I dedicate this text to the great man of the theater Aderbal Freire Filho, who loved and knew Latin American theater.
Latin American Theater Day is today. And tomorrow. And yesterday. And all the days that preceded it and those that will follow. Latin American Theater Day is an important anniversary because it reminds society of our specificity, and us, of our craft.
The world is dominated by economic, ideological, and technological structures that tend to replace the word with the image, presence with virtuality, the body with the machine, reason with lies, and dialogue with the algorithm. In this reality, Theater seems impossible.
After all, Theater is one body facing another body, dialoguing through elements of the sensible—images, sounds, symbols, sensations—in search of an understanding that is not limited to reason, but does not exclude it either, insofar as it does not renounce the word.
And yet, it has never been so desirable or so desired. Since it only exists if the bodies of actors and spectators are in the same space, it is an antidote to a world that seeks to replace the encounter with machines. Because it is in-person, it demands that the virtual yield its place to presence for a moment. Because it needs the common word between actor and spectator, it prevents the image from occupying everything. Because it only exists if dialogue is established, it returns the irrational to its place, outside of the spotlight. Because it is the empire of desire and the unpredictable, no algorithm can determine it completely.
Theater, like all Art, has no function, except for its own arbitrary exercise of playing with the elements of the sensible, conscious of tradition, rooted in the community, causing countless consequences, but in itself inconsequential. Its only commitment is to the irresponsibility of one who knows that, first and foremost, they are playing.
Its very existence is political, even if the form and elements of the game are apparently devoid of that intention. Today more than ever, theater is, in itself, a response to authoritarianism and to the prefabricated and lying answers about what Man is and why he is the way he is.
Ignorance and authoritarianism are exercised today with pride and shamelessness. Theater remains humble in its certainty that it knows nothing and that it cannot control that which is flow, that which is life. Theatrical spaces are sacred places where citizens live the rite of the encounter of their private life with the life of the community.
Latin America is once again taken over by fascism. And Theater, now as always, is the most powerful weapon against it. Because Theater is life, fascism is death. Yes, we will all die. But death only reigns on the other side of the Styx. On this side, Life—and Theater—will always win.
by Aimar Labaki
playwright, director, translator and
essayist. BRAZIL