general. I personally felt like he was less imaginative that others, was lower in energy, and seemed less comfortable onstage. So I ask myself: how do I observe someone's process, their thought patterns, their approach to action and scenework? How did I miss the qualities in his work that Rudi saw? Was I just dazzled by the other students' external efforts?
As Rudi critiqued each scene, I was thinking about how I would approach the critique, and though we differed on some topics, Rudi and I were really in agreement about a lot of things--we just came at them from different directions.
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We found out that Thursday, we will all go to Tuxtla Gutierrez to perform for some refugees from northern Chiapas, where there has been flooding recently. The students will perform the newspaper/hat routine, and Rudi and I will perform the show that we will be doing for the rest of the tour. And we set that up and rehearse it tomorrow!
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9 January
Today we rehearsed our show, setting up a basic structure that we will continue to adapt on our tour. The show consists mostly of Rudi's standard routines, several of which come from his solo show that he tours in Europe. He's really treating me as an apprentice, inserting me into set routines as the #2 as a way of simply generating a show. As my character comes into focus in the work, the routines may evolve and change, and we may take different roles in them. Most of this material, he says, grew out of live improv onstage; the show has evolved itself in front of audiences. For now, though, I must simply execute the routine as it stands.
We rehearsed for about 3 hours, which Rudi says is a pretty short time! We managed to do an Italian of the whole show--this first version of it will be 20 minutes long--with few glitches. It's a fair amount of memorizing for me, and I had to take pretty copious notes, especially of the more technical bits (like the juggling!) Luckily a lot of the show is me just following him and doing what he tells me to do, master-and-servant style.
This will be my first time juggling onstage in a long time, and I'm a little nervous about it. But the Alexander Technique is serving me well, here. If I breathe, expand my awareness, don't hesitate and keep my hands soft, the juggling is fine. I'm more nervous about remembering the order of routines.
My clown, Ferdinand the Magnificent, is a real weirdo — you know how some clowns scare kids? Ferdinand scares other clowns — and I have a hard time imagining how he's going to fit into Rudi's routines. I suppose we'll work it out over time; the key is just to get onstage and play...
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In contrast with Mexico City, Chiapas and San Cristóbal not only seem more Mexican, but the tensions inherent in the Mexican experience seem closer to the surface here. There are a lot more tourists here; San Cristóbal is the real darling of the Lonely Planet set right now, in terms of tourist destinations. And while I felt distinctly foreign in Mexico City, here I feel obviously gringo but thoroughly banal. The place is crawling with people like me, and is making a fair amount of money off of us...
That said, Chiapas is known in the US almost exclusively in terms of its political history, and so I come loaded with preconceptions about politics here; my copy of the Lonely Planet guide says that the political situation has mellowed somewhat, though there's still a lot of Zapatista activity here. And that's borne out immediately when you come here: in the central part of town, the graffiti is extremely political, but the cynic in me has to wonder how much of it comes from any organized political groups, and how much is even put up by American tourists! A lot of it is in English--so is it for my benefit? Is the graffiti, in fact, a tourist attraction? If anyone out there has info or opinions on this, I'd love to hear it.
There is is a lot of building going on; the LP guide says that one at least semi-positive afteraffect of the 1994 uprising was increased attention and investment from the larger Mexican community. But the barrios are as miserable as any I've seen, here or in the Brazilian favelas, and the contrast between poverty and wealth is occasionally stunning. But does the building signify actual wealth, or just speculative investment? I wonder. Will it all come crashing down, say, when Pemex runs out of oil? Or when this stops being a chic deposit-point for left-wing Eurodollars?
Am I as colonial as anyone else, here? I'm certainly not making any money, but I'm gaining experience and resumé-fodder. When I fly out ten days from now, will I have left more of value behind me — Laughter! — than I am taking away?
I feel a certain tension in myself between the theatre professional and the tourist, and that bothers me. I used to work in the tourism industry, as a cartographer and writer for Frommer's Travel Guides, and I have that post-modern awareness of the tourist-as-colonialist: that by promoting knowledge of foreign and "exotic" places, we certainly change them and make them safer for middle-class Americans. Sometimes we outright destroy them. And part of the lure of working for Clowns Without Borders is definitely the opportunity to travel and see places that have been in the news, or that are just plain exotic. Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed by my earlier Indiana Jones reference. And I take some foolish pride in carrying the Lonely Planet guide and not the Frommer's.
