Community Theatre in Colombia: Origins and Trajectories

Sarah Ashford Hart* and Janneth Aldana**

Abstract

There has been renewed national interest in socially-engaged arts since Colombia’s 2016 peace accord, but the legacy of community theatre is largely ignored in pedagogy and scholarship. This article considers origins and trajectories of Colombian community theatre starting from the 1960s. While methods such as El Nuevo Teatro and Theatre of the Oppressed have come to dominate the Latin American theatre cannon, we show how the influential ideas of Augusto Boal and Enrique Buenaventura were shaped through dialogue and exchange with collages who are much less known. We examine debates from the 70s about whether “popular theatre” was by or for “the people,” which have evolved into a contemporary commitment to working in community. We consider key international encounters that occurred at regional festivals like the Festival de Manizales, which was a laboratory for the development of an anti-hegemonic Latin American theatre. Despite the extrajudicial persecution of “leftist” artists carried out across the region during the 80s, aggressive commercialization and persistent institutional amnesia regarding creative practices of resistance, we find that “popular theatre” has endured by adapting to changing (now neoliberal) contexts, becoming “community theatre” in the 90s. We highlight the work of three active Colombian groups with long-term trajectories: Teatro Experimental de Fontibón (Bogotá), Nuestra Gente de Medellín, and Esquina Latina (Cali). All show a commitment to transgenerational collaboration and have proven resilient in contexts that are often life-or-death. This brings us to a Latin American understanding of applied theatre based in building affective connections and repairing torn social fabrics.

Keywords: community theatre, Colombia, popular theatre, Latin America, applied theatre

Introduction

The history of community theatre in Colombia is rich yet generally unknown. Tracing its origins and trajectories offers new ways of conceptualizing the international field of applied theatre. In 1997, the Colombian Network of Theatre in Community emerged with the purpose of unifying a movement described as “[theatre] done with, by and for the people, who are the protagonists of their own dream” (Una red que teje país 71). This was a new theatrical trend built on legacies of popular theatre, university theatre, and El Nuevo Teatro of previous decades. The way it distinguished itself from commercial, traditional, Eurocentric, or avant-garde theatre, unlike these earlier movements, was not precisely by its national, political, or social content, but its commitment to ongoing collaboration with marginalized communities. At the same time, the groups in the network then and now value high aesthetic standards, a distinctive factor of community theatre in Colombia, as opposed to other contexts in the world, where community arts take more processual forms and there is less emphasis on the product.

Sample of Esquina Latina’s youth and community theatre groups. Photo: Courtesy of Esquina Latina Theatre Group

The choice of the name “theatre in community” resulted from a debate among network members; they discussed the difference between theatre for the community, theatre by the community, and theatre in community (i.e. with the community and constitutive of it). This last distinction indicates that there is not a directionality (from outside the community inward or from inside the community outward) but a location: the participating theatre groups are situated in and shaped by their communities, who are also their audience, their inspiration, and their legacy. It is worth mentioning that the founding groups of the network that we focus on (Nuestra Gente de Medellín, located in Las Cruces since 1987, Teatro Experimental de Fontibón (TEF) in Bogotá since 1979, and Esquina Latina, located in the eastern neighborhoods of Cali since 1978), were chosen precisely because of their long trajectories, which show the influences of the popular and university theatre movements that fed into the Nuevo Teatro movement from the late 1960s.

We look briefly at how these three community theatre groups emerged (from which theatrical movement), why they persevered and what their approach is today. They have received little recognition at the academic level, mainly due to a lack of archival documentation, in addition to institutional amnesia (sometimes intentional) towards practices of resistance from below. What’s more, they work in territories of Colombia where diverse and excessive forms of violence and inequity are manifested – territories that at different moments of Colombia’s prolonged armed conflict have received thousands of displaced people, often from rural regions, who resettle in marginalized neighborhoods of large cities seeking to build conditions for a dignified life. In human development terms, dignified life requires the guarantee that citizens will be able to fully exercise their capabilities as human beings (namely, bodily integrity, political participation, education, health, culture, play, thought and emotion, affiliation with others, interspecies relations, and control of their environment) (Naussbaum cited in Mantilla).Community theatre in Colombia aims to contribute to the conditions for dignified life.

