Playback in Cuba
By Susan Metz
This material is made publicly available by the Centre for Playback Theatre and
remains the intellectual property of its author.
La Habana ñ Cubaís capital
Havana is the capital of Cuba where reside about 1/5 of the islandís population of 11.2 million. La
Habana Vieja has been identified as Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, and there, with international
investment, the old city is experiencing a renaissance that is saving from collapse its gorgeous colonial
homes and squares. Plaza Vieja is located two blocks closer to the bay along Calle Teniente Rey from
Casa Gaia where we hold our workshops. Over the four years we have been working there we watched
the plaza being rebuilt to its antique and present splendor. Most of the old city is shabby, though, and it
is considered a ëmarginal neighborhoodí in need of attention. Centro Habanaís pitted streets appear in
nearly all the documentaries about the capital that foreigners may have seen, including Buena Vista
Social Club and Suite Havana. Outside of Cuba we will rarely see the wide tree-lined thoroughfares of
El Vedado whose large houses have been broken up into modest apartments. The elegant mansions of
Miramar now house embassies and the headquarters of the mixed enterprises that are finally attracting
investment from Canada and Spain. We never see the suburban residential neighborhoods of La Vibora
to the south or the boro of Marianao to the west. Still further west is Cubanacan with wide, curving
boulevards and immense palaces now used to house international guests of the government. The national
and international medical schools are out there, as are the research facilities, manufacturing centers and
the complex of housing where live the tens of thousands employed in Cubaís profitable biotech industry.
The two colonial forts guard the entrance to the harbor, El Morro and La Cabana, both now museums.
On the point of the promontory is the lighthouse, and to the east and slightly south around the bay, on the
far side of La Cabana is a giant statue of Jesus that was commission at the behest of the wife of Baptista,
the cruel dictator overthrown by Fidel Castroís Revolution in 1959. Havana reaches around the deep
water bay to the east to the working harbor and the traditionally working class boros of Regla and
Guanabocoa.
Farther east along the Atlantic coast are the post-revolution apartment complexes of Camilo Cienfugos
and Antonio Guiteras and farther still the vast housing project of Alamar. Havana city has grown to the
south to include the open spaces of Parque Lenin, the Botanical Garden and the Zoo, surrounded by
developments of individual homes and garden apartments, many built by brigades of volunteers in
national sweat equity programs during the 70s and 80s. The ramshackle dwellings of San Miguel de
Padron and the neat cottages of Cottoro extend to the southern border of the capital where begin the
farmlands of Havana Province.
The northern border of the city is the Malecon, the curving road, walkway and sea wall that holds back
the Atlantic Ocean.
The capital, and indeed the entire country, is divided into administrative boros or counties called
Municipios. Habana Vieja, Marianao, Regla and Alamar are municipios. Each Municipio is made up of
a series of neighborhoods or barrios. El Vedado is a barrio in the municipio of Plaza de la Revolucion,
commonly referred to as Plaza.
Organization of Cuban Culture
In Cubaís socialist society the State, the national government, plans the economy, decides how many of
who do what, and pays salaries to about 80% of the working population. Culture too is socialized.
Artists are government employees. The Ministry of Culture has two divisions ñ Community Culture and
professional artists who are linked to one of the national councils responsible for each of the categories ñ
visual arts, music and theater. Writers work for publications or are paid for each piece.
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Those employed by Ministry of Culture in the division of Community Culture work in a Casa de Cultura
or community cultural center, one of which is located in each of the 148 municipios or administrative
units into which the island nation is divided. Here classes are offered to homemakers, students and
workers in every aspect of the visual, literary and performing arts. Amateur groups flourish. The
members of the staff are called Instructors of Art for their specialty ñ instructor of art for theater, for
example. Depending on the talent and diligence of the members of the staff, each Casa de Cultura
develops its identity and specialty. One is known for its excellent gallery, another for its music program.
Folks will move around the capital city to find the teachers they like and projects in which they wish to
participate. All activities are free. Expense of materials and the poverty of the state do impose limits.
The Instructor for Art in Theater will teach classes, direct the local amateur company and prepare folks to
participate in competitions and festivals. Particularly popular is the yearly contest for the best original
monologue. The president of the Consejo Nacional de Cultura Comunitaria (CNCC) is Fernando Roja.