But I don't feel like the world must stay segregated to retain some kind of cultural or "natural" purity; we on this Earth have to find ways of living together. So we have to communicate, work together, play together. And that's what I think I came here to do.
===============================================================
10 January
Today was our first show, at a sports complex in Tuxla Gutierrez that is serving as a refugee camp for over 800 people from Ostuacan, Tecpatan and other communities along the Rio Grijalva in northern Chiapas, which flooded this winter. The complex is called the " Instituto de Seguridad Social de los Trabajadores del Estado de Chiapas" (ISSTECH.) Our contact for this performance was Alejandro Alarcón Zapata, Director General of Chiapas Solidario por la Alfabetización (CHISPA), who also happens to be Rudi's neighbor near San Cristóbal. His organization is a state office which advocates and teaches literacy; the literacy worker's we've been working with are Alejandro's employees.
Before the performance, Rudi and I were briefly interviewed for CHISPA's television program on the local Channel 10; our performance at ISSTECH was also taped. We don't know yet when the broadcast will be, but I will post that info as soon as possible. Supposedly the piece will also appear on YouTube. Stay tuned... Photos will be forthcoming, too.
The refugees were sleeping on the floor of a basketball gymnasium, and hanging their laundry out on ropes between the trees around the grounds. A flock of chickens and turkeys occupied the small, fenced-in playground. When we arrived, the people were mostly just hanging out in the courtyards and under the food pavilion. We chose the our performance area: a section of courtyard backed by the basketball gym, where the people could pull chairs over easily from the dining pavilion and surround us on three sides.
The literacy workers performed first. I was dressed and ready to go when they started; toward the end of their first number, I left the swimming-pool building we were given as a dressing room, and immediately pulled so much of the audience's attention from the performers onstage that I had to go back into the pool building and hide. But this gave me a problem: Rudi was next to the stage and was expecting me to watch the first part of the show from there; but there was no way I was going to go out there and not pull focus. So I waited, and decided that when the literacy workers finished their last number and took a bow, I'd make the biggest possible entrance I could: when they left the stage, I screamed, allowing my voice to echo across the pool, ran out of the pool area and slammed the gate, and ran screaming all the way over to Rudi, who had to calm me down. I tried some quickie-pantomime to show that some kind of Loch Ness Monster had attacked me from the pool, but I don't think it played too well. Anyway, afterward Rudi said the entrance in general was a good decision. How was I going to appear and not pull focus? There was no way. And this will be an ongoing issue on this tour.
He said that he hadn't anticipated how different a world Ferdinand is from his clown--mirroring my own anxiety about how I was going to fit into his show. But he's intrigued by the challenge and he enjoyed it tonight. Maybe he'll end up treating me like some kind of pet, or a Sesame St.-style subspecies. One technical aspect of this issue is that Rudi's material demands that I wear a hat--things disappear under it, it's involved in punishment when I misbehave, etc. And I haven't done my usual Moe Howard bowl cut because I'm traveling terra incognita and didn't want to look like a freaky gringo in my daily life... but tonight's messy hat-head is unacceptable. I have to come up with a hairstyle that can work under the hat and function somehow in its own right--maybe as a surprise reveal. I also need to have places in the costume to stash stuff, like balloons and other surprises. But the diaper/tutu combination isn't set up for that yet...
The show, as a whole, went well, considering we had rehearsed a total of three hours and didn't tech all the bits fully. He's given me a firm directive to make my own balloon bit, because me trying to do his bit is pretty lame so far. And I need to step up and personalize a couple other routines as well. We decided that the juggling routine — which was alright, just draggy — needs to be rehearsed ten times a day and done in a fight call before every show. We have no ensemble rhythm with it.
He also gave me some solid advice for getting audience participation: we had chosen a kid to come up and assist us, but when we grabbed his wrists to pull him up, the kid resisted and squirmed, and I let go of him. Then Rudi had to let go of him, and we had a hell of a time getting anyone else to come up with us. Rudi says that the kid was reacting to us well when we were "picking" him, and that he likely would have settled down once we got him onstage. But I indulged his resistance, and this made our job that much harder, even with other kids.... The moral: don't let go of the kid!
