Long live the Seasons! 31 years of theater that flourishes in every season.
Teatro de las Estaciones celebrates its 31st anniversary today, more than three decades in which there have been many moments of growth, sleeplessness, sacrifice, hope, certainties rather than doubts, great solutions to great problems, resilience.
The choice of its name was due to those first shows they unveiled in 1994, which would mark the beginning of their life. It was an almost random act, but perhaps no one imagined the impact and the exact correspondence that has always existed between the group, its name, and how they have asserted it for 31 years now.
The passage of time leaves its mark on nature, and one of the most representative cycles is the season. Each one transforms the environment in a unique way, reflecting the change through colors, temperatures, and landscapes.
If we were to draw a parallel, during these three decades (and counting, as the slogan for this anniversary states), Teatro de Las Estaciones has also left its mark on several generations of Matanzas residents, not to mention its performances in several provinces across the country and its tremendous success on tours abroad.
If we were to continue with the analogies, the troop of the Sun and the Moon, constant and essential like the stars that govern life on the planet, transforms its immediate surroundings. They do so through proposals that turn to colors, which invoke beauty; melodies, which leave deep traces in our emotional memories; images, which correspond to realities both personal and distant, as a reaffirmation of their connection to today’s world; dance and movement, as proof of transformation and life.
Thanks to these and other resources deployed with unparalleled mastery on the altarpiece, they convey a series of sensations, emotions, messages, and reflections, to revive the child within us adults when we go to the theater with our little ones and to sow in them a seed of goodness and a constant search for personal growth.
Just as the seasons, throughout their history until today, have experienced different moments in their development, with stages of reflection and harvest, like autumn; introspection and hope, like winter; rebirth and growth, like spring, and vitality and fullness, like summer. These states seem to always be inherent to them.
Teatro de las Estaciones celebrates its 31st anniversary today. The premiere of the concert-performance, dedicated to the birthday of Cuba’s leading puppet theater group, starting at 3:00 p.m., will feature performances by Sonia María Cobos, Yadiel Durán, Raúl Alvarez, Laura Marín, Iván García, Ale García, Iris Mantilla, and Yasey Muñoz, representing the actors and dancers who have been and are part of the Matanzas group.
Four performances by Olga Blanco will follow on stage, featuring songs created by Raúl Valdés; four songs by Teresita Fernández orchestrated by Elvira Santiago; and four songs with Lucelsy Fernández and the Vida quartet. There will be moments to pay homage to pianist, arranger and composer Hilda Elvira Santiago Novo and composer, arranger and bassist Raúl Valdés, local musicians whose talent, in addition to other projects, has always been at the service of Teatro de Las Estaciones. The video clips Las Estaciones, by Ivette Ávila and Ramiro Zardoya, and Meñique, by Rubén Darío Salazar, performed by Rochi Ameneiro, will be shared.
Teatro de las Estaciones celebrates its 31st anniversary today, more than three decades in which there have been no shortage of moments of growth, sleeplessness, sacrifice, hope, certainties rather than doubts, great solutions to major problems, and resilience. They have always done so, from their birth during the harshest moments of the Special Period to the terrible years of the pandemic when audiovisual media and social media served as favorable avenues to continue creating despite the impossibility of working in theaters.
Their most recent creation, Un ramillete de verano (A Summer Bouquet), a show that joins a repertoire of around 40 productions, is a project that was born precisely as an alternative to the times when the Pepe Camejo theater lost power. The group and its director could not afford to lose the audience they had gained through the richness of their performances, stability, tenacity, and perseverance, and they brought to life this performance that combines fragments of various shows in their repertoire, puppets, songs, games, and stories, and especially includes children during the performances.
Yes, because Teatro de Las Estaciones doesn’t settle for easy things; it doesn’t allow itself to be intimidated by the ups and downs of the economy, by the ravages of the crisis. Its main mission, the essential reason for its work, is to provide children and families with hours of happiness, reflection, sincere dialogue, and beauty.
The good fortune of having them, not always appreciated beyond the loyal audience that always accompanies them and those who have been fortunate enough to be part of their various moments, is only comparable to the necessity of their existence, from a city, in a province where a puppet group always strives for permanence based on its social and human responsibility, and is reborn every year, in every show, in every performance.
Teatro de Las Estaciones celebrates its 31st anniversary, like the seasons that give it its name, constant, invariable, and essential to Matanzas and to Cuban culture. Photos taken from the Facebook profile of Rubén Darío Salazar, director of Teatro de las Estaciones.
Writen by Jessica Mesa.