While Brazilian practitioner/scholar Augusto Boal is widely credited as laying the foundations for “applied theatre”—a term used to refer to a range of theatrical practices applied to social and somatic issues—, community theatre has a tenuous relationship with Boalian ideals. Boal was a leader of the popular theatre movement in Latin America from the 1960s onward. He rigorously documented the theories and practices of the movement in several books. Thanks to his publications and their translations, his work is known almost everywhere in the world, but Boal is an exceptional case; most of his colleagues in the popular theatre movement, with whom he collaborated in many Latin American countries, remain largely unknown and their contributions, even their influence on Boal’s ideas and practices, have not been formalized or taught, as Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed (TOTO) method has been.

Although his contributions are invaluable, Boal’s hegemonic position in the applied theatre cannon is problematic. TOTO systematized a kind of work that many popular theatre groups of the 1960s and 1970s did. Moreover, TOTO was a historically specific response to authoritarian states in Latin America, yet it continues to be disseminated, applied and adapted to different social contexts around the world, partly because it is effective in facilitating community participation. However, Boal’s dualistic oppressed/oppressor conceptualization often falls short of addressing complex power dynamics in current neoliberal realities. For instance, in the context of post-apartheid South Africa, Kennedy Chinyowa calls for adapting TOTO into a more inclusive “theatre of the oppressor,” because “Theatre of the Oppressed seems to falter when it comes to dealing with the inherent complexities that are hidden in real situations of oppression” (Chinyowa 15). Meanwhile, Latin American practitioners of popular theatre continued to evolve their approaches in relation to changing circumstances. We ask, then, what can the experience of groups such as Nuestra Gente, Esquina Latina and TEF offer applied theatre pedagogy?

To understand Colombian community theatre, we briefly retrace the emergence of popular theatre and El Nuevo Teatro, followed by an analysis of popular theatre’s evolution towards community theatre, which we see as a mode of survival. We provide illustrative examples of these three groups’ experiences and include audiovisual materials they have disseminated online, in an effort to depict their dynamic approaches. We want to highlight their constant struggle to work in community, in a socially engaged, anti-hegemonic way, despite the limitations of being immersed in precarious contexts. In Colombia, we see a remarkable capacity for self-determination and self-sufficiency in the face of violent (often life-or-death) situations.

Resilient creativity emerges from seemingly impossible conditions–not only the armed conflict, but drug trafficking, crime and corruption, the persecution of community leaders who protest the violations of human and environmental rights by international and national corporations, the lack of support and protection from the state for vulnerable groups, and the structural violence that maintains social and economic inequality. Community theatre in Colombia confronts these various forms of violence every day in very real ways in the barrios [ghettos]. As Nuestra Gente de Medellín’s director explains, their work stems from a commitment to “building artists for life” in a context where “life was worth nothing and no one cared what happened to the other kids who lived on the streets” (Una red que teje país 68-9). Although he refers here to the Las Cruces neighborhood of Medellín in the 1980s, he could be talking about any number of barrios in Cali or Bogotá in recent years.

Nuestra Gente’s *Comparsas*, part of their National Community Meeting of Youth Theatre. Photo: Courtesy of Nuestra Gente Cultural Corporation

However, Colombia is more than a “culture of violence” (Jaramillo 119). There are many different worlds within the country: peace and war, the presence and absence of the state, neoliberal and informal economies, poverty and wealth, indigenous cosmovisions and colonial paradigms, folkloric ideologies and Catholic beliefs, ancestral and scientific medicines. For the same reason, the history of popular and community theatre in Colombia has been ignored—because it exists in the margins, in the worlds invisible to institutions, including the institutions of memory in many cases. Most books on this subject examine parallel movements in other countries, such as Argentina or Chile, that have contributed to memory work. When Colombian popular theatre is mentioned in the literature, there is a tendency to name only the two most emblematic groups (Teatro Experimental de Cali and Teatro La Candelaria), which have never been community theatre groups.

The groups we focus on have not been fully accepted as part of Colombian theatre history, though they have published about their own work and students have written about them. On the one hand, there has been renewed interest in the role of the arts in creating a “culture of peace” in the years since the last peace process, which led to the “final accord for the termination of the conflict and the construction of stable and enduring peace,” signed in 2016 by the Armed Revolutionary Forces of Colombia (Farc) and the Colombian government. Thanks to this there are now more publications documenting the use of theatre for reconciliation, community building and memory. On the other hand, there is still little mention of the legacy of community-based theatre in Colombia. Something we find remarkable about Colombian community theatre is a commitment from its inception to shaping the next generation through pedagogical work with young people from poor neighborhoods, both as audiences and as artists. It is precisely this transgenerational view that can strengthen both memory and hope as inherently intertwined.

