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Troubling Multiculturalisms: Staging Trans/National Identities in Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes's El gallo

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 August 2014

Katherine Zien
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Extract

The collaborative “antiopera” El gallo: Ópera para actores (The Cock: An Opera for Actors), which was produced from 2007 to 2009 by Mexican theatre company Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes (hereafter referred to as Ciertos Habitantes) and British composer Paul Alan Barker, toured for three years to dozens of venues in Mexico and abroad, garnering numerous awards and accruing more than a hundred performances. Performed in speech/song gibberish, El gallo mingles physical theatre and butoh techniques. The piece chronicles the making of an opera, from auditions through rehearsals and performance, alongside the emotional, physical, and vocal breakdowns of the five main characters and their beleaguered director. El gallo enacts an allegory of conflict-ridden community formation through the device of a play within a play.

Type
Articles
Information
Theatre Survey , Volume 55 , Issue 3: Theatre, Transnationalism, and Economy , September 2014 , pp. 343 - 361
Copyright
Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 2014 

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References

Endnotes

1. Paul Alan Barker, “El Gallo: A Globalisation of Theatre which Emphasises Identity,” paper presented at the conference “Arts and Belonging in the Americas Today,” 12–13 April 2013, Senate House, London, www.academia.edu/2536613/El_Gallo_A_Globalisation_of_Theatre_which_Emphasises_Identity_for_the_conference_Arts_and_Belonging_in_the_Americas_Today, accessed 11 April 2014.

2. My analysis also draws upon recorded footage of El gallo. See “El Gallo,” On the Boards streaming video, filmed 13 May 2011, Seattle, WA, posted 1 September 2011, www.ontheboards.tv/performance/theater/el-gallo.

3. Viptim's ethnicity is not overtly marked in El gallo; actor Ernesto Gómez Santana is Mexican. Although I am here presenting these actors as individuals with “hyphenated” ethnicities, my framework borrows from North American usage, as ethnicity in Mexico refers almost exclusively to indigeneity.

4. Claudio Valdés Kuri (director, Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes), conversation with the author, 13 May 2013.

5. Góngora, Zully, “XV años de Ciertos Habitantes,” Paso de Gato 51 (October–December 2012): 73–82Google Scholar, at 82. All translations from Spanish are my own unless otherwise indicated.

6. Andrew Dickson, “Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes: And Now for Some Chaos,” The Guardian, 22 May 2011.

7. Bennett, Susan, “Theatre/Tourism,” Theatre Journal 57.3 (2005): 407–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8. Ibid., 418–25. See also Harvie, Jen and Hurley, Erin, “States of Play: Locating Québec in the Performances of Robert Lepage, Ex Machina, and the Cirque du Soleil,” Theatre Journal 51.3 (1999): 299–315CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

9. Lavender, Andy, review of Zaia and The House of Dancing Water, Theatre Journal 63.4 (2011): 626–30CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10. Barker. On grammelot, see Jaffe-Berg, Erith, “Forays into Grammelot: The Language of Nonsense,” Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism 15.2 (2001): 3–15Google Scholar.

11. Carlson, Marvin, Speaking in Tongues: Languages at Play in the Theatre (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2009)Google Scholar, 76.

12. Knowles, Ric, Theatre & Interculturalism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

13. Carlson, 158–60, quote at 160.

14. Rebellato, Dan, Theatre & Globalization (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, 60.

15. Ibid., 71–2.

16. Ibid., 61.

17. Gilbert, Helen and Lo, Jacqueline, “Toward a Topography of Cross-Cultural Theatre Praxis,” TDR: The Drama Review 46.3 (2002): 31–53Google Scholar, at 31–2.

18. Ibid., 33.

19. Ibid., 33–4.

20. Tan, Marcus Cheng Chye, Acoustic Interculturalism: Listening to Performance (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 16–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21. Gilbert, Helen and Lo, Jacqueline, Performance and Cosmopolitics: Cross-Cultural Transactions in Australasia (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)Google Scholar, 12.

22. Góngora, 80–1.

23. Ibid., 81.

24. Evan Kuchar, “El Gallo Lays It Bare at MCA,” Chicago Now, 28 April 2011, www.chicagonow.com/beyond-words/2011/04/rvw-el-gallo-lays-it-bare-at-mca/.

25. Rojas, Mario A., “El FITEI 34° y los nuevos paradigmas y lenguajes teatrales,” Latin American Theatre Review 45.1 (2011): 179–88CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 180.

26. Góngora, 75.

27. Valdés Kuri, conversation with the author, 13 May 2013.

28. Carlson, 171. See also Stephenson, Jenn, Performing Autobiography: Contemporary Canadian Drama (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Grace, Sherrill and Wasserman, Jerry, Theatre and AutoBiography: Writing and Performing Lives in Theory and Practice (Vancouver: Talon Books, 2006)Google Scholar.

29. Góngora, 74.

30. Ibid., 75.

31. Vera Milarka, “Teatro multicultural,” Reforma, 30 March 2005.

32. Góngora, 74.

33. Zinser, Luz Emilia Aguilar, “Habitanto el teatro con certeza,” Paso de Gato 51 (October–December 2012): 83–5Google Scholar, at 84.

34. Barker.

35. “Trayectoria: Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes,” Paso de Gato 51 (October–December 2012): 90–1.

