Experimental and Traditional Theatre in Peru: Reflections from the Halfway Point

Sirens sang from the river, and a horse flew over the trees. I was at Double Edge Theatre in Ashfield, Massachusetts where I first saw processional performance integrated throughout the landscape. Double Edge’s artistic DNA includes Argentinean co-director Carlos Uriona, whose background in street performance and parades inspired me. Through his mentorship and my own deep dives into Double Edge’s archives, I learned of Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani in Peru. I was immediately captivated by what I learned from afar, particularly the company’s focus on the actor-creator and long-term artistic investigation of their country’s history and traditional culture. The Andean performance that influenced Yuyachkani included stunning masks, costumes, and performances across lakes, streets, and town centers – an interdisciplinary creativity that further intrigued me.

The Julie Taymor World Theatre Fellowship offered the opportunity for a living encounter with Peruvian and Latin American theatre. I committed to the fellowship because I desperately wanted to open myself to new (for me) theatrical paradigms. I wanted to learn more about the syncretic theatre of Latin America, to expand my tools and sensibility, and find my place as a young artist invested in culturally specific work. After seven months of research, I am writing just past the halfway point to share some of my initial experiences as a Taymor Fellow.

LIMA: INDEPENDENT THEATRE

I started my journey in Lima, with Yuyachkani and AngelDemonio Colectivo Escénico as my focal points in the independent theatre scene. With histories that encompass decades of continuous work, these companies are living vectors of a distinctive theatrical lineage, one which emphasizes ensemble practice, collective creation, and the importance of ritual and folklore. The predecessors of this work include, among others, Enrique Buenaventura and Santiago García who specifically grounded their generative dramaturgies in critiques of western hegemony and industrialized creative processes. Today, their radical spirits live on in the socially-oriented works of Yuyachkani and AngelDemonio.

Formed in 1971, “Yuyachkani” means “I am thinking” or “I am remembering” in Quechua, an indigenous Andean language, and the group’s work focuses on strengthening citizen memory. The company’s repertoire interrogates official narratives of Peruvian history, often by deconstructing the boundaries between actor and character. Director Miguel Rubio frequently remarks that to understand Yuyachkani you must understand Peruvian history, especially the Shining Path movement’s violent attempts to establish communism, and the subsequent truth and reconciliation processes. Developed alongside these dramatic events, Yuyachkani’s theatrical training emphasizes testimony and playfulness with “the self, the other, and the rest.” Agitating the act of spectatorship, Yuyachkani pushes audiences into participatory roles through dialogue and movement, creating theatre as a total social encounter.

Yuyachkani’s mask room includes traditional and contemporary characters.

Like Yuyachkani, AngelDemonio investigates theatre as social encounter by turning to traditional performance and popular culture, often realizing their experiments in urban public spaces. I participated in one of the collective’s urban interventions during a laboratory for their currently untitled work in progress. We explored choreographic proposals based on the “devils” of Túcume, the pageantry between angels and demons enacted at this traditional festival, and the childhood song “Rompe la Piñata.” Coming from a long acting hiatus only heightened my thrill in transforming the energy of a commercial thoroughfare between the Plaza San Martín and Plaza de Armas, as people rushed to gather treats from the piñatas falling apart on our heads. Like Santiago García before him, Artistic Director Ricardo Delgado’s interest in urban public spaces resulted from the group’s search for new audiences – for communities formed outside of the theatre box, where he found the best partners to and critics of the work in buses, plazas, and streets.

Public intervention in Jirón de la Union with AngelDemonio Colectivo Escénico.

EL CARMEN, MITO & MANZANARES: TEATRO ORIGINARIO

Many of the working communities occupying public spaces are migrants or their children. Lima is a city of migrants who moved for economic opportunity and to escape violence in rural provinces in the ‘80s. At this writing, many of them are walking back home on foot in the wake of economic collapse caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. For decades, however, migrant communities have maintained their regional celebrations in Lima. I witnessed some of these events in neighborhood parties and competitions, such as the witty Chonguinada, a satirical dance mocking the attitudes and culture of Spanish colonizers. Eventually, I had the opportunity to travel and experience some festivals first-hand in their sites of origin.

The Chonguinada, a dance from the Junín region, performed in Lima.

I arrived first at El Carmen in Chincha, the heart of Afro-Andino culture. The region is home to several coastal plantations, which now operate as historical attractions, agribusinesses, and pisco breweries. The hot, dusty town features a central plaza with soaring palm trees, lined with a Catholic church and a handful of menus, or small homestyle restaurants. Here, the Virgen is honored by zapaterías, dancers of an elegant shuffling, stomping processional dance.