The communal construction of TEF’s theatre building. Photo: Courtesy of Teatro Experimental de Fontibón

The Emergence of Popular Theatre and El Nuevo Teatro

It is impossible to understand Colombian community theatre without first discussing popular theatre in Latin America. Colombia played an important role in the development of the popular theatre movement at the regional level, especially with the International Theatre Festival in Manizales and the National Festival of Nuevo Teatro. As Adam Versényi states, “the 1960s and 1970s saw a proliferation of theatre festivals throughout the region” that were “of immense importance in establishing links between theatre practitioners and breaking down the historic barriers to communication between countries” (193). He adds that the festivals were not only a forum for the exchange of ideas, but also “a stage for the presentation of theatre created upon an aesthetic foundation directly linked to specific communities and reflecting those communities’ problems, preoccupations and means of expression” (193).

The label El Nuevo Teatro Latinoamericano [The New Latin American Theatre] began to be used to describe work at these festivals created under the principles of collective creation, which “assumed that theatre-making was about critical reflection on social contents and traditional values, and in general on the ideology understood as the discourse of the status quo” (Chaparro 138). Adolfo Chaparro adds that in Colombia “by the seventies, collective creation became an aesthetic-political formula that contained both militancy and creativity” (11). Thanks to the influence of Teatro Experimental de Cali (TEC), directed by Enrique Buenaventura, and their systematized method, disseminated via regional festivals and numerous publications, the central concept of El Nuevo Teatro Latinoamericano became an “emphasis on the popular and non-commercial, based in the history of the people, and the initiation of the collective creation method, which would later extend to the rest of the continent” (Chesney 89-91).

El Nuevo Teatro Latinoamericano was distinct from European and North American collective creation, because it was conditioned by the “social and political needs” of the Latin American people (Vasquez cited in Gutiérrez 136). The 1960s “were marked by the forceful intervention of the United States in Latin America, which, in the face of the conditions of underdevelopment prevailing on the continent, created as a reaction an intense yearning for unity and revolutionary combative action, aspects to which the theatre would not be alien” (Chesney 97).

El Nuevo Teatro Latinoamericano was initially part of the workers’ movement and the quest to consolidate an autonomous language of self-expression. Enrique Buenaventura explained that in the Colombian context, “the working class of the country, with its current growth and unitary and conscientizing process, is also taking to the field of theatre, as an art form that is today more immediate and accessible” (Buenaventura in Gutiérrez 214). As militant groups converted the theatre into a weapon of resistance, Nuevo Teatro groups of the 1970s (mostly middle-class intellectuals) rallied around a concern for the needs of “the people” and a desire to engage marginalized sectors.

At the same time, they resisted traditional, colonizing theatre forms, which historically had had more institutional support—a matter that was the subject of debate at the festivals. Augusto Boal documents, for example, his experience of the 1972 Manizales Festival, which for him represented “the vices of bourgeois officialdom and all the virtues of a battlefield”, specifically between “Latin American theatre and colonialist theatre” (117). He criticized the Colombian government for closing the Manizales Festival, due to the leftist content of the plays, and instead investing in bringing high profile companies from Europe to a new national theatre festival. Adolfo Chaparro confirms that by the end of the 1970s in Colombia, with the suspension of the Manizales Festival, and the political persecution of well-known directors, “silence in the shadow of fear obfuscated the vitality of the theatre movement” (30).

Another target of state censorship was the university theatre movement, which was expressly militant and had established a presence throughout the country. It was forced to disappear in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when “imprisonment, raids and torture to counteract the growth of popular movements were on the rise” (Parra 72). Curiously, El Nuevo Teatro managed to adapt and survive, thanks to a newfound commitment to the aesthetic over the explicitly political. It would seem that popular theatre lost the battle.

This phenomenon was repeated throughout the region in different ways; by the 1980s, Latin American theatre and the regional festivals changed focus, in part due to the end of authoritarian and totalitarian regimes, leaving behind the political and social emphasis that had defined popular theatre (Versényi 193). Artists had been forced to leave their countries due to political persecution, whether by dictatorships in Chile and Argentina that detained, murdered and disappeared a large portion of the cultural sector, or by more clandestine forms of violence in Colombia, which achieved similar effects. Although a military regime was not imposed in Colombia, the violation of human rights occurred due to the democratic restrictions of a two-party system of government that prevented the rise of new social forms. Among many excessively violent responses to leftist movements, the most resonant case is the genocide against the Patriotic Union (UP), a party that brought together several leftist organizations. Between 1985 and 1993 more than one thousand militants were assassinated and another hundred disappeared at the hands of state forces in alliance with paramilitary and drug trafficking sectors (Palacios 112-70).

