Teatro comunitario y testimonio en la escena española: "Fuegos" (2017), de Lola Blasco y La Nave

Abstract

Currently, there is a growing interest in community theatre in Spain. Among the modalities of community theatre, it is possible to distinguish proposals of scenes addressed to, created by, and performed by a community. These projects encourage the participation of persons who are not necessarily familiar with theatre, which has a positive effect on the promotion of their cultural agency. In this context, the initiative of La Nave of the Calderón Theater of Valladolid stands out. La Nave has succeeded in both fostering the creative talent of its participants and in attracting new audiences to the theatre. Every year since 2014, more than fifty young people between 16 and 26 years old participate in the program. The so-called Navegantes, led by Nina Reglero and Carlos Nuevo, develop proposals for a multidisciplinary stage on specific topics. This article analyzes the use of testimony, documents, and new expressive languages -such as the hashtag- in Fuegos [Fires] (2017), a play about instances of exodus written by Spanish playwright Lola Blasco, who took into account the ideas of the Navegantes. During the creative process, Blasco and the Navegantes counted on the collaboration of the refugee student Marah Rayan. This article argues that community theatre proposals, such as Fuegos, represent different forms of testimony. On the one hand, there is a textual testimony based on Marah Rayan’s life experience, which she performs on stage as part of her self-representation. On the other, the sole physical presence of community members on stage can be considered a form of embodied testimony.