I arrived at the house-turned-cultural center of the late Amador Ballumbrosio, the head of a widely recognized family of musicians and dancers. These days, his descendants reunite annually to continue the festival dance. The dancers, from boys of 5 to elders of 70, were dressed in white, slung with brightly colored sashes adorned with mirrors and ribbons. Following three violinists, they danced in two parallel rows, and accentuated their singing with small bells as we headed away from town. I, along with a handful of friends, family, and researchers, accompanied them in the slow, hour-long march. It was a spectacular vision, but not the type to which I was accustomed, in which spectacle surprises with new tricks and climaxes. Instead, like many Peruvian dances, the movement and music were rigorously repeated without pause, creating the conditions for a trance or meditation.

Passing trucks pulled aside for the zapaterías, and the only thing that interrupted the procession of dancing men was a grandmother. It occurred as we passed a settlement of rickety wooden cabins, which I learned was a community of Andean migrants. Four women of different generations watched from the doorway of the first house; without breaking the rhythm, the whole dancing procession turned to face the eldest woman, dancing for her. Later, when we returned to town they repeated the beautiful salute for every elder woman we passed – “in hopes of receiving their blessings,” one dancer told me. Eventually, we arrived at the graveyard – colorful mausoleums where the dancers honored the first Ballumbrosio with music, still more invigorated dancing than before, and an endurance ritual. Afterwards, we danced back through different neighborhoods of El Carmen and the Ballumbrosio house. There, an enormous pot of chicken and rice arrived, tied to the top of a car, and the dancers hosted a huge shared meal. The next day, the festivities continued as zapateo groups from across the region descended on El Carmen for several days of competitive dancing, celebration, and performance for a second virgin and nativity scene.

Zapaterías at the cemetery.

Local musicians perform with violinist Ana Correa (of Yuyachkani).

The procession returns to town from the cemetery.

From El Carmen, I traveled to Manzanares to see the Awkish dance. Passing through Huancayo en route, I paused to see the Huaconada in Mito. In this 1,000+ year old dance, performers embody an ancient council of elders brandishing whips. For three days, they transcend the normal social order as the accepted authorities who pull wrongdoers into their procession and snap at their ankles. The huacones are distinguished by aprons, cloaks, fur shoes, and expressive wooden masks whose exaggerated noses resemble the beak of an Andean condor. These costumes appear in ancient monochrome and modern, colorful styles. Accompanied by musicians, the processional movement of the huacones around the town square drives everything in a slow rotation.

Unfinished wooden mask in the ancient style.

Depiction of Huacones in 1838, from the museum in Mito. Detail shows Huacones with an offender.

The most poignant experience for me occurred in Manzanares, a tiny town accessed by way of three shared taxis from Concepción. The Awkish dance is organized around veneration of the Virgin, though the emphasis on Pachamama, fertility, and the role of green branches also hint of older agricultural meanings. One dancer told me it originates in the War of the Pacific (1879-1884), and that the dance is fundamentally a celebration of the soldiers’ homecoming – hence the characteristic military coats and the single female character, performed by a man, waiting for her loved one’s return. Regardless of the multiple and ambiguous (to me) meanings of the dance, I was enthralled by the incredible commitment of the performers.

Arriving in the early afternoon in a quiet square, I saw a dancer wearing a soldier’s antique coat, a Peruvian flag, and rainbow-colored leg wraps and hat. The Awkish dancer was in town to pick up supplies and extended an invitation to join his group’s preparations for the festival. As a storm slowly rolled in, we walked about half a mile uphill past a man and his cattle tilling a field, eventually stopping amidst a cluster of dancers and their families.

Like the huacones in Mito, the Awkish use carved wooden masks accentuated by beards. When we arrived, all of their bearded wooden masks were nestled in a ring of stones where the dancers made offerings of cigarettes and pisco. A dancer gave me a handful of cocoa leaves and the instruction to separate the whole ones and chew the crushed or damaged leaves; the whole ones we offered to the masks as well. I understood this to be an offering to the Pachamama, the goddess of the earth; afterwards we all gathered in a circle and the leader said a prayer, nominally to God though most of his words honored community and inheritance and dance. The dancers began to get into costume; parents dressed their sons, and wives and sisters helped the men while musicians dressed in purple jackets played and one man set off fireworks. Finally, the dancers withdrew their masks from the circle. What had initially seemed to me like a “greenroom” or preparatory space began to feel more like a performance in itself, full of creative intention and collaboration. I started to wonder when and where the performance began, or if it already had. With the storm approaching, we started to descend, the dancers snapping off branches to bring with them on their way down the hill.