In general, theatre artists who survived the repression of the Cold War era in Latin America (a war waged against an “enemy within”), if they manage to return to their homelands, sought out other ways to continue their work, leaving behind their leftist agendas both out of necessity and because utopian illusions could no longer be sustained. As the economic climate became more neoliberal and individualistic (even after the return to democracy in the Southern Cone), grassroots theatre groups that operated on a voluntary basis with limited funds struggled to survive. Conservative governments let the market govern cultural production, which functioned as a form of censorship that favored commercial theatre over social and political theatre.

As a result of this economic austerity, from the late 1980s onward popular theatre arguably disappeared from record in Latin America, although it continued under the radar. While Prentki, Preston and Balfour describe Theatre for Development (TfD) in Latin America as a continuation of “The Nuevo Teatro Popular” (Prentki et al. 49-50), we identify distinct but connected trajectories. What has become applied theatre, synonymous with TfD, is a grassroots theatre [Teatro de Base], which in part lost strength because grassroots work that was carried out by “diverse types of popular organizations: human rights committees, trade unions, women’s groups, ethnic vindication associations”, as a form of resistance to repressive states, had lacked information networks and occurred in isolation in each country (Ochsenious 11). That is to say, the established groups of El Nuevo Teatro, whose work was popular in its aims but not necessarily in its modes of production, that participated in the regional festivals (and are well documented) represented only the tip of a much larger movement; Teatro de Base was happening in less visible contexts, like streets and prisons, though it was scarcely documented. Carlos Ochsenious describes Teatro de Base as an “occasion-event through which the group or community acts upon itself to regain a sense of belonging, identity, commitment, and collective participation” (127). Though the neoliberal market and state repression were deadly antagonists, a collective memory of these practices remains; it is a memory that is fractured, interrupted, partial, and embodied. This other memory of the legacy of popular (grassroots) theatre is revived and reimagined today in community theatre, sustained by the long-standing “invisible friends” of the more recognized groups. We consider below how they survived by moving from making political interventions in the barrios towards making a home there.

Nuestra Gente’s *Sonata para un Sinaí* outside their “Casa Amarilla” cultural center (2022). Photo: Courtesy of Nuestra Gente Cultural Corporation

The Evolution from Popular Theatre to Community Theatre

Community theatre groups across Latin America have organized national and international networks and festivals, gaining traction from the 1990s on, but are less known in theatre studies than El Nuevo Teatro. This is because community theatre and its festivals are (intentionally) situated within marginal spaces. Historically, 1970s popular theatre included both theatre made by the people and for the people: “one way corresponds to the productions made by groups from slums, factories and peasant communities [. . . .] The other way involves visits to poor communities [. . .] and above all, is made by groups alien to these communities” (Gutiérrez 5). Community theatre is effectively the evolution of the former, although some groups began working with the latter approach (which characterizes El Nuevo Teatro). Because popular theatre is context-specific, and “there is no single popular theatre for all times, for all places and for all social groups” (Piga cited in Gutiérrez 74), we must consider how the specificities of the time and place shape each approach and its aims.

In 1970s Latin America, Boal distinguished the following categories of popular theatre: 1. of the people and for the people; 2. propaganda; 3. didactic (discusses an ethical problem); 4. of popular perspective but for another audience; 5. of anti-popular perspective but for the people (44). Boal’s conceptualization of “the people” [el pueblo] reflects the Marxist ideology of the era’s leftist movements, focusing on class conflicts and idealizing the proletariat. Boal states: “People is a generic designation that encompasses workers, peasants and all those who are temporarily or occasionally associated with them;” he classifies the “anti-people” as “the landowners, the bourgeoisie and their associates” (21). This dualistic conceptualization served to elaborate a counterhegemonic discourse as well as a form of social organization for theatre-making based in the collective, which prioritized as its audience the popular masses oppressed by neo-colonial, capitalist society (Pardo in Antei). This ideology has evolved in today’s community theatre towards a rights-based commitment to dignified life, requiring a consistent presence in marginalized sectors that goes beyond solidarity to cohabitation.

