As never before among the 7.7 billion people who inhabit the earth, having pulled out the last page of the 2020 almanac generated a certain sense of relief. For a specific sector, the one linked to the performing arts, that sentiment was mixed with the growing expectation of being able to repopulate the stages, after practically a year of absence.
The lack of official provisions by the Emergency Operational Committee (COE) of the Province of the announcement that came from its own bosom that the official rooms would be reopened, with specific protocols, is deepened in the case of the independent spaces of Tucuman, which do not would be contemplated in the pending resolution. The delay in formalizing the decisions that are adopted and the lack of precision of their scope generate even more uncertainty.
The absence of specific regulations makes it difficult (even prevents) from projecting actions. The transcended not reflected in text speak that the demands will not be different from those that are requested for other kinds of meetings of people, namely: extreme hygiene and cleanliness; limit the capacity of viewers, artists and technical teams; accessibility to alcohol gel; simplify entries and exits; enhance the ventilation of the place and some more. The prohibition of the use of air conditioning splits also transcended.
But you have to look beyond the structure of each place and delve into the artistic fact. In the year of the coronavirus, searches were forcibly moved into virtual space. Internet was populated with proposals by streaming, live or recorded, which generated a controversy about the identity of these experiences, among those who claim them as a new way of doing theater and those who resignify them in another way, to baptize them as “pandemic art”.
Beyond the nominal, what is attractive is to face this debate as an exercise in the imagination of the theater to come, in whatever way, with opinions and visions of different specialists from Tucumán that augur the future (see “A look …” and “The state…”).
Teresita Guardia bet that in La Sodería (Juan Posse 1,141) the coexistence between artists and the public is fully breathed. He has been experiencing it in the outdoor patio, while the room awaits its turn. Without disqualifying virtual experiences, he frames them in “another mode of artistic expression and production that we cannot in any way call theater; in any case it will be clip, spot, video, short, long, whatever you want; but theater, no ”.
“Contagion (it is energy pollution) happens if and only if there is presence of at least one spectator in the same space as the artist. That energetic fluid between actor / actress and spectator, plus the sound and light environment that contains both, is a magma that is produced if it is present: hearts beating in unison in the same space / time ”, he points out.
Small casts
Different is the look of Sebastian Fernandez, teacher of the Theater Degree at the UNT and creator of the Chapeau musical theater school. “The theater to come and its aesthetics will undoubtedly have significant changes, derived from the alteration of the pacts of expectation and the consequent theatrical strategies that artistic groups develop to produce stage events while still complying with health protocols.”
“Very possibly we will return with smaller casts, shorter shows and the open air proposals in public spaces will be revitalized. I imagine the incorporation of certain technological infrastructure in the staging, especially in official theaters that have better economic possibilities, in order to achieve shows that do not involve the permanent presence of many artists ”, he highlights. It exemplifies with the play “Tina, the rumor of a Nation”, in which there are 30 characters but only two are in charge of live actors and the rest are holographs, lights and sound programmed automatically.
Fernandez go to streaming as a complement rather than a substitution: “broadcasts would have to be scheduled in all theaters to maintain postseason activity by alternative media and on specific platforms; it could be a way of achieving continuity and accessibility to a cultural project, and of income for artists who make a living from production in seasons that in Tucumán rarely exceed two months ”.
“The pandemic showed us how vulnerable we were to situations that affect circulation and face-to-face encounters; I’m not only talking about the virus, but also about bus stoppages, among other examples. We must seriously rethink our digital leap, learning and capitalizing on novel experiences in isolation, which are not restricted only to the transmission of works but also to content such as colloquia between artists and spectators, spectator schools or the educational approach; it is complementary material that gives thickness to the stage experience ”, he concludes.
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