36. Barker.

37. “Distinguen ópera mexicana como la mejor de Portugal,” El Universal, 3 February 2012, www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/827689.html.

38. Santana, Analola, “Una apuesta por el teatro,” Paso de Gato 51 (October–December 2012): 86–7Google Scholar, at 87.

39. Ibid.

40. Kuri, Claudio Valdés, “Oportunidades para las compañías y artistas escénicos independientes en México,” Paso de Gato 54 (July–September 2013): 52–3Google Scholar.

41. “Reconocimientos y premios: Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes,” Paso de Gato 51 (October–December 2012): 92.

42. “Intérpretes, colaboradores y creativos,” Paso de Gato 51 (October–December 2012): 93.

43. Claudio Valdés Kuri. Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes. lecture delivered at Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, New Hampshire, 8 November 2013.

44. Valdés Kuri. Teatro de Ciertos Habitantes.

45. “El presupuesto 2013 propone reducir más del 30% recursos para Conaculta,” CNN México, 10 December 2012; “Aumentó 13% presupuesto al CNCA respecto de 2012, dice informe presidencial,” La Jornada, 3 September 2013.

46. A descriptive list of FONCA's funding programs may be found at the Conaculta Web site, http://fonca.conaculta.gob.mx/programas/.

47. “EFITEATRO,” Conaculta, www.conaculta.gob.mx/financiamiento_efiteatro/, accessed 26 November 2013.

48. “Resultados, México en Escena 2013,” Conaculta, http://foncaenlinea.conaculta.gob.mx/resultados/resultados.php, accessed 26 November 2013.

49. Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, Modernización y política cultural (México, D.F.: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1994), 31–2Google Scholar.

50. Ibid., 36–8.

51. Miller, Marilyn Grace, Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004), 28–30Google Scholar. See also Vasconcelos, José, La raza cósmica: Misión de la raza iberoamericana, Argentina y Brasil, 3d ed. (Mexico, D.F.: Espasa-Calpe Mexicana, 1966)Google Scholar, published with English translation as The Cosmic Race: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Jaén, Didier T. (1979; repr., Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997)Google Scholar.

52. Alfaro-Velcamp, Theresa, So Far from Allah, So Close to Mexico: Middle Eastern Immigrants in Modern Mexico (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007), 159Google Scholar.

53. Ibid., 66.

54. Kymlicka, Will, Multicultural Citizenship: A Liberal Theory of Minority Rights (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 10–33Google Scholar.

55. For more information, see Alfaro-Velcamp, Theresa, “Immigrant Positioning in Twentieth-Century Mexico: Middle Easterners, Foreign Citizens, and Multiculturalism,” Hispanic American Historical Review 86.1 (February 2006): 61–91CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56. Guerra, Fernando Vizcaíno, El nacionalismo mexicano en los tiempos de la globalización y el multiculturalismo (México, D.F.: UNAM, 2004), 104–5Google Scholar.

57. Rafael Tovar y de Teresa, director of CNCA from 1992 to 2000, was reappointed to the post by newly elected Mexican president Enrique Peña Nieto in 2012. This appointment may have been intended to evoke nostalgia and gain support for the Institutional Revolutionary Party, as Tovar y de Teresa's administration of CNCA is considered to be one of the more positive aspects of Salinas de Gortari's presidency.

58. Chorba, Carrie C., Mexico, From Mestizo to Multicultural: National Identity and Recent Representations of the Conquest (Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2007), 21–2Google Scholar.

59. Vizcaíno Guerra, El nacionalismo mexicano, 105, 122–3.

60. Araceli Burguete Cal y Mayor, “Constitutional Multiculturalism in Chiapas: Hollow Reforms that Nullify Autonomy Rights,” trans. McKelvey, Andrew, in Latin America's Multicultural Movements: The Struggle between Communitarianism, Autonomy, and Human Rights, ed. Eisenstadt, Todd A. et al. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), 40–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 44.

61. Lucero, José Antonio, “Ambivalent Multiculturalisms: Perversity, Futility, and Jeopardy in Latin America,” in Latin America's Multicultural Movements, ed. Eisenstadt et al. , 18–39Google Scholar, at 18–19.

62. Chorba, 2.

63. Cal y Mayor.

64. Chorba, 3.

65. Tovar y de Teresa, 7; Chorba, 24.

66. Buchenau, Jürgen, “Small Numbers, Great Impact: Mexico and Its Immigrants, 1821–1973,” Journal of American Ethnic History 20.3 (2001): 23–49Google Scholar, at 23–4, quote at 23.

67. Ibid., 24, 29.

68. Ibid., 40.

69. Ibid., 43.

70. Damien Cave, “For Migrants, New Land of Opportunity Is Mexico,” New York Times, 21 September 2013.

71. “Migration to Mexico: Three Measures of the Country's Foreign-Born Ranks,” New York Times, 21 September 2013.

72. Ibid., and for 1980, see Buchenau, 33, tab. 1.

73. Góngora, 81.

74. “Paul Alan Barker: Conference Presentations,” description of his “El Gallo: A Globalisation of Theatre which Emphasises Identity” (see note 1), http://ulondon.academia.edu/PaulBarker/Conference-Presentations, accessed 27 May 2014.