We can thus trace different but connected routes: commitment to revolution (which eventually fell by the wayside), collective creation of a Latin American aesthetic, and rootedness in community organizing (not for politics, but for life). We are interested in how the latter route emerged. Carlos Ochsenious identified three goals of grassroots theatre: educational (learning something together about ourselves), communicational (articulating a shared vision of ourselves), and animative (expressing a collective aspiration) (129). His discussion of Teatro de Base evidenced a move away from political discourses of “the people” towards what would later be called “the community”. There is a clear difference with Boal’s more ideologically Marxist tone. In part this is due to the repressive context of the Chilean dictatorship where Ochsenious wrote, but it is also because Teatro de Base is linked to liberation theology, the fundamental basis of which is the “active, aware, critical questioning of society by an individual that moves by degrees towards a collective consensus” (Versényi 188). Versényi explained, “teatro de base parallels the religious base communities in that it is theatre made by the marginalized population for itself, not by university students or professionals who bring ‘culture’ from outside the community” (179). This marks a departure from the conceptualization of popular theatre as being either by or for the people and prioritizes embeddedness in grassroots groups.

Many Latin American popular theatre-makers started out with the aim of delivering a liberating message to “the people” and then began to learn from the communities they engaged about what kind of theatre best suited their reality (see Taylor’s discussion of Yuyachkani). They learned to create works in a more collaborative and immersive way with their working-class audiences, incorporating their customs, beliefs, and aesthetics. This is partly the case with TEF. When Emilio and Ernesto Ramirez, the brothers who cofounded TEF, were high school students interested in theatre, coming from the marginalized neighborhood of Fontibón, which had no theatres but plenty of internally displaced migrants from the countryside who brought with them their religious festivals, they discovered street theatre and comparsas (carnivalesque marches), which they used to attract audiences. Still, their work was not consciously communitarian. Emilio explains “there were [militant] people who worked in the communities and…they took us there and we did plays and we worked in that sense with the people, but…we did not have the technical, logistical nor space capacity to do community work” (Ramirez cited in Rubio 48). TEF’s origins can be traced in part to militant theatre, which aimed to reach the people where they were, in non-theatrical and open-air spaces, with the purpose of forming audiences for a non-commercial teatro propio [people’s theatre] (Parra).

One of TEF’s goals has been to foster the appreciation of theatre as contributing to ethical and aesthetic development, shaping a new sensibility with principles of solidarity and cooperation, particularly in their work with young people in the barrios of Bogotá (Rubio 92). The main difference with the militant theatre of the 70s is their commitment to building a permanent and close relationship with a specific community (Fontibón); members of that community become part of TEF, not only via audience participation, but as actors in the company. Like other community theatre groups, they “make politics in the way they demand that there be a reflection on current issues, with the plays that they circulate” (Ríos 74). They’ve also inherited militant theatre’s aim “that the work be logistically adaptable to non-conventional spaces, such as parks, avenues, squares, community halls, parking lots, etc., which can be accessed by the population that does not usually attend theatrical spaces or niches in the city center” (Ríos 40, 44). Yet they also go a step further to incorporate the “territorial dynamics that define a community theatre group”, like “carrying in their name some reference to the place of origin or the neighborhood to which they belong” (Mercado cited in Ríos 19). In fact, in 2016, the Ramirez brothers converted their childhood home into the company’s theatre building, “Sala Augusto Boal”.

As Edith Scher argues, community theatre has “fought against the culture of individualism and focused its energies on constructing a plural subject,” through “a ritual encounter among neighbors, a resignification of spaces that are not hegemonically viewed as places in which cultural practices can be carried out . . . spaces inhabited by the community [ . . .] to celebrate” (275). Teatro Esquina Latina add that in community theatre

“groups not only operate with creative dynamics, but, like any other social gathering, they generate links, bonds and affections. Even above the art itself, these groups have sought to serve as protective spaces in which theatre is the excuse for reflection and enjoyable encounters.” (22, 2022)

Esquina Latina place focus on vínculos afectivos [affective connections]and their ethos reflects the Afro-Colombian notion of Vivir Sabroso [living joyfully]. They emerged as part of the university theatre movement at the Universidad del Valle, founded by students from different fields who practiced theatre in their free time and enjoyed a close relationship with TEC, participating in Buenaventura’s collective creation workshops. One of these students was Orlando Cajamarca, who studied medicine and became the group’s director. Esquina Latina began to extend their reach to barrios and rural areas with the aim of promoting community health, but the communities quickly demanded more active participation. This led to an approach more aligned with Teatro de Base, based on a community’s self-reflection, where the “social theatre animator” works with local grassroots groups.

Esquina Latina’s now large-scale community program “Jovenes, Teatro y Comunidad”, which addresses a range of conflicts including environmental issues, has supported Esquina Latina’s professional programs in their theatre building in the privileged San Fernando neighborhood of Cali, where they have become something of an institution, facilitating exchanges between participants from different localities. Their community program is focused on children and young people. It began in marginalized areas of Cali’s Aguablanca district, with the aim of promoting community self-management [autogestión] (Teatro Esquina Latina 38 1988).