The kids in general were rowdy, but attentive, and we had a lot of them running up onstage and spanking me, etc. One legacy of this particular performance was the experience of one kid who ran onstage and goaded Rudi, who chased him back to the audience and de-pantsed him! [post-modern side comment: my computer's spell-checker, interestingly, has accepted "de-pantsed," but not "Ferdinand" or "Zapatista"... oh, brave new world...!] The audience laughed a lot, and the kid had been one of the more obnoxious ones we dealt with tonight; apparently, there's a Mexican saying: "if you call the Devil, he will come!" and Rudi initially felt like the kid had gotten what he asked for. But as the show went on, other kids continued to taunt this little guy, and he watched most of the show in tears. And now Rudi feels like he's made the kid a target for as long as he's living in this camp, and even beyond. Rudi feels awful, but it was a playful decision he made on the fly and now regrets. The kid has disrespected him, sure, but he overreacted. And the kid may continue to pay a price for a long time.
So this work has boundaries and costs.
All in all, though, it was a successful show, a good start to 2008, and this year's CWB work....
Today I assisted Rudi in a clown workshop he's teaching at El Centro Porfirio E. Hernàndez La Albarrada, a local institute that teaches literacy, conflict resolution, peace culture, organic farming, and other worthy processes. The students are literacy specialists who are working on using Clown to promote literacy. Rudi is teaching them basic scenographic structure and principles for working with props and other characters. This was his second day working with this group.
He started with some basic warmups: follow-the-leader, Sun Salutations, joint articulation and isolation. Then he led an action-mirroring game in which the group forms a circle, one person steps to the center and each person around her, in turn, does an action that she must mirror. After everyone has had a turn in the center, the focus changes: the central person must do an action which is somehow the opposite of what the other is doing. This introduces the idea of partnership--the person initiating the action must, through their action, help and direct the central person. So actions must be simple and articulate.
Next we stood, five in a line, all facing the same direction. This is an improv where there must always be two people squatting and three standing, but people must change position frequently, and do it decisively. The person in front has the most freedom, and the people in back have the most responsibility to maintain the rules. AFter this is played for a few minutes, of course, we change direction and the roles are reversed.
We then improvised, in groups of four, a series of tableaux. One person would take a position, and the other three would then add to the image. Strength of image comes from physical connection to one another, direction of energy and clarity of focus. Rudi then would give us three seconds to change the tableau.
The students were then given five minutes to rehearse their homework from the previous class, which was to do a scene with an object, two minutes maximum, in which the object is somehow transformed. The exercise brings home the difficulty of trying to effect illusions in pantomime — it's easy to appear psychotic! One's perception of time onstage is also explored, as each scene was timed with a stopwatch.
Rudi then led the whole group in a scene that he's used on stage before: he has a recording of a buzzing fly that we must all see together as it flies around us. We have to react as a group, being sensitive to the dynamics of the recording, to the fly's actions — landing, taking off, dive-bombing the group, etc. How does the group listen together? How do we follow each others' visual focus and change leaders according to the dynamics of the scene? A difficult exercise, one that requires deep ensemble, I think, to be really successful.
We then split into pairs and worked on another of Rudi's comic routines, where a #1 is trying to read a newspaper and a #2 pesters him, eventually gaining his seat, his paper, and inducing the 1 to destroy his own hat.
For me, the challenge of the day was following the whole class in Spanish! Since I was familiar with the material, it wasn't too difficult to piece together the thoughts involved. But I have to pay very close attention, and consciously follow all the words.
I'm including all this info in the blog because I'm interested in the pedagogy; as I step away from my studies at Dell'Arte, and while I aim for a career as a performer (not a teacher), it'd be foolish to think I won't be teaching this stuff at some point. It's also interesting to see the approach to the work outside of the Dell'Arte context, and even outside the context of theatre as a profession.
In general the students here are enthusiastic and creative. A few of them have good instincts for comic timing and how they play their mask for the audience. But there's a general level of discomfort with their bodies, and the couple that do have a sense of physical plastique tend to try to act with their faces and hands--the classic pantomime conundrum. Nearly all (myself included) tried to effect difficult illusions in the two-minute object scenes, although one guy kept his scene very simple and real. He was only trying to pull a box with a cord, and even made the discovery of comedy when the cord failed. Rudi singled him out for being the one who came closest to fulfilling the exercise, and seemed most in tune with the work in general. I personally felt like he was less imaginative that others, was lower in energy, and seemed less comfortable onstage. So I ask myself: how do I observe someone's process, their thought patterns, their approach to action and scenework? How did I miss the qualities in his work that Rudi saw? Was I just dazzled by the other students' external efforts?
