Free or Slaves?

Free or Slaves? / 14ymedio, Lynn Cruz
Posted on September 1, 2015

14ymedio, Lynn Cruz, Havana, 30 August 2015 — The play The
Emigrants (1975), by the Polish playwright Slawomir Mrozek has been
staged by Sahily Moreado and his company Teatro del Cuartel at Sala
Teatro El Sotano in Havana. This story of tearing apart, uprooting and
exile will present the final shows of its revival over the weekend.

One of the characters fled for political reasons, while the other to
escape misery. The first believes in the value of being able to think
and speak freely, while the latter wants to make money to return to his
family. Two visions of the world coexist in a basement, but what isn't
specified is in which country or city.

Driven by survival, each character shows his most primitive side and at
the moments when the atmosphere becomes more sordid than dreary, the
theater piece evokes the work Two Lost in the Filthy Night (1966) by the
Brazilian Linio Marcos.

Because The Emigrants is presented in a Cuban scenario, for the audience
the association is immediate: Two Cuban immigrants in a first world
country. Thus, the two realities end up merged, and even more so due to
the historic similarities that unite us with Poland.

The absence of scene design, however, weakens the vision. For example,
the use of Caribbean objects and furniture found in any Cuban house or
kitchen. Another notable aspect were the sudden and almost mechanical
lighting transitions, which at many points are divorced from the rhythm
of the staging.

However, the minimalism, as well as the use of space and each of the
elements, display no lack of rigor. Moreda, in addition to being
characterized by his exhaustive selection of texts, fends intelligently
for himself, countering the material deficiencies with the quality of
his performers, who achieve particularly emotional moments.

It is not difficult for the spectators to enter in the atmosphere of the
basement where the story narrated by the play takes place. A match
between the real space and the theatrical space, with the odor of
dampness and the dust in the room, this time, favors the fiction.

The characters are from different backgrounds and had they remained in
their birth countries it is probable that their paths never would have
crossed. This is one of the conflicts of the play, which also addresses
the psychological processes an immigrant passes through, ranging from
the more casual relationship between them, to the most extreme
circumstances.

The intellectual proclaims that he lives in post-socialism, now that he
can say and express what he feels. He experiences freedom, but he has
lost conflict as a driving force for creativity and his truths must be
spoken in the place where they were engendered. On the other hand, the
construction worker, his roommate, is his object of analysis and he
needs him to cope with the displacement.

The subject and the object become one. The intellectual calls him slave,
and challenges him to say what he thinks, without fear. He confronts the
worker with his truth: The loss of the sense of the journey. With this
he goes into a deeper truth that leads him to question even his own
existence.

The truthfulness in his characters, the precision of movement as well as
the careful diction, often absent in today's Cuba, characterize the
excellent performance of Daniel Robles. The young actor excels in an
way, along with the more experienced Walfrido Serrano, who has returned
memorable performances in Teatro El Publico. The latter, however, is
excessively theatrical in his delivery at times and should check his
laughter which, on occasion, tarnishes his naturalness.

The Emigrants arrives on the Cuban scene and, beyond history versus the
individual, Mrozek digs into the human aspect. It brings us to accept
out truth without distorting it, makes us live truly in the present and
positively influences our future. It leaves us with an individual
question: Are we free or are we slaves?

Source: Free or Slaves? / 14ymedio, Lynn Cruz | Translating Cuba -
http://translatingcuba.com/free-or-slaves-14ymedio-lynn-cruz/