For community theatre groups today, autogestión, a practice of collective resistance to oppression developed in the 1960s-1980s in Latin America, necessarily “reaches beyond financial considerations, embodying not only resistance to the competitive market logic of neoliberalism, but also advocating an ethical and cooperative way of life” (Glass 103-104). Esquina Latina’s (quite well-funded) community theatre work is a process of sociocultural animation oriented to a specific population, offering the possibility for collective reflection about their living conditions and inspiring radical hope by creating celebratory spaces of participatory decision making that can facilitate voicing rights claims to the authorities (Persino 46).

On the other hand, Nuestre Gente de Medellín can be traced back to liberation theology, but their approach has evolved towards Buen Vivir [the indigenous Andean concept/practice of wellbeing]. This reflects the tendency in Colombia today for community and applied theatre to be oriented towards conflict transformation and processes of repairing the social fabric, building trust and imagining a better future. Nuestra Gente sees the staging of free plays for their community as an excuse to create a space to “free the word” and share stories, through talkbacks after the plays, offering a way to interact with neighbors outside of day-to-day norms and thus form “networks of possibilities” (Bedoya).

Jorge Blandón, Nuestra Gente’s director, first participated in theatre through the liberation theology initiatives in the barrio. In 1986, the main cause of death in Medellín was homicide and the majority of victims were young men (García). The theatre Blandón and his friends founded in Santa Cruz barrio was initially called teatro de grito [theatre of screams], as a resistance to the curfew imposed by armed groups. The local youth attended with their grandmothers, whose presence protected the group in taking back the cultural space of the night, to defeat darkness and fear. Eventually, they were able to convert a former brothel into their cultural center, “Casa Amarilla”. Today, Nuestra Gente train young people in a range of theatre skills, organize comparsas to cross the invisible barriers between areas controlled by different gangs, host a national gathering of youth theatres, and use a barter system for admission to their performances (the audience brings something to trade for tickets, be it a can of food or a sack of potatoes to share with others who have nothing to trade).

Although “drug-related criminality continues to thrive in Medellín,” comparsas have formed part of a movement that has contributed to facilitating a “culture of peaceful coexistence” along with “a relatively strong decline in the number of homicides” in the city (Bedoya & van Ervan 224).

The “community” aspect of these theatre groups is that they “understand the particularities of the territory where they originate, address issues from a different perspective than the one reproduced in the mass media and break with the hegemonic discourses, which opens the possibility for alternative approaches” (Rueda-Mendoza 258). Their overall purpose “is the improvement of situations of general concern to the community” and in particular, the places “where coexistence is intersected by violence and abuse are where oases of tranquility and affection are found in the form of community theatre organizations, capable of pulling children and young people out of hostility and fear” (Rueda-Mendoza 258, 260).

Lest we forget, women play a key role in this work, though they have often not had leadership roles due to gender inequality but have been active group members shaping the process from within. Colombian community theatre draws on local and folkloric performance traditions, which have women at their core, revitalizing and adapting them to current needs and challenges, and proposing a nontraditional outlook that makes it “possible to imagine other worlds instead of passively accepting the idea that we have only one single possibility” (Scher 271).

This is a popular theatre that has adapted to a specific context and time, addressing issues of armed conflict and precarity through performance as well as forms of social reorganization. This reveals that popular theatre is not necessarily “an inherently militant theatre, as Boal would seem to maintain, but goes through different stages of criticism and social, cultural and ideological questioning [. . .] immersed in an environment of stimuli and actions of everyday life of the communities of a country or region” (Chesney 75-6). There is not one way of doing popular theatre, especially considering the complex political changes brought about by the second half of the last century, with the fierce incorporation of neoliberalism, hand in hand with inequality and state and clandestine violence, in varying ways across Latin America. When Boal began to work in the global north, his discourse necessarily evolved, becoming less militant and more therapeutic as it adapted to distinct social realities.

Esquina Latina’s *Cuentos eroticos africanos* by Alfredo Valderrama & Orlando Cajamarca (2001). Photo: Courtesy of Esquina Latina Theatre Group

In Colombia today, even during peace-time, “war-time strategies continue to be used to seize control of territory” (Humphry 468); in this context, peacebuilding requires “living in harmony with other living beings and the environment: el buen vivir o vivir sabroso” (Blanco & Sorzano 181). Community theatre creates community in Colombian territories scarred by violence, and though it does not always communicate a political message, it facilitates critical reflection, dialogue and coming together in community, which demands the (re)construction of vínculos afectivos.