The government has lately been emphasizing engaging young people in community cultural activities.
Fidel Castro says that culture forms revolutionary values to the same extent as education. The number of
places in the school for Instructors of Art has been increased. Talented youth are being recruited into this
career.
Professional artists who receive their salaries through one of the national councils present their work in
the theaters, concert halls and galleries, which the government owns and controls. National Council of
Theater Arts (Consejo Nacional de Artes Escenicas or CNAE) supervises dance and theater companies
and is responsible for paying the salaries of everyone connected to the companies. With the final
approval of the Minister of Culture, the appointed leadership of each council decides which groups will
be funded for which projects, on opportunities to travel abroad, and on invitations for foreigners to
perform and for invited foriegners to come and work with Cuban artists.
Applicants who want to be professional actors are evaluated by a commission whose members work in
teams of three (including at least one experienced actor and at least one CNAE assessor) to decide on the
status and pay scale of each successful applicant, from level 3 (inexperienced) to level 1 the highest
rating. The evaluations are based on formal criteria and also, inevitably, on personal and also political
considerations. Evaluation teams can do only a fraction of the assessments that hopefuls request. Julian
Gonzalez has been president of CNAE for more than 10 years. The National Council of Theater Arts has
a small central staff made up of two vice-presidents and a handful of part-time assessors. In addition to
their administrative responsibilities, most teach at the fine arts university, Instituto Superior del Arte, El
ISA.
El ISA is the fine arts university. It is one of a series of institutions offering post-secondary professional
preparation. The others are the U of Havana for humanities, liberal arts and sciences; CUJAI the
technical university for engineering, architecture and infomatics; and Pedagogical Institute for teacher
training. Specialties offered in the theater division of El ISA include playwriting, directing, theater tech
and acting. Entrance auditions are extremely competitive as it is the only institution of its kind on the
island. A branch in the central province of Camaguay is for the ballet. Graduates of the 5-year course
are guaranteed jobs as professional artists.
Abel Prieto has been the Minister of Culture since 1997. He is a novelist who was previously head of the
Union Nacional de Escritores y Artistas de Cuba (UNEAC). The Union of Writers and Artists of Cuba is
affiliated with UNESCO as a non-governmental organization, highly politicized, prestigious and
influential. Only a small percentage of professional artists are invited to join, and it is pointless to apply
unless you can count on wide support of those already enrolled. Membership ensures expedited
procedures to travel off the island on intercultural exchange. Another NGO linked to the Ministry of
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Culture is the Sociedad Cultural Jose Marti (SCJM) headed by Armando Hart who was the first Minister
of Culture before Abel Prieto and who before that served Cuba as the first Minister of Education after the
1959 Revolution. Because these have NGO status and are not branches of the Cuban government, both
these agencies may receive grants from foundations and other international agencies, and the may
administer international projects.
Playback enters Cuba
To formally enter the centrally administered and controlled Cuban culture, a new initiative must
find institutional support. Folks do things outside of formal institutions, to be sure. There is a
wide and thriving grey market of goods and services, and arts. Fortunately, Playback has been
able to find its place and be accepted within the system. It was a long, winding and thorny trail
we traveled to arrive, iat home with the Sociedad Cultural Jose Marti . In March 2005 They
signing an agreement to collaborate with the International Playback Theatre Network to
disseminated these new participatory improvisational theater techniques throughout the island.
The trip began in Havana in December of 1999.
Over a glass of wine in the back garden of her house in the Nuevo vedado section of the capital,
Belkis Vega and I commiserated about the personal losses that we had suffered to the AIDS
epidemic. We cried together. Each had long promised herself to do something to help. A film
director and an educator, we decided to make an audio-visual piece that would sensitize people to
the experiences of people living with HIV. I was also committed to sharing internationally the
unique way in which Cuba was caring for the victims of the epidemic within a comprehensive and
completely free health care system.
I suggested using Playback Theatre as a way of making the film artistically original as well as
socially important. I explained Playback to Belkis, and she was interested. She had worked with
Teatro de los Elementos, a professional company working in the farming town of Cumunayagua
in the foot-hills of the Escambray Mountains in the central province of Cienfuegos. When I
visited them in May, they enthusiastically accepted the challenge of learning the new performance
techniques and participating in the filming.