Musicians play, overlooking the valley.

Dancers passing the Disney-themed children’s area of the festival.

Pots of chicha with the name of each neighborhood group atop cases of beer.

Throughout their tireless dancing, the Awkish characters let out wild, cackling laughs, sometimes right in your face. I was warned that first they will charm you and later in the festivities they will kidnap you. As we entered the town plaza, several other groups arrive, and I learn that each neighborhood has their own team which performs the 24 scenes of the dance. The first scene occurs in the main square, where the dancers share a pot of chicha, a traditional beverage of fermented corn, and dance with the women. Following this, the dancers delivered their branches outside of the small church, where they were taken inside by the women to adorn the Nativity scene. Each group continued dancing in the plaza until they had the opportunity to enter the church and dance for the Virgin. There, the dance changed from a repeated core sequence to one of greater improvisation, culminating with the male dancers inviting women to participate in an exaggerated, playful procession towards the Nativity scene. Each pair devised an approach, always ending in a kneeling position and with the men dropping coins into the offering plate. Then the dancers ran out of the church with the women, where we were thanked for our participation and released.

Throughout the highly energized seven or eight hours that I was there (and the festival continued long after my mid-evening departure), I was particularly struck by the relative absence of spectators. Almost all of the “audience” were family, primarily women, involved in the orchestration of the festival. Roving among the wooden bleachers, to the side, nibbling on picarones (fried dough), and caring for their dancers, they were more a part of making the festival than not. Even I, a very obvious outsider, was pulled into sharing chicha and dancing. Who was watching? Or, if that didn’t matter, who was it all for? Pachamama, the Virgin Mary Mother of God, the memory of a bloody war, each other?

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Miguel Rubio of Yuyachkani contextualized the syncretic nature of these festivals, emphasizing that they are products of ongoing processes of colonization. In Semillas y Raices he wrote, “In the colonial mission, what could not be eradicated was incorporated to internalize the values of Catholicism using the elements of representation present in dance, music and image, which were subsequently assimilated into great festive displays, thus including levels of mixing and syncretism with which we live today, and which sustain the encounter of pre-Hispanic and Christian elements in a conjunction of rites of different origins. How this syncretic mechanism operates is essential to understanding the mixing and ‘hybridization’ of cultural processes in constant movement.”

I understand that the Awkish festival addresses the Pachamama and the Virgin Mary, and I believe it exists to sustain community and indigenous cosmovision despite various cultural and political invasions. As in all matters of the spirit, I am sure the answers to why and for whom are as varied and unique as each person there. Regardless of my ongoing search to understand, I was moved by the overwhelming impact of feeling a whole, present, multigenerational community joined in the realization of creative action. In El Carmen, Mito and Manzanares I noticed that commerce sprang up around the festivals in the form of colectivos, taxis, memorabilia, sun protection, food stands – but the central actions of the festival were not ticketed “products.” Rather they were open-air, participatory, roving events that operated on a different economy and spiritual order, one that ripples into the social theatre of Yuyachkani and AngelDemonio.

Early on, I was drawn to Peru for the rich juxtaposition of urban experimental artistry and rural traditional practices, the latter of which are framed as teatro originario or teatro ancestral by the artists of Yuyachkani and AngelDemonio. Encountering this duality in person through city plays and rural performance, I often caught myself thinking, “They’re breaking all the rules!!” One of the many humbling aspects of my travel experience has been a greater awareness of the so-called rules and roles that I received in my western theatre education. As another Taymor Fellow Christopher Betts observed, the director is a pretty new figure in the history of theatre – and a role that we can continue to redefine.

Like artists around the world, most of my research has moved into the virtual sphere due to the coronavirus pandemic. Recently, a theatre friend in Lima shared a new home video of several Qolla characters (Andean trickster figures wearing distinctive knit masks) in a small mountain town. The video shows a short pageant performed in Quechua, which appears to be a response to and informational alert about the COVID-19 pandemic. The festival in which I hoped to meet the Qollas was cancelled, but watching their charming, playful theatricality online, I think of Miguel Rubio’s emphasis on folklore as a living cultural process, and actors as witnesses to their times. As he notes, most theatrical innovation emerges from a state of crisis and uncertainty. I look forward to continuing this transformative fellowship and to witnessing what innovations emerge in the sacred space created when we gather our bodies and spirits together again.