Conclusion

Community theatre emerged as a movement in Latin America in the late 1980s and early 1990s. To this day, it can be seen in squares, streets and other non-traditional theatre spaces throughout the region, yet a class or a book on Latin American theatre history rarely includes Nuestra Gente, TEF, or Esquina Latina, nor do they appear in applied theatre pedagogy. We want to highlight how these Colombian community theatre groups have proven resilient in contexts that are often life-or-death, given the diverse violent forms that the Colombian armed conflict takes, which are variable in different territories but persistent over decades. These groups have survived by taking intergenerational approaches that ensure their continuity and relevance, immersing themselves in a territory and its day-to-day concerns. The founders and the second generation of artists in these groups continue to collaborate as part of the same collective, while the audience they engage also reflects this diversity of ages.

Not only in Colombia but in Latin America in general, and for Latin American groups in other parts of the world, the commitment to strengthening transgenerational relationships as part of the artistic and social work is a characteristic of the evolutionary route from popular theatre to community theatre (for example, the emblematic Teatro Aleph, originally from Chile, with over 30 years of community work in France, developed a similar model).

If we were to identify a uniquely Colombian approach to applied theatre, it would be the importance of vínculos afectivos, repairing the social fabric, and reclaiming communal spaces, which is particularly well evidenced in community theatre. In post-dictatorship societies of the Southen Cone, community theatre has focused on reviving freedom of expression to deepen democracy. In Colombia, the continuation of the armed conflict has generated complex, ongoing forms of repression and dispossession. While the Southern Cone entered a more stable era of post-memory in the 2010s, Colombia has struggled to cultivate peace while also reimagining the nation.

It is interesting to note that Boalian approaches are used by community theatre groups from Argentina to Colombia, but often with different objectives than what Boal proposed. When TEF does “forum theatre,” they do not use the traditional TOTO method but embrace Boal’s ideas more in principle than practice. In other words, when TOTO falls short, community theatre groups develop their own methods, informed by localized practices (Chesney 140).

TEF’s *El canto de las moscas* directed by Juan Carlos Moyano Ortiz & Emilio Samuel Ramírez (2010). Photo: Courtesy of Teatro Experimental de Fontibón

It is worth noting, too, how “community” would seem to be a localized structure, framed by the geographical boundaries or social characteristics of each group (and implicitly excluding those who do not belong to it). However, through the Network of Theatre in Community, and regional networks like ENTEPOLA–a popular theatre festival in Chile–relationships are cultivated among groups from different places and backgrounds. This indicates the possibility for community theatre in Colombia to continue to evolve and build more heterogeneous networks and coalitions.

NOTE from the authors: all translated passages from texts originally published in Spanish are our translations.

Bibliography

Antei, Giorgio, editor. Las rutas del teatro: ensayos y diccionario teatral. Universidad Nacional de Colombia, 1989.

Bedoya, Freddy. Personal interview. January 7, 2020.

Bedoya, Doryan and Eugene van Ervan. “The Ludic Box: Playful Alternatives from Guatemala for the World.” Applied Theatre: Development, edited by Tim Prentki, Sheila Preston & Michael Balfour, Bloomsbury, 2015, pp. 222-45.

Borelli, Melissa Blanco and Olga Lucía Sorzano. “Performing Practices and the Conflict of Memory in Colombia: Working Towards a ‘Decolonial’ Digital Archive and Epistemological Justice.” Contemporary Theatre Review, vol.31, no. 1-2, 2021, pp. 172-90.

Boal, Augusto. Técnicas latinoamericanas de teatro popular. Editorial Nueva Imagen, 1982.

Chaparro Amaya, Adolfo. La época épica del teatro contemporáneo 1984-1998: Crítica y po(i)ética de la puesta en escena. Universidad del Rosario, 2023.

Chesney Lawrence, Luis. El discurso del teatro popular en América Latina. On Demand Publishing LLC, 2013.

Chinyowa, Kennedy. “Re-imagining Boal through the Theatre of the Oppressor.” Applied Drama/Theatre as Social Intervention in Conflict and Post-Conflict Contexts, edited by Hazel Barnes and Marié-Heleen Coetzee, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2014, pp. 2-17.

García, Hector Iván, et al. “Treinta años de homicidios en Medellín, Colombia, 1979-2088.” Cad. Saúde Pública, vol. 28, no. 9, 2012, pp. 1699-1712.