Jose Oriol Gonzalez the artistic director of Teatro de los Elementos and Belkis received scholarships
from Jonathan Fox to take two weeks of classes at the School of Playback in NYS during the summer of
2000. I raised the money from friends and contributed about half myself. When they returned to Cuba
after the training, they spoke with Abel Prieto about their experiences. In October, in Brooklyn, I
received a letter from the Minister of Culture inviting me to continue to teach Playback in Cuba. That
winter began the adventure.
We began a two year process in two directions. One was research into HIV/AIDS on the island and the
search for tellers, or narrators as we call them in Spanish. The other was the training of the 5 actors
affiliated with Elementos and finding, to round out the company, females and blacks. Carlitos Borbon
helped.
Alfredo Gonzalez, an Argentine anthropologist living in NYC and active in the International Network of
People Living with AIDS, had given me a list of Cuban AIDS activists to contact. Carlitos Borbon was
one. Belkis and I asked him to be one of the tellers selected for the film during the 2 years of research
and preparation that went on at the same time as the training of the actors. Carlitos was so persistent in
asking to train with the actors that, despite hesitation of having someone with double responsibility of
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actor and teller, we decided to let him. He wanted to switch careers from being a nurse to being an actor.
Carlitosí, with his passion for Playback, facilitated the second stage of trainings. After the filming in
February 2002, he recruited his friends and comrades from theater and from the HIV community, and he
organized several introductory workshops for them. Determined to find those whose passion for the form
matched his own, he set about building a company dedicated to using Playback in prevention of
HIV/AIDS. Carlitos has participated in every workshop presented in the capital.
Lourdes Zayon is another person who took responsibility for the growth of Playback in Cuba. As
Instructor for Art in Literature at the Casa de Cultura in the southern municipio of Arroyo Naranja,
Lourdes had formed and facilitated a creative arts group on the theme of HIV/AIDS. She also presented
creative writing and creative dramatics workshops for patients at the largest residential AIDS treatment
center located in the town of Santiago de las Vegas, called ëLos Cocosí. Lourdes offered institutional
support through the official project of the CNCC called ëMontana Magicaí..
After these classes, in October of í02, Oriol arranged for a meeting for me with Julian Gonzalez,
president of National Council of Theater Arts, and his vice president for international relations, Virgilio
Martinto. Oriol and Isnoel Yanes, one of the most experienced actors of Elementos, met us at the Calle 4
offices of the CNAE talking about how we could continue.
We talked about the upcoming international conferences where Playback could be introduced to the
intellectual community in Cuba. The Ministry of Culture was organizing their bi-annual conference on
Culture and Development for that June í03. They asked me to participate.
At that Juneís conference organized by the Ministry of Culture, I would be on the panel about community
theater organized by Nicea Aguero, who was the director of the Teatro Nacional de Cuba (TNC) , the
most prestigious and important performing arts center on the island. Located on one side of the expanse
of the Plaza de la Revolucion, TNC consists of a huge concert hall, a theater for 500, two cabarets (one
above and one under the grand hall) and the Ninth Floor, an space for experimental work. Nicea has
been a central figure in Cuban culture for years, holding various important posts, always with a keen
interest in community participation.
We also talked about the possibility of starting a professional company of evaluated actors who would
receive full-time salaries for doing Playback. I wrote up the notes on the meeting and sent them to each
participant. Initiating a new company seemed a miracle. Julian never met with me again.
It was Cymbeline Buhler, a Playback trainer in Australia, who read an announcement on the internet that
the Sociedad Marti was organizing an international conference ìPor El Equilibirium del Mundoî ñ for
World Balance in Havana to be held at the Palacio de Convenciones in Havana for January í03. She
suggested organizing an international delegation to participate. Unfortunately, Cymbeline was not able to
travel at that time. I met with Hector Hernandez Pardo of the Centro de Estudios Martianos in El Vedado
and discussed our organizing a delegation from the International Playback Theatre Network to
participate with a group of Cubans and present Playback to those gathered for that international event
sponsored by UNESCO. From Britain and Hong Kong came Veronica Needa, then president of the
IPTN. From Asheville (North Carolina) Playback came Debe Scott, an experienced trainer and from
Tucson, Arizona Charles Schnaaran. I invited and subsidized the trip of Maria Elena Garavelli, wellknown figure in Teatro Espontaneo from Cordoba, Argentina whom I had met in York England in 1999
at an international Playback gathering.