As Rudi critiqued each scene, I was thinking about how I would approach the critique, and though we differed on some topics, Rudi and I were really in agreement about a lot of things--we just came at them from different directions.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
We found out that Thursday, we will all go to Tuxtla Gutierrez to perform for some refugees from northern Chiapas, where there has been flooding recently. The students will perform the newspaper/hat routine, and Rudi and I will perform the show that we will be doing for the rest of the tour. And we set that up and rehearse it tomorrow!
===============================================================
9 January
Today we rehearsed our show, setting up a basic structure that we will continue to adapt on our tour. The show consists mostly of Rudi's standard routines, several of which come from his solo show that he tours in Europe. He's really treating me as an apprentice, inserting me into set routines as the #2 as a way of simply generating a show. As my character comes into focus in the work, the routines may evolve and change, and we may take different roles in them. Most of this material, he says, grew out of live improv onstage; the show has evolved itself in front of audiences. For now, though, I must simply execute the routine as it stands.
We rehearsed for about 3 hours, which Rudi says is a pretty short time! We managed to do an Italian of the whole show--this first version of it will be 20 minutes long--with few glitches. It's a fair amount of memorizing for me, and I had to take pretty copious notes, especially of the more technical bits (like the juggling!) Luckily a lot of the show is me just following him and doing what he tells me to do, master-and-servant style.
This will be my first time juggling onstage in a long time, and I'm a little nervous about it. But the Alexander Technique is serving me well, here. If I breathe, expand my awareness, don't hesitate and keep my hands soft, the juggling is fine. I'm more nervous about remembering the order of routines.
My clown, Ferdinand the Magnificent, is a real weirdo — you know how some clowns scare kids? Ferdinand scares other clowns — and I have a hard time imagining how he's going to fit into Rudi's routines. I suppose we'll work it out over time; the key is just to get onstage and play...
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
In contrast with Mexico City, Chiapas and San Cristóbal not only seem more Mexican, but the tensions inherent in the Mexican experience seem closer to the surface here. There are a lot more tourists here; San Cristóbal is the real darling of the Lonely Planet set right now, in terms of tourist destinations. And while I felt distinctly foreign in Mexico City, here I feel obviously gringo but thoroughly banal. The place is crawling with people like me, and is making a fair amount of money off of us...
That said, Chiapas is known in the US almost exclusively in terms of its political history, and so I come loaded with preconceptions about politics here; my copy of the Lonely Planet guide says that the political situation has mellowed somewhat, though there's still a lot of Zapatista activity here. And that's borne out immediately when you come here: in the central part of town, the graffiti is extremely political, but the cynic in me has to wonder how much of it comes from any organized political groups, and how much is even put up by American tourists! A lot of it is in English--so is it for my benefit? Is the graffiti, in fact, a tourist attraction? If anyone out there has info or opinions on this, I'd love to hear it.
There is is a lot of building going on; the LP guide says that one at least semi-positive afteraffect of the 1994 uprising was increased attention and investment from the larger Mexican community. But the barrios are as miserable as any I've seen, here or in the Brazilian favelas, and the contrast between poverty and wealth is occasionally stunning. But does the building signify actual wealth, or just speculative investment? I wonder. Will it all come crashing down, say, when Pemex runs out of oil? Or when this stops being a chic deposit-point for left-wing Eurodollars?
Am I as colonial as anyone else, here? I'm certainly not making any money, but I'm gaining experience and resumé-fodder. When I fly out ten days from now, will I have left more of value behind me — Laughter! — than I am taking away?
I feel a certain tension in myself between the theatre professional and the tourist, and that bothers me. I used to work in the tourism industry, as a cartographer and writer for Frommer's Travel Guides, and I have that post-modern awareness of the tourist-as-colonialist: that by promoting knowledge of foreign and "exotic" places, we certainly change them and make them safer for middle-class Americans. Sometimes we outright destroy them. And part of the lure of working for Clowns Without Borders is definitely the opportunity to travel and see places that have been in the news, or that are just plain exotic. Frankly, I'm a little embarrassed by my earlier Indiana Jones reference. And I take some foolish pride in carrying the Lonely Planet guide and not the Frommer's.
