Home, Sweet, Sweet Home
Yesterday I hit home in Nicaragua. Sweet, sweet home.
I had heard word that there was a play being performed this Saturday night, at a place very close to my home, by a theatre group from Managua that was commended to me as the best theatre group in Central America. So of course I went.
It wasn´t just a play. It was theatre. A beautiful play, with a beautiful, important message, with incredible movement work, about the issue of domestic violence in Nicaragua, complete with a talk-back by the cast after the show. I was so in my element. It was entitled "Sopa de Muñecas," or "Doll Soup," loosely translated.
I loved every moment of the piece, understood in a way that gave major props to the actors, as well as to the power of art to cross the barriers of language and experience. I looked at the actors like they were my long lost cousins; these were my people.
Even now, as the magic of last night is fading, I´m frustrated with myself for not having the words to properly express that feeling of glow in one´s heart, knowing that they are known, that they are home, that they are with people that they understand perfectly, that they respect deeply, that they relate to fundamentally.
I sat there for the duration just soaking up the magic that the cast laid out before my eyes, laughing at the funny bits, grieving at the tragedy, and loving the feeling of understanding and being communicated with. In the talkback, one of the cast members talked about how the purpose of theatre is not to give solutions to issues like domestic violence or inter-family violence, but to be a mirror for society, to bring forward the issues, to spark thought and conversation that might move people towards drawing their own conclusions and solutions. For those of you who understand or subscribe to the Lucy Maud Montgomery concept of kindred spirits, these people were mine.
A spanish student from Austria that I had met earlier in the day had planned on possibly meeting me there, but in the end she went to a rock concert that a member of her host family had an extra ticket to, and I sat there alone, conspicuously blond as usual, and conspicuously solo as well. So began an exchange with a guy named Norlan sitting about a row back that at first felt a little something like this*, but took a definite turn for the better when Norlan´s friends Juan and Jimmy showed up. I felt a little less like prey at that point, and my discovery that Juan and Jimmy were both actors whose group had recently disbanded and theatre enthusiasts in heart changed everything. I found it very endearing as Juan tried with a fine mix of social reservedness and uninhibited passion for his art to explain that he and Norlan were poets, and that he very much wanted to share with me the verses contained in the leather-bound notebook that he carried with him.
As someone who lives off of deep connections, good conversations, and common ground with the people around me, I´d been feeling a little bit dry and deserted since arriving in Matagalpa. Kindred spirits for me are the heart of life. And I found Juan to be a kindred spirit. (Norlan was kind of still a bit of a player... I found out later that one of the first things he had said to me was a lie. He told me he was 22 when I said I was 23, but he´s actually 26. He defended himself profusely by saying he didn´t want to come across as old. I laughed pretty hard when Juan unintentionally outed him.)
Realizing that these two guys were harmless, and better yet, that they were people with whom I could relate, I took the liberty of hanging out with them for awhile after the play, explaining that I was craving one of my Canadian customs of seeing theatre with friends and then going out after to discuss it. In the end, it didn´t turn out to be all that I was hoping. Both Norlan and Juan mumbled so much and spoke spanish so informally that I could barely understand them most of the time, and Juan was so obviously smitten by my gringa-ness that he couldn´t and wouldn´t talk at first, trying to get Norlan to re-explain everything (still in spanish, of course) when I couldn´t understand him instead of just repeating himself more slowly, and then eventually wouldn´t stop talking at all and would go on for 10 or 15 minutes at a time about his ideas, his thoughts, and his dreams about life, the world, art and theatre. It was the language barrier that destroyed us, because the conversation held loads of possibility and interest, but was irretrievably lost in translation.
It is nevertheless still a very good thing to sit for a couple hours in the middle of a central park in a latin-american country in another part of the world with some generally good guys - poets, dreamers, actors, etc - and to be completely, hopelessly unable to understand the words being rapidly flung at you by way of conversation, and at some point realize that Juan was just quoting Constantin Stanislavski, is now giving you his thoughts on Grotowski and the Poor Theatre, and recommending you read ¨Manual Minimo del Actor¨(in English The Tricks of the Trade) by Dario Fo, an Italian contemporary working in the field of commedia dell`arte. That´s the sort of conversation in which it´s a beautiful thing to find yourself lost.
Anyways, now having felt very blessed by the much-craved taste of home and familiarity, I´m able to enjoy a laid-back, spanish-school free Sunday morning. I´ll be going to Catholic Mass this afternoon with the family I´m staying with, doing a bit more reading, sending a few e-mails, maybe watching me some Driscoll, and waiting in eager expectation to meet the kids at Hogar Amistad in Jinotega in a week.
*if you missed that link, go back and click on the link attached to the word ¨this,¨ and by all means, enjoy watching one of my favorite comedic sketches ever....