That team comprised our first international delegation of trainers. We presented an intensive Playback
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training in Havana at Casa Gaia in the old city, which has become home to our work. To prepare Cuban
performers to work with the internationals in presenting both a performance and a panel on theory at the
SCJM conference, we practiced together for two weeks. Marilen and I worked in uneasy collaboration
the first week to present the introductory class. With fluid expertise, she facilitated activities opening
creativity. I was didacted, teaching the techniques of Playback and the forms that I assumed we would
use during the show. Veronica and the two US trainers collaborated to facilitate the second week. One
important goal was to unify the group that would participate in the conference. Five internationals and
five Cubans attended the conference and participated in a performance we presented there.
Marilen conducted using the director-dominated techniques closer to psychodrama, which are called
Teatro Espontaneo in South America. The performance was intriguing and well-received. She, Veronica
and I were on an afternoon panel. Marilen discussed the roots of the work in psychodrama, I talked
about Playback techniques as well as the Cuba project and Veronica about the organization of the
International Playback Theatre Network and Playback in the world.
Our guest teachers stayed together in a large apartment on Paseo in El Vedado ñ a ëcasa particularí or
private home whose owner is permitted to legally receive payment in dollars because she pays
substantial taxes that go to the government to support Cubaís extensive and expensive social project. I
stayed in Marianao. We had been guaranteed a telephone in the apartment, but there was no connection
until late the third day. Because I had responsibilities to coordinate, I needed to be in communication.
So, I missed the evening conversations. I asked for a gathering after the closing of the conference so that,
with our Cuban colleagues, we could decide how to proceed in relation to the CNAE. If we were to
follow-up on the formation of a company, I thought we would have to present names of actors we felt
were prepared to take on those jobs. No one wanted to talk during the conference and Fidel Castro was
the last presenter. He began late, and he spoke for his usual several hours until all energy was spent. We
got back to the apartment to find the Cubans also exhausted after a long day. After tense agreements on
how we would conduct that meeting, we produced a list of 10 actors and 2 alternates that we could
present to Julian and the CNAE as performers prepared to form a new professional company. No one
was very happy, and we did not know what would happen. The professional company did not
materialize.
During the second week, we went to visit with Nicea, at her office as director of the TNC. She expressed
appreciation for our work and offered the her cooperation and the use of TNC facilities. She confirmed
my participation on the panel about community theater.
In June, Cultura y Desarollo proved a disappointment to me. After sitting through three days of only
talking heads in a huge florescent-lit chamber, I had all of 10 minutes to present Playback.
Ours was the last panel scheduled at the end of the meetings, and I was next to the last presenter. Fruitful
were the conversations in the corridors. At the coffee bar mid-morning at the Palacio I talked with Tony
Fernandez, Niceaís right hand at TNC who became one of our most enthusiastic students and allies.
As a result of our dignified and professional entry into the official cultural life of the island during those
two conferences, the CNAE offered me a visa for the following year as ëartista invitadaí for three
months between mid-January through mid-March 2004. This status meant that companies could invite
me to teach as part of their professional development. I knew that this was a great honor. I submitted
my papers to the Cuban Interest Section in DC in September ë03, and I entered Jose Marti International
Airport in mid January ë04 with added status as invited artist and much enthusiasm.
With Tonyís support and help, I presented two introductory workshops at the National Theater, in the
lobby of the Sala Covarubia, the large, bright and well-ventilated space with periodic interruptions as
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folks walked through to other functions that took place in the main hall of that theater. One group was
composed of Tonyís students at the Tourism School who were training to be recreation specialists at the
hotels and Tony participated. The second one was at the end of my stay that March. It was a group of
instructors de arte por teatro.
I subsidized Hannah Fox to come that January to teach performance skills at TNC to the students who
already trained with me and had some experience. It was a small group: Oriol, Isnoel and Lavinia from
Elementos, and from Carlitos group which calls themselves Teatro Espontaeo de la Habana Lourdes,
Mirtha Lilia, Teresita. Tony participated, and we had a lovely guest from Mexico. The concluding
performance presented traditional Playback to a mixed audience of functionaries, intellectuals and artists.
