Theater of and on the Border 2010

Theater of and on the Border 2010

Research: Rocío Galicia

Reflections on the theater expressions of Mexico’s northern border.

This series of round tables took place on the 1st of October 2010 as part of the Third Theater Book Fair at the Plaza Ángel Salas of the Cultural Center del Bosque (Centro Cultural del Bosque).

“A boundary is not that at which something stops but, as the Greeks recognized, the boundary is that at which something begins its being present.” (Martin Heidegger).

A frontier is the territorial and symbolic space in which we place ourselves in order to ask ourselves —today— about the state of theater and performance. From three levels of enunciation we try to dissect the theater-frontier concept.

The dramatic creation is the starting point for analyzing phenomena such as migration, drug trafficking, violence and those episodes from a story that theater insists on bringing to individual and collective memory.

The current transgression of the borders of theater makes us notice an intersection-tension in which sociology, history, science, plastic arts and political activism cohabit.

Furthermore, if the frontier is an exchange, mobility, hybridization, contrast, negotiation, crossroads and violence, how do these determine the artistic creation? What context traces infiltrate and mark the theatricality? What does theater do in the face of a reality that at all times surpasses it and throws it into trivial territory? What are the ethical and esthetical implications of a theater that is as deep-rooted as it is without territory?

Deep into the feeling of unease and violence we gather to ask ourselves if with theater we can contribute to a social cure.