Gutiérrez, Sonia, editor. Teatro Popular y Cambio Social en América Latina. Educa Editorial Universitaria Centro América, 1979.

Humphrey, Michael. “The Political Lives of the ‘Disappeared’ in the Transition from Conflict to Peace in Colombia.” Politics, Religion & Ideology, vol. 19, no. 4, 2018, pp. 452-70.

Jaramillo Marín, Jefferson. “Formas de la memoria en Colombia: fracciones y encuentros.” Los futuros de la memoria en América Latina: Sujetos, políticas y epistemologías en disputa, edited by Michael J. Lazzara and Fernando A. Blanco, Editorial A Contracorriente, 2022, pp. 110-36.

Mantilla García, Juan Carlos. Vida digna: hacia un horizonte normativo para el desarrollo humano de la Colombia rural. 2017. Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, doctoral thesis.

Glass, Penelope. “Autogestión, Conviction, Collectivity and Plans A to Z: Colectivo Sustento in Continuous Resistance.” Applied Theatre: Economies, edited by Molly Mullen, Bloomsbury, 2019, pp. 97-114.

Parra Salazar, Mayra Natalia. A Teatro Camaradas! Dramaturgia militante y política de masas en Colombia. 2015. Universidad de Antioquia, undergraduate thesis.

Prentki, Tim. Applied Theatre: Development. Sheila Preston and Michael Balfour, series editors. Bloomsbury, 2015.

Ríos, María Fernanda. El Teatro comunitario como posibilidad de resistencia social. 2021. Universidad Santo Tomás, undergraduate thesis.

Rubio Clavijo, Junior Eduardo. Soñar, actuar y arriesgar: Reconstrucción colectiva de la historia con la fundación cultural Teatro Experimental de Fontibón, 1979-2019. 2020. Universidad Pedagógica Nacional, undergraduate thesis.

Ochsenious, Carlos. Práctica teatral y expresión popular en América Latina: Argentina, Chile, Perú, Uruguay. Ediciones Paulinas, 1989.

Palacios, Marco. Violencia pública en Colombia, 1958-2010. Fondo de cultura Económica, 2012.

Persino, María Silvina. “La labor social del Teatro Esquina Latina, Cali.” Teatro Esquina Latina, 40 años. Grandes creadores del teatro colombiano. Ministerio de Cultura, 2014.

Una red que teje país desde la amistad. Red Colombiana de Teatro en Comunidad, 2006.

Rueda-Mendoza, Sofía. “Feminismo popular y teatro comunitario. El liderazgo de las mujeres, clave del desarrollo del teatro comunitario.” Calle 14: Revista de investigación en el campo del arte, vol. 18, no. 34, 2023, pp. 250-61.

Scher, Edith. “The Community and its Gaze: Argentine Community Theatre.” The Routledge Companion to Applied Performance, vol. 1, edited by Tim Prentki and Ananda Breed, Routledge, 2022, pp. 271-77.

Taylor, Diana. The Archive and the Repertoire: Performing Cultural Memory in the Americas. Duke UP, 2003.

Teatro Esquina Latina. LATR, vol. 22, no. 1, 1988, pp. 37-8.

Teatro Esquina Latina. 48 años de terquedad teatral: un recorrido a la práctica teatral comunitaria del Teatro Esquina Latina. Colección Juntanzas para la Paz (Cinep/PPP), 2022.

Versényi, Adam. Theatre in Latin America: Religion, Politics and Culture from Cortés to the 1980s. Cambridge UP, 1993.

*Sarah Ashford Hart is Assistant Professor of Theatre and Performance at the College of William & Mary. She is a socially-engaged performance practitioner/scholar from a Canadian-Venezuelan-American background. She completed her BA in Theatre at Barnard College, Columbia University, her MA in Devised Theatre at Dartington College of Arts, Falmouth University, and her PhD in Performance Studies with designated emphasis on Human Rights at the University of California, Davis. Her recent publications address contemporary performance in Latin America, devised theatre methodology, the importance of affect to applied theatre in contexts of immigrant incarceration, and embodied approaches to witnessing testimonial performances.

**Janneth Aldana holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in sociology and a doctorate in history from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia. The central themes of her research are cultural sociology and the history of knowledge, especially as related to art. In the context of Colombia and Latin America, she studies the relationship between artistic creation and reception as well as its place in social development. She is Associate Professor (tenured) in the Department of Sociology, within the School of Social Sciences, and a member of the working group on Culture, Knowledge and Society, at the Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Colombia.