In February I traveled to teach an introductory workshop to the Consejo Provicial de Cultura in the
eastern province of Holguin. Members of Co-Danza, (modern dance) Ballet de Camara, Teatro Gunol,
(childrenís theater) and a few students of theater from the local university participated. As a guest artist
of the government, I was provided a room in the nicest hotel and three meals for that week of teaching.
After years of rehearsing to perfect technique, the emphasis on spontaneity challenged the dancers and a
provided relief. They had worked together for years and had never gotten to know each other so well,
several commented. The concluding performance brought Playback to that community.
I taught a second introductory workshop at TNC to a mixed group of 18 including actors, public health
workers and instructors of art for theater. They were enthusiastic and chattered constantly about
immediately beginning work on a company. One did grow. The called themselves Bienaventurados and
worked together for two years.
Those folks came to TNC as a result of an afternoons activities that I lead at the Casa de la Comedia,
near Plaza de Armas in the heart of the old city. Previously, I had several meetings with Clara, the
director of community culture for the city of Havana and with Fidelito, the co-ordinator for theater.
There was much enthusiasm for the place of Playback at the casas de cultura in the municipios of the
capital. We agreed that Playback fits perfectly into their community theater program and planned to
collaborate more the following year. Clara referred me to Guillermo Artiles, vice-president of the
CNCC. The day before I left the island, I met with Artiles. We planned a collaboration to prepare
teatristas with Playback techniques to the Casas de Cultura the following year. I expected to return for a
brief visit in either late spring or early autumn (summers are broiling) and arrange the papers for visa of
visiting artist with their sponsorship.
Publicity was coordinated by Cira Peraza of Radio Taino who announced the performances and
interviewed a few of us for broadcast on the national multi-lingual station. An interview on Canal
Educativo conducted by Oscar Suarez also helped get the word out. Our liaison with the CNAE was
Pedro Morales whose specialty in performance ritual and spirituality gave him a particular insight into
Playbackís goals. He and Barbara Rivero, another assessor, attended a number of performances. I
arranged regular meetings with Pedro, which always was difficult as he teaches performance theory at El
ISA, has many responsibilities for the Council. He has no telephone at home.
As a possible location for the classes for the four week intensive we were planning for February í05, we
found the Fragua Martiana, a museum and cultural center dedicated to the work of Jose Marti and
connected to the University of Havana. Milagros Pardo had participated in the TNC workshop and was
working at the Sociedad Marti for the city of Havana. She introduced me to Carlos Marchante, the
director of the Fragua who became enthusiastic about facilitating the training and hosting the growing
new company.
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Unfortunately, for personal and political reasons, I did not go back to Cuba until December í04. I sent
many email messages. None were answered. Without that intermediary visit to work out the details of
the plan I was not sure exactly how I would be received when I returned.
I entered Cuba on a tourist visa and went immediately to Artiles at the Consejo Nacional de Cultura
Comunitario (CNCC) to ask him to change my status and arrange for a visa of invited artist. Saying it
would be no problem, he sent me on a half-day mission around the city to get the $40 in official
government stamps required by immigration. I left with his secretary my passport, the stamps and all the
documents about the project. Two weeks later, after keeping me waiting nearly two hours, I entered his
office, filled with people and with smoke. He abruptly handed me my documents and told me he was
sorry, but it couldnít be done. He advised that I go to CNAE.
There, our assessor, Pedro Morales, assured me that they would have no difficulty making the change.
He told me that he was working with invitations for me to teach in the provinces that had been generated
as a result of the previous yearís success in Holguin. He asked for and I gave him the names and phone
numbers of all my contacts. I submitted my passport and all the papers to the director of the CNAE
office of international relations. Then, I began orientation sessions at the Fragua, registering people who
wanted to take classes under the auspices of both the Fragua and the CNAE. Perspective students came
from professional theater group, community culture, university theater and the psychology department,
students at El ISA, instructors of art for theater and health promoters from the HIV community.
Everything seemed in order. I had a week free before I was scheduled to begin teaching the introductory
workshop. I bought a plane ticket to travel to Santiago de Cuba with Walter who had just arrived from
Florida, to spend a week with friends. Those plans changed.
