Talismans, sorcery and puppets: the legacy of a magical past
By Jorge Rueda March 14, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Art exhibit
Talismanes y sortilegios (Talismans & Sorcery)
Puppets, theater & marionettes by Athanor
Fri, Mar 14, 7pm
Sala de Arte Mexicano
Bellas Artes
Hernández Macías 75

Athanor: The furnace of the alchemist has again ignited in San Miguel. The fifth Festival of Puppets marks the reappearance of the magical creations of the theater group Athanor with a magnificent exhibit of puppets and artifacts recovered by Rosario Otero and original Athanor member Claude Prud´Homme. 


Athanor is the old crucible in which alchemists would watch, without rest, the transmutation of metals. In the same manner the theater group that took that name was a crucible of transformative creative expression. Under the direction and creative guidance of Maria de Cespedes, this experimental group explored theater, modern dance and the plastic arts in Paris during the seventies, participating in national festivals and television programs. Coming to Mexico in the eighties and nineties, the group continued to open creative spaces to explore the imaginative and the contemplative. Their dynamic works of theater sought to liberate the repressed soul. Between 1995 and 1996 the group acquired the city’s first circus tent, creating a popular theater in San Miguel de Allende, which later traveled the state.

The exceptional Maria de Cespedes passed in 1998, entrusting the future of the company Athanor to Claude Prud´Homme.

Children’s theater at the Biblioteca
By Gabriela Blanco

Children’s theater workshop
José Luis Mendoza
Saturdays, 10am–noon
Begins Apr 5, course lasts six months
Biblioteca Pública
Insurgentes 25
Free

The manager of Teatro Santa Ana and director of La Comedia del Universo (The Comedy of the Universe), José Luis Mendoza and his theater group members will offer a free theater workshop for children and youth 10 to 20 years in age. The course will run for six months and will end with a play planned, written and designed by workshop participants. They will make the set, costumes, advertising, tickets and posters related to a staging.

The project will provide children and youth of the Mexican community an opportunity to learn acting techniques, body expression, imagination expansion and public speaking. They also will learn lights, scenery, sound, costumes, makeup, theater administration, literature and script writing. Students will experience different styles of performance such as comedy, drama and parody. They will do exercises, practices, improvisation, diction, stage presence and projection.

A casting call will select a group of no more than 15 members, a homogeneous group of kids with similar characteristics, capabilities, concentration and interests.

In our culture, theater lacks the same recognition as other arts and is rarely seen as a formative and educational complement. However, theater develops love for the arts, raises critical thinking, reinforces the ability to express feelings and overcomes shyness. It nurtures imagination, allows us to know ourselves and helps to open communication between the inner self and the exterior.

Kids completing the workshop advance to a second level and another 15 will be selected to start with the basic level.

Volunteer teachers requested

This year the Biblioteca Pública aims to increase workshops for children and young Mexicans. “We would like to offer courses in ceramics, modeling, sculpture, music and visual arts in general, but we need volunteer teachers in these disciplines,” says Mendoza. “Library workshops and courses are free and materials are donated. For example, we offer a painting workshop Monday through Friday, 4–6pm. The San Miguel community donates paintings, paper, brushes, easels and everything related to a painting workshop.”

Benefits of being harangued
By Dean Taylor

Theater
Compassion & The Loner
Wed, Apr 9–Sat, Apr 12, 8pm
Sun, Apr 13, 5pm
Teatro Santa Ana
Biblioteca Pública
Reloj 50A

How would you feel of you were sitting on a park bench minding your own business and a total stranger sat down next to you and began berating you for isolating yourself from society? Would you resent it? Would you fight back? Would you acquiesce? Would you get up and leave? 

In the play Compassion, being presented the second week of April, a total stranger does sit down between two people on a park bench and starts berating each rather harshly.

One is a young man recently dumped by his girlfriend and now indulging in monumental self-pity; the other is an older woman who lives in a narrow world of her own. Neither is in any mood to be harangued by this stranger.

Just who is he, anyway? He claims to be a self-appointed general in the army of compassion and he sees his mission as practicing an outrageous form of compassion so intense and so probing that it breaks down the walls people have built around themselves, and thereby freeing them to enjoy life once again.

Compassion, written by Dean Taylor, won first prize at the Alleyway Theatre in Buffalo, New York, where it was produced two years ago with great success. It’s one of a pair of Dean Taylor plays, both directed by Michael Gottlieb. The other is The Loner, about a man interested only in himself to the exclusion of all else. Love. What is it? We’ve been asking this question of ourselves for a long time. Love can be many things. It can be infatuation (madness). It can be long-term, short-term, romantic, wild.

It’s especially interesting when it’s denied. When a man professes a profound disbelief in love—feeling that it is a inconvenience, that it gets in the way of his life, that it is unnecessary, that it may in fact be an illusion. What happens when such a man meets a fun and feisty woman he simply cannot resist? Does she, can she, change his life?

Both are San Miguel plays, written here and inspired by real events here.

Dean Taylor was born and raised in New York City, and is now a resident of Canada. He attended Yale School of Drama and has written 31 plays.