But I don't feel like the world must stay segregated to retain some kind of cultural or "natural" purity; we on this Earth have to find ways of living together. So we have to communicate, work together, play together. And that's what I think I came here to do.
===============================================================
10 January
Today was our first show, at a sports complex in Tuxla Gutierrez that is serving as a refugee camp for over 800 people from Ostuacan, Tecpatan and other communities along the Rio Grijalva in northern Chiapas, which flooded this winter. The complex is called the " Instituto de Seguridad Social de los Trabajadores del Estado de Chiapas" (ISSTECH.) Our contact for this performance was Alejandro Alarcón Zapata, Director General of Chiapas Solidario por la Alfabetización (CHISPA), who also happens to be Rudi's neighbor near San Cristóbal. His organization is a state office which advocates and teaches literacy; the literacy worker's we've been working with are Alejandro's employees.
Before the performance, Rudi and I were briefly interviewed for CHISPA's television program on the local Channel 10; our performance at ISSTECH was also taped. We don't know yet when the broadcast will be, but I will post that info as soon as possible. Supposedly the piece will also appear on YouTube. Stay tuned... Photos will be forthcoming, too.
The refugees were sleeping on the floor of a basketball gymnasium, and hanging their laundry out on ropes between the trees around the grounds. A flock of chickens and turkeys occupied the small, fenced-in playground. When we arrived, the people were mostly just hanging out in the courtyards and under the food pavilion. We chose the our performance area: a section of courtyard backed by the basketball gym, where the people could pull chairs over easily from the dining pavilion and surround us on three sides.
The literacy workers performed first. I was dressed and ready to go when they started; toward the end of their first number, I left the swimming-pool building we were given as a dressing room, and immediately pulled so much of the audience's attention from the performers onstage that I had to go back into the pool building and hide. But this gave me a problem: Rudi was next to the stage and was expecting me to watch the first part of the show from there; but there was no way I was going to go out there and not pull focus. So I waited, and decided that when the literacy workers finished their last number and took a bow, I'd make the biggest possible entrance I could: when they left the stage, I screamed, allowing my voice to echo across the pool, ran out of the pool area and slammed the gate, and ran screaming all the way over to Rudi, who had to calm me down. I tried some quickie-pantomime to show that some kind of Loch Ness Monster had attacked me from the pool, but I don't think it played too well. Anyway, afterward Rudi said the entrance in general was a good decision. How was I going to appear and not pull focus? There was no way. And this will be an ongoing issue on this tour.
He said that he hadn't anticipated how different a world Ferdinand is from his clown--mirroring my own anxiety about how I was going to fit into his show. But he's intrigued by the challenge and he enjoyed it tonight. Maybe he'll end up treating me like some kind of pet, or a Sesame St.-style subspecies. One technical aspect of this issue is that Rudi's material demands that I wear a hat--things disappear under it, it's involved in punishment when I misbehave, etc. And I haven't done my usual Moe Howard bowl cut because I'm traveling terra incognita and didn't want to look like a freaky gringo in my daily life... but tonight's messy hat-head is unacceptable. I have to come up with a hairstyle that can work under the hat and function somehow in its own right--maybe as a surprise reveal. I also need to have places in the costume to stash stuff, like balloons and other surprises. But the diaper/tutu combination isn't set up for that yet...
The show, as a whole, went well, considering we had rehearsed a total of three hours and didn't tech all the bits fully. He's given me a firm directive to make my own balloon bit, because me trying to do his bit is pretty lame so far. And I need to step up and personalize a couple other routines as well. We decided that the juggling routine — which was alright, just draggy — needs to be rehearsed ten times a day and done in a fight call before every show. We have no ensemble rhythm with it.
He also gave me some solid advice for getting audience participation: we had chosen a kid to come up and assist us, but when we grabbed his wrists to pull him up, the kid resisted and squirmed, and I let go of him. Then Rudi had to let go of him, and we had a hell of a time getting anyone else to come up with us. Rudi says that the kid was reacting to us well when we were "picking" him, and that he likely would have settled down once we got him onstage. But I indulged his resistance, and this made our job that much harder, even with other kids.... The moral: don't let go of the kid!