At home on that Friday morning I received two phone calls. The first was from Marchante. He read me
a message left for him by the rector of the University informing him that all programs at the Fragua
between February and the end of the spring semester were cancelled. No reason was given nor could
Marchante provide any additional information. He was really upset. We assumed that the influx of
students from Venezuela put classroom space under such pressure that the university needed every
corner. Then came a call from Pedro. He was unusually serious. Gisela, a VP of CNAE, he told me
wanted to see me on Tuesday afternoon. ìThe news is not goodî, he said. I asked if it would mean a
change in the program for the workshops. Pedro said that according to his criteria, yes, it would require a
radical change. So I called Santiago to tell them I couldnít travel and phoned Carlitos, Lourdes, Milagros
and Tony looking for their advice about how to handle this surprise. Tony suggested that I call Nicea.
At that point the five Playback trainers planning to present classes during the intensive in February í05
already had their plane tickets. Our friend Deb from Asheville was returning with a member of her
company who is a yoga teacher and fluent in Spanish. From Florida, a Cuban-American Playbacker,
Walter, planned to combine some teaching with his first visit to his family in Guantanamo province since
his mom took him to the US when he was 13. And from Uruguay, we awaited Rasia Friedler, whose
agency SaludArte in Montevideo supports two Playback groups ñ one using dance and the other theater. I
would subsidize Rasiaís trip. The fifth was Sarah U, a Swiss-American Playback School graduate who
is a 12-year member of Hudson River Playback and licensed psychodramatist. She was coming to
supervise performances and help us work on improving practice.
On the following Tuesday at the offices of CNAE three of us met for about twenty minutes. Gisela
announced that the Council would no longer support Playback because it did not fit into the trajectory of
Cuban Theater. Playback, she told me, is too unpredictable. It was an announcement, Pedro explained.
The decision had been made. Gisela merely repeated the verdict, offering no more explanation nor
commentary. This decision meant that professionals whose salaries came through the Council would not
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be able to use the classes for professional development, and the work could not be included in their
resumee nor count towards their evaluation. We could not use any venue connected with the CNAE to
hold the classes. And there would be no professional Playback company. I told them I thought that they
were making a mistake to withdraw their support before this set of classes. I knew that these classes
would finally complete the training of a group of participants who could show the power of Playback.
About one third of those who had registered withdrew from the course. .
We searched for a place to hold the classes. Jaime suggested Teatro San Boi, a dilapidated, barn-like
nearly abandoned former cinema located a 15-minute walk from where I live in Marianao. Fortunately,
being near the big military hospital, it had great bus connections to the rest of the city. Nicea gave us
permission to work there. She had separated from the National Theater in preparation for her retirement,
and taken a post as VP with CNCC. Fernando Roja and Artiles were both out of the country at that
moment, so she was in charge. None-the-less, I taught the first two days of the introductory class in a
near-by park. The letters of permission from Nicea to the director of cultura for the municipio of
Marianao and from him to the director of the theater, without email, took several days. Fortunately, the
weather was fine. The large grassy field shaded on one side by huge cieba trees, sacred in the Afro faith
of Santaria, welcomed me and a dozen young and enthusiastic students. We entered the San Boi the third
day and finished the week there. Our culminating performance was presented at the Madriguera, the site
of the young artists collective in the park Quinto de las Molinas on the wide boulevard Carlos Tercera
near the Plaza de la Revolucion. It was their first encounter with our work. For the class on
performance skills (23 participants) taught by the Asheville team, we returned to San Boi. The
culminating performance was there as well.
For Rasiaís class on conducting we moved back into Casa Gaia in Habana Vieja which is quieter, cleaner
and more centrally located. This upstairs studio is the property of a well-known actress, Esther Cardoso,
who fixed it up with the help of foreigners who stay at her casa particular. For the right to rent to
tourists who pay for their lodging in dollars, or convertible pesos now printed in Cuba to be used in the
places where hard currency had formerly been used, hosts pay high taxes. Esther runs a casa particular
in Centro Habana which helps her support her studio. She lends it to us, and we ëcooperateí. It is illegal
for her to rent us the studio. During the last week of the í05 intensive training, teams of performers
presented four shows. Different groups performed at Gaia, at Centro MLKing in Marianao, at Parque
Almadares near the river, and at an elementary school. Cira organized a press conference at UNEAC.
Lourdes asked me to work with a group of young people from the school of instructors of art with whom
she was working on Playback. We met for a week-end, a ëTaste of Playbackí rather than a workshop.