I had heard word that there was a play being performed this Saturday night, at a place very close to my home, by a theatre group from Managua that was commended to me as the best theatre group in Central America. So of course I went.
It wasn´t just a play. It was theatre. A beautiful play, with a beautiful, important message, with incredible movement work, about the issue of domestic violence in Nicaragua, complete with a talk-back by the cast after the show. I was so in my element. It was entitled "Sopa de Muñecas," or "Doll Soup," loosely translated.
I loved every moment of the piece, understood in a way that gave major props to the actors, as well as to the power of art to cross the barriers of language and experience. I looked at the actors like they were my long lost cousins; these were my people.
Even now, as the magic of last night is fading, I´m frustrated with myself for not having the words to properly express that feeling of glow in one´s heart, knowing that they are known, that they are home, that they are with people that they understand perfectly, that they respect deeply, that they relate to fundamentally.
I sat there for the duration just soaking up the magic that the cast laid out before my eyes, laughing at the funny bits, grieving at the tragedy, and loving the feeling of understanding and being communicated with. In the talkback, one of the cast members talked about how the purpose of theatre is not to give solutions to issues like domestic violence or inter-family violence, but to be a mirror for society, to bring forward the issues, to spark thought and conversation that might move people towards drawing their own conclusions and solutions. For those of you who understand or subscribe to the Lucy Maud Montgomery concept of kindred spirits, these people were mine.
A spanish student from Austria that I had met earlier in the day had planned on possibly meeting me there, but in the end she went to a rock concert that a member of her host family had an extra ticket to, and I sat there alone, conspicuously blond as usual, and conspicuously solo as well. So began an exchange with a guy named Norlan sitting about a row back that at first felt a little something like this*, but took a definite turn for the better when Norlan´s friends Juan and Jimmy showed up. I felt a little less like prey at that point, and my discovery that Juan and Jimmy were both actors whose group had recently disbanded and theatre enthusiasts in heart changed everything. I found it very endearing as Juan tried with a fine mix of social reservedness and uninhibited passion for his art to explain that he and Norlan were poets, and that he very much wanted to share with me the verses contained in the leather-bound notebook that he carried with him.
As someone who lives off of deep connections, good conversations, and common ground with the people around me, I´d been feeling a little bit dry and deserted since arriving in Matagalpa. Kindred spirits for me are the heart of life. And I found Juan to be a kindred spirit. (Norlan was kind of still a bit of a player... I found out later that one of the first things he had said to me was a lie. He told me he was 22 when I said I was 23, but he´s actually 26. He defended himself profusely by saying he didn´t want to come across as old. I laughed pretty hard when Juan unintentionally outed him.)
Realizing that these two guys were harmless, and better yet, that they were people with whom I could relate, I took the liberty of hanging out with them for awhile after the play, explaining that I was craving one of my Canadian customs of seeing theatre with friends and then going out after to discuss it. In the end, it didn´t turn out to be all that I was hoping. Both Norlan and Juan mumbled so much and spoke spanish so informally that I could barely understand them most of the time, and Juan was so obviously smitten by my gringa-ness that he couldn´t and wouldn´t talk at first, trying to get Norlan to re-explain everything (still in spanish, of course) when I couldn´t understand him instead of just repeating himself more slowly, and then eventually wouldn´t stop talking at all and would go on for 10 or 15 minutes at a time about his ideas, his thoughts, and his dreams about life, the world, art and theatre. It was the language barrier that destroyed us, because the conversation held loads of possibility and interest, but was irretrievably lost in translation.
It is nevertheless still a very good thing to sit for a couple hours in the middle of a central park in a latin-american country in another part of the world with some generally good guys - poets, dreamers, actors, etc - and to be completely, hopelessly unable to understand the words being rapidly flung at you by way of conversation, and at some point realize that Juan was just quoting Constantin Stanislavski, is now giving you his thoughts on Grotowski and the Poor Theatre, and recommending you read ¨Manual Minimo del Actor¨(in English The Tricks of the Trade) by Dario Fo, an Italian contemporary working in the field of commedia dell`arte. That´s the sort of conversation in which it´s a beautiful thing to find yourself lost.
Anyways, now having felt very blessed by the much-craved taste of home and familiarity, I´m able to enjoy a laid-back, spanish-school free Sunday morning. I´ll be going to Catholic Mass this afternoon with the family I´m staying with, doing a bit more reading, sending a few e-mails, maybe watching me some Driscoll, and waiting in eager expectation to meet the kids at Hogar Amistad in Jinotega in a week.
*if you missed that link, go back and click on the link attached to the word ¨this,¨ and by all means, enjoy watching one of my favorite comedic sketches ever....