The kids in general were rowdy, but attentive, and we had a lot of them running up onstage and spanking me, etc. One legacy of this particular performance was the experience of one kid who ran onstage and goaded Rudi, who chased him back to the audience and de-pantsed him! [post-modern side comment: my computer's spell-checker, interestingly, has accepted "de-pantsed," but not "Ferdinand" or "Zapatista"... oh, brave new world...!] The audience laughed a lot, and the kid had been one of the more obnoxious ones we dealt with tonight; apparently, there's a Mexican saying: "if you call the Devil, he will come!" and Rudi initially felt like the kid had gotten what he asked for. But as the show went on, other kids continued to taunt this little guy, and he watched most of the show in tears. And now Rudi feels like he's made the kid a target for as long as he's living in this camp, and even beyond. Rudi feels awful, but it was a playful decision he made on the fly and now regrets. The kid has disrespected him, sure, but he overreacted. And the kid may continue to pay a price for a long time.
So this work has boundaries and costs.
All in all, though, it was a successful show, a good start to 2008, and this year's CWB work....
Tuesday, January 8, 2008
OK, after a few days of vacation in Mexico City, it's time to get down to work!
I arrived in San Cristóbal de las Casas yesterday morning after a 13-hour bus ride, on which I was able to sleep very little. Travel is just too exciting for my poor nervous system... Anyway I was traveling over some of the most novel terrain in my experience (the tropical mountains surrounding the altiplano of Mexico City and the transition to tropical rain forest), and I missed it all in the darkness! But I awoke this morning as a misty dawn broke over the lowlands of Chiapas as we rolled into Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capitol. The sun was very bright and the air moist. But nothing prepared me for the ride up the rim of the plateau to San Cristóbal — we went up and up and up until we could see an enormous green valley below, filled with cropland and lumpy, scrubby hills, and jagged green mountains looming dimly in the hazy distance. I felt like Indiana Jones just before the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Suddenly, just as I notice that we're above the level of the few clouds hanging in the valley, the soil goes from beige to rusty red, and we are surrounded by pine trees and junipers! San Cristóbal lies at 2300 meters above sea level (7200 feet?) and the vegetation is very much like the foothills outside of Denver! Later on there was a small afternoon rainstorm and I could swear, by the smell, that I was in the Front Range... ah, mountains!
San Cristóbal itself is nothing like Denver, of course... a small colonial city that is very picturesque and much more "Mexican" in feel and aesthetic than Mexico City, which is more cosmopolitan and pan-Latin, or even European (similar to Recife.) Rudy picked me up at the bus station and we had a little breakfast and caught a cab up to his house, which is well outside the city, up in the hills at maybe 8000 feet. He has built a small house up here in a neighborhood that is rapidly growing, but still feels like just a bunch of houses on the side of a mountain. His house is a fantasy, a little getaway he designed himself that looks like a jewel on the hilltop. From the front porch one can see beyond the ring of mountains surrounding the high plateau, and to the mountains beyond the verdant valley beyond...easily a distance of 50 miles. Amazing and beautiful!
I had brought a bottle of Mezcal for Rudy from Mexico City, and we sat down and discussed his plans for our little tour. Tomorrow and Wednesday he's teaching some workshops in San Cristóbal at some kind of literacy agency--more on that later, I guess. Then on Friday we'll do our first performance here in San Cristóbal before leaving to tour the northern reaches of Chiapas. It's very exciting to me. Clowns Without Borders has loomed in my imagination for years now, and it's amazing to finally be out doing it. I still don't know much about what we'll be performing, but I got a tiny taste today: a street urchin of maybe 6 years approached us at the internet cafe and tried to sell us gum and peanuts; Rudy engaged him in conversation, bought some peanuts, and took his questions, whereupon he informed the boy that we were clowns. So he asked us to do something! Rudy did a little trick with his baseball cap, balanced on his nose, then removed and restored his thumb. He pulled a sugar packet of f the kid's ear, and the kid asked him what I could do! So I juggled three sugar packets, and I think the kid thought we were pretty cool.
