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18 years of Teatro El Paso – El Diario
THIS IS HOW THE IDEA WAS BORN
TRAVELLING THE WORLD
18 YEARS, A TURN OF THE LEAF
THEY ARE INTEGRAL ARTISTS
OPINE
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES
A BATTLE WON
CREATING FROM THE PERIPHERY
César Castaño is the director, playwright and actor of the company Teatro El Paso de Pereira that in the month of April celebrates 18 years of history.
THIS IS HOW THE IDEA WAS BORN
César was a student of the training processes of the city’s secretary of culture, at that time the groups were made up of 20 people who received classes daily for five years.
This formative exercise built in César the discipline that allowed him to discover the possibility in the exercise of stage direction, at that time 20 years ago, he received his first offer from a professional group in the city of Medellín to be the director of ‘Teatro Hora 25’. He was in charge for six months and in that time he confirmed that upon returning to Pereira he could create a direction process in a theater group.
Upon his arrival in 2004, he invited 12 young students from the Technological University of Pereira to form a theater group ‘El Mal Paso Teatro’, at the end of this year they were already working on the first play that would be premiered in the auditorium. Jorge Roa Martínez of the UTP on April 5, 2005 ‘The King Kong Palace’. For this reason, April 5th is the date that commemorates the birth of ‘Teatro El Paso’.
The commitment was greater and although many withdrew from the group, 5 members continued in an uninterrupted work of formation and creation.
The year 2010 represented a critical moment for the group, César went to work in Bogotá for two years, but the group continued working in Pereira.
In 2013, the group rented a space to set up La Textilería theater room, but in 2018 they were asked for the place; how as a result of the work of all these years the group gathered enough resources to buy a house in the Maraya neighborhood, a house with enough space to have its own theater ‘La Textilería Sala de Teatro El Paso’ located at carrera 11 number 42 – 83, in this space the group has excellent technical conditions, because there it has everything to create its works.
TRAVELLING THE WORLD
Thanks to tireless work, they have managed to travel to different countries of the world and also travel Colombia from north to south doing theater.
18 YEARS, A TURN OF THE LEAF
This celebration has allowed César and the group to recognize the process built, the battles lost and the battles won. Daniel Vergara and Cesar Castaño remain from the initial group, in relation to the new members, the one who has been around for the least time is 5 years old, Fernando from Bolivia.
The training process that has been going on for 18 years has allowed them to build with discipline a particular language that is the hallmark that identifies them in relation to other theater groups. When people see a work by ‘El Paso’ they understand it, this means that people expect a forceful narrative, lighting, scenic objects, aesthetic surprises and a very important and characteristic element of the group, live music.
THEY ARE INTEGRAL ARTISTS
The artists in this group are actors who dance, make music, teach, carry out cultural management, know how to sell their work and write projects.
The success of ‘Teatro El Paso’ is partly due to its multidisciplinary nature, these actors have university and specialized training.
The great fortune of this group is that they have managed to make a living from the theater, which is like any other profession, just as engineers build plays in the theater is also built. The big difference is that these actors are lucky enough to get up every day to read poetry.
OPINE
«El Paso Theater, is a proposal of resistance, social demand, it is a proposal of cultural construction in a city where the line of culture is the least important thing, this group is sustained not thanks to Pereira, between 80% and 90% we have to manage it from the outside, because the city still hasn’t learned, these are the heights in which there is no concerted room program, the creation grants have low budgets, there is no strong vision of independent creative economies, it is a a city that needs to grow in its political, cultural and social perspective, but I must admit that we are better than 10 years ago, but the city falls short compared to what the artistic and cultural movement is beginning to generate, when we talk about resistance we mean to the fact that everything is given so that we are not here, so that we leave, everything is given so that we can build outside and surely we can do it, but we also have a proposal for construction from the periphery, a proposal to think that the edge is the center and this It is what moves us to live day by day on the scene, it is 18 years of weaving the dream»
INTERNATIONAL EXPERIENCES
With their works they have traveled to various countries around the world, some of them are Lamina and painting; loneliness; Bull face voice; Richard III; Ubo in Colombia. Mexico, Argentina, China, Ecuador.
Because managing international tours requires a lot of lobbying and protocol, they concentrated on strengthening themselves internally.
A BATTLE WON
In the country, at least a handful of groups can say that they have their own room, ‘Teatro El Paso’, after its 13 years of existence, already had one.
It is a battle won because it has allowed them to build exchanges, dialogues and weave relationships in another order, because by having their own room they can invite other national and international groups.
«Living on a floating island and plowing in the sky, that plowing in the sky is building dreams from the scene in unlikely places like Pereira, a city that devours dreams and kicks out its artists, and that is the great victory won, choosing the periphery as a center of creation despite the context and the lack, there is an absence of cultural journalism, theater criticism, there is no professional training program in performing arts, in the political administration the theater does not have an important line» , César Castaño narrowed.
Along with César, Daniel Alejandro Vergara, Fernando Moro, William Ortiz, María Camila Sáenz, Laura Murillo and Carlos Acai make up ‘El Teatro El Paso’
THE PRESENT
They have two international tours, one to Bolivia that begins on April 25, in which they will present the works ‘Ubo en Colombia’ and ‘Indicio’, at the international festival of Santa Cruz de la Sierra.
In La Paz, Bolivia they will present ‘Indicio’ at ‘Casa grito’ as a result of an alliance with the Fitaz festival.
The director César Castaño will be giving a seminar on dramaturgy and stage dynamography