Athanor brings back magic shell
By Krishna Villena November 21, 2008 San Miguel de Allende

Children’s Theater
La Concha (The Shell)
Athanor Theater Company 
Sun, Nov 23, noon and 5pm 
El Sindicato Centro de Artes Escénicas 
Recreo 4
40 pesos

After a 10-year absence, Athanor Theater Company returns to San Miguel with the children’s play La Concha next weekend. The performance includes audience participation and language is not a barrier because the story is mainly told visually.

In 1967, Maria De Cespedes mixed artistic expressions such as theater, modern dance and plastic arts and created a theater group called Shadow Theater of Paris which eventually became the Athanor Theater Company. With the play The adventures of Minus and Magnus they produced a unique spectacle of human shadows, trimmed dolls, projections and transparencies that were presented in theaters, festivals and palaces.

La Concha is the story of a beautiful, magical shell that knows the secrets of the moon and sea. Two naive characters find and decide to take the shell home, never imagining they would thus alter the natural order of life. Outside its native habitat, the beautiful shell attracts violence and greed more than love and admiration. After many adventures, the shell is returned to its rightful place.

At what seems to be the conclusion of the short play, children in the audience are invited to the stage to choose a puppet or character and create their own story. “Children always prefer the lion, because he is the strongest,” says Alina Monterrubio, the actress who portrays the lion Anselmo.

Director Claudio Kremaria says, “We allow them to participate in our magical world to encourage their creativity.”

Kremaria invites others to join the Athanor company. “We all can do theater—it’s all about discovering creativity. The most important thing is to have the desire to live life and set free our inner child and have fun. Athanor is ‘the alchemist’s furnace’ where creativity and emotions are transmuted…it’s an alchemical process and the result is theater.”

Athanor has plans to re-establish a coffeehouse-theater here in an effort to recover the cultural and artistic environment and bohemian brotherhood that San Miguel once had. “We think that cultural activities are more than gallery openings and plays in English. In San Miguel, there’s a polarization because Americans are the people going to the theater and we Mexicans tend to avoid paying for this type of spectacle,” says Monterrubio.

A story of theater and circus performance
By Oliver Avendaño

Theater
La Trapecista (The Trapezist)
Sun, Nov 30, 11am
Shelter VG4
Vicente Guerrero 4
Col. San Rafael 

Theater in Mexico tends to search for new ways of expression and of capturing the attention of an audience. Within these new paths several proposals surface, such as classical, contemporary-classical, experimental and vanguard, all sustained with diverse voice, body and emotion techniques. Two or more of these disciplines can combine on stage.

In the fifties, a trend of combining theater with music, dance and other artistic disciplines arose. This is how circus performance began merging with theater and theater with circus performance. While circus performance presented acts where an actor would be transformed from one character to another, theater, on the other hand, began including juggling and equilibrium acts and more accentuated make-up on stage. It is worth mentioning that Fellini and his movies, Clowns, 8½ and La Strada, have strongly influenced performance art throughout the world.

Today an actor requires a combination of disciplines to capture an audience. We have trained in music and circus technique for this performance and have combined them with theatre, and now we are able to tell a story that happens in the circus world and that speaks about the importance of fighting to achieve what we need to be happy, thus aspiring to be free.

Camaleones Escenicos (Scenic Chameleons) is a theater group with its origins in Mexico City. Their new theater proposal is called The Trapezist, which will be arriving in San Miguel soon. Camaleones Escenicos welcomes all of the San Miguel artists’ community to a pre-launch screening. An especially warm invitation is extended to those would like to participate in funding the latter part of the project, which is now in its post-production phase. The shared time will include the screening, a mini-performance and a chat with the screenwriter, actors and director.