Given the traumas at the beginning the í05 intensive was particularly gratifying. Cuban colleagues
rallied and took responsibility. But at the end of the month we were still without institutional support.
The day before the end of the last class in the intensive series, Oriol came into Gaia to pick up Isnoel and
Lavinia to take them back to Cumunayagua. He came with good news.
There had been a large meeting at UNEAC, Oriol told me. Tony Fernandez made a speech about a US
solidarity worker who brought a precious gift of Playback Theater to Cuba. Could this gift be rejected
just as artists were realizing its value? Oriol, who had been to Playback School and had participated in
the filming and used the techniques in the countryside with Elementos, also testified. Two NGOs
offered their support. One was Sociedad Cultural Jose Marti, the other, CIERIC, a project of UNEAC
dedicated to community transformation. Oriol gave me cards of the directors of both of the agencies
telling me to call them both right away.
I met with Rigoberto Fabelo of CIERIC. He was interested and said that he would help. Fortuitously, at
that time Milagros worked at SCJM for the city of Havana. She arranged for a meeting with Ileana
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Musibay, the VP of SCJM for the day before I was to fly out. The three of us drew up a simple
agreement of affiliation between the Sociedad and the IPTN, and we three signed it. They would
provide the institutional support that brought Playback official status within Cuban culture. Armando
Hart himself had approved the project.
During the summer of í05 I wrote in Spanish an invitation to learn Playback in Havana, which Rasia
emailed to psychodramatists and the teatro espontaneo movement in Latin America. Three Argentines
and three participants from the US joined us for Januaryís classes with the Cubans.
Also during that summer, the Playback community sent five boxes of material aid on the 16th caravan of
Pastors for Peace. P4P sends yearly caravans of trucks and buses along 14 routes throughout the US that
carry and deliver material aid to the island. They hand-carry the boxes over the Mexican border and
reload for the trip to Tampico where the aid is put on ships to Havana. Over 100 caravanistas accompany
the shipment and fly to the island for the yearly celebration of citizen solidarity. We collected and sent
mostly clothe and black performance clothing, also some instruments and rehearsal clothing. The
shipment was approved both by Pastors and by the Ecumenical Council of Cuba which distributes the
aid through churches, not through the Cuban government. The stuff reached Milagros at Sociedad Marti.
She convened a meeting and divided everything among five group leaders: Carlitos of Teatro Espontaneo
de la Habana, Roberto of Bienaventurados, Lourdes for her group of young instructors de arte por teatro,
Marta who works at Casa de Cultura in the old city and Yunier, who had taken responsibility for a
practice group called Initiative One.
My on-going relationship with Pastors for Peace brings me tremendous status on the island because it
shows that I continue to work stateside to end the embargo, and that I am willing to confront the legal
restrictions on travel in the spirit of one of my early mentors, Dr Martin Luther King Jr. P4P has never
asked for a license from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) of the US Department of Treasury,
even though it is widely known that since they are church based, even the Bush administration would be
willing to grant them permission.
My introductory experiences on the island were with study delegations organized by Lucius Walkerís
faith-based coalition. In í97 and í98, with small groups first researching Cuban culture and later the
school system, I stayed at the Martin Luther King Center in Marianao. It is extremely unusual for a
foreigner, much less someone from the US, to be granted permission, access and actually to enter and
work within Cuban institutions.
The Intensive Playback Training of January í06 for the first time enjoyed the endorsement of the School
of Playback Theatre so that the certificates that participants received for their resumes were quite
presitigious. The scheduled introductory class, I taught at Sala Teataro Cero, under the auspices of
Sociedad Hermanos Saez, also known as Joven Creadores, the young artists collective. Their members do
receive stipends for participation and the group enjoys a large and unusual measure of autonomy. Only
the comite de direccion needed to approve our use of one of their sites. I taught a three day intro at their
main casita in Quinta de las Molinas for members of their collective, four of whom continued on to more
advanced classes. As usual, I contacted as many casas de cultura and cultural projects as I could to look
for students. And for the folks from outside the capital (five came in from various provinces) I
presented a short, two day, intro at Gaia directly before Hannahís class on performance skills.
Hannah had 23 in her class, which was the largest group we ever had and really strained the space.
Everybody participated in the performance that culminated the class.
Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org
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Centre for Playback Theatre www.playbackcentre.org
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