I have to struggle with my senses of compassion and propriety when I see kids like that, selling out of what I presume is desperation. My first trip abroad, in Russia, I gave a few rubles to a miserable-looking gypsy kid once and was instantly surrounded by 20 more, cynically pretending to cry.... And the street vendors here can be incredibly aggressive--we didn't get through breakfast without being hassled by three of them who had to be repeatedly ignored before they would go away. Rudy said he liked this kid — he was still soft. And Rudy genuinely wanted some peanuts. So he engaged the kid. It was beautiful. How can I open myself to people without cynicism? How can I simultaneously avoid the cynical and the genuinely annoying?
I arrived in San Cristóbal de las Casas yesterday morning after a 13-hour bus ride, on which I was able to sleep very little. Travel is just too exciting for my poor nervous system... Anyway I was traveling over some of the most novel terrain in my experience (the tropical mountains surrounding the altiplano of Mexico City and the transition to tropical rain forest), and I missed it all in the darkness! But I awoke this morning as a misty dawn broke over the lowlands of Chiapas as we rolled into Tuxtla Gutierrez, the state capitol. The sun was very bright and the air moist. But nothing prepared me for the ride up the rim of the plateau to San Cristóbal — we went up and up and up until we could see an enormous green valley below, filled with cropland and lumpy, scrubby hills, and jagged green mountains looming dimly in the hazy distance. I felt like Indiana Jones just before the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark. Suddenly, just as I notice that we're above the level of the few clouds hanging in the valley, the soil goes from beige to rusty red, and we are surrounded by pine trees and junipers! San Cristóbal lies at 2300 meters above sea level (7200 feet?) and the vegetation is very much like the foothills outside of Denver! Later on there was a small afternoon rainstorm and I could swear, by the smell, that I was in the Front Range... ah, mountains!
San Cristóbal itself is nothing like Denver, of course... a small colonial city that is very picturesque and much more "Mexican" in feel and aesthetic than Mexico City, which is more cosmopolitan and pan-Latin, or even European (similar to Recife.) Rudy picked me up at the bus station and we had a little breakfast and caught a cab up to his house, which is well outside the city, up in the hills at maybe 8000 feet. He has built a small house up here in a neighborhood that is rapidly growing, but still feels like just a bunch of houses on the side of a mountain. His house is a fantasy, a little getaway he designed himself that looks like a jewel on the hilltop. From the front porch one can see beyond the ring of mountains surrounding the high plateau, and to the mountains beyond the verdant valley beyond...easily a distance of 50 miles. Amazing and beautiful!
I had brought a bottle of Mezcal for Rudy from Mexico City, and we sat down and discussed his plans for our little tour. Tomorrow and Wednesday he's teaching some workshops in San Cristóbal at some kind of literacy agency--more on that later, I guess. Then on Friday we'll do our first performance here in San Cristóbal before leaving to tour the northern reaches of Chiapas. It's very exciting to me. Clowns Without Borders has loomed in my imagination for years now, and it's amazing to finally be out doing it. I still don't know much about what we'll be performing, but I got a tiny taste today: a street urchin of maybe 6 years approached us at the internet cafe and tried to sell us gum and peanuts; Rudy engaged him in conversation, bought some peanuts, and took his questions, whereupon he informed the boy that we were clowns. So he asked us to do something! Rudy did a little trick with his baseball cap, balanced on his nose, then removed and restored his thumb. He pulled a sugar packet of f the kid's ear, and the kid asked him what I could do! So I juggled three sugar packets, and I think the kid thought we were pretty cool.
I have to struggle with my senses of compassion and propriety when I see kids like that, selling out of what I presume is desperation. My first trip abroad, in Russia, I gave a few rubles to a miserable-looking gypsy kid once and was instantly surrounded by 20 more, cynically pretending to cry.... And the street vendors here can be incredibly aggressive--we didn't get through breakfast without being hassled by three of them who had to be repeatedly ignored before they would go away. Rudy said he liked this kid — he was still soft. And Rudy genuinely wanted some peanuts. So he engaged the kid. It was beautiful. How can I open myself to people without cynicism? How can I simultaneously avoid the cynical and the genuinely annoying?
Tuesday, January 1, 2008
Greetings, all--
And a 2008 full of music and laughter to all of you!
This is the beginning of my blog/journal for internships and side-trips, as I travel North and South America in pursuit of street theatre and music. Tonight I'm at the airport in Vancouver, British Columbia; tomorrow I fly to Mexico, and later in January, I'll head to Brazil for Carnaval and other projects.
Stay tuned...
--Nick
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