 all of our eyes. And so here are just some brief words before I hand it over to Olivia Mansour who's moderating the first panel. Cruising utopia as if we were cruising the transgressions of our youth, the split selves that make us bi and multicultural, multilingual, immigrant and exiled, and the children of inheritors of the aspers that raged through and across earth and oceans, these selves find themselves in our bookstories, poems, plays, films and hybrid tomes indebted to the exploration of aesthetic, cultural, faith, gender, economic and class differences as well as those along and across constructed lines of race, quote, determined by neoliberal policies, first world to so-called third world. In these utopic lenses that almost always reflect its opposite dystopia, we construct new selves that practice decolonial love in the hope that by so doing equitable coexistence will be possible with our fellow humans on this planet. Raging desire fuels us in the search for new stories that will spark our imaginations and those of our emancipated spectators and readers. This search, this journey through our diasporic imaginations, is the core of our travels today here in Baton Rouge and on howl round in the virtual space, but this story, this journey has been with us for years and will continue past this day. For now, the utopias sit on the landscape of our dreams, acted on our stages yet to be written, ghosted by the past in the palaces of our expansive and gorgeous imaginations. The first panel today is Caribbean diasporous tracing interconnections through the archive, theater, performance, and ritual. It's moderated by Lydia Mansour of the University of Miami. I hand the floor to her and I welcome you all today, which I know is going to be a long day and I'll keep checking in with you and saying hello. Welcome. Thank you very much and good morning. It's always hard to follow a caridad on the podium, but at any rate, this first panel today is looking at how art is marked by diaspora in its dramaturgy, effective practice, and emotive patina. What kinds of stories are generated in diasporous? How do diasporous retrace history in theater and performance? And we're going to be, the panelists today are going to be looking at a series of different cultural productions and at the end we're going to have two very short performances, one by artist Margaret Kemp and then at the very end by Omisona Franca from Cuba. So the first speaker today is Solimar Otero, who I, this audience I guess needs no introduction. She's a associate professor in the Department of English and a folklorist here at LSU, her research centers on gender, sexuality, Afro-Caribbean spirituality and Yoruba traditional religion in folklore, literature and ethnography. She's the author of Afro-Cuban Diasporous in the Atlantic world and she's also the co-editor of Jamoja, Gender, Sexuality and Creativity in Latino, Latina, Latino and Afro-Atlantic Diasporous. Her presentation today is titled, Se van los Ceres, Espiritismo and Ritualized History in the Afro-Latino Diasporic Imagination. Thanks to Caridad and to Vivian for having me here today and inviting me to be part of this panel. It's pretty exciting and so I'm just going to set it up. So I have just a little context for what I'm going to be talking about today. I'm going to be talking about some fieldwork I did last year in Aqours, where I've been doing fieldwork for over 15 years with this particular community full disclosure. Some of the people you'll be seeing, some of the spirit mediums and practitioners are actually my aunts and my uncles and people I'm related to. So this project is very personal and just quickly, Espiritismo is a creolized religion that has roots in Europe, the Americas, South America and since the 19th century has been changing in many different manifestations. Can you guys hear me? Yeah. That's better. Okay. I want to start with a quote from Tadramon Achoa's book Society of the Dead that deals with Apollo religions and he says this about Espiritismo. Espiritistas are important mediators of the dead. Practitioners of Apollo and Ocha Santo. Importantly, during the masses, Espiritistas help the living engage these dead through a complex theater of possession, often involving the experience of Congo dead, usually runaway slaves. Ochoa's comments on the important work that Espiritistas do in the ethnophistorical theater of possession, especially in terms of the representation of the legacy of race and slavery in Cuba puts the ritual performances of mis espirituales in a temporally heightened politicized and conjunctural context. The emergence of several conjunctural moments in ritual storytelling and talk with my interlocutors in Havana were manifested through what I call a performative inner orality. And when I'm thinking about inner orality, it's a lot like intertextuality, but in this case where you have these dense oral traditions where people interlayering stories within a ritual. And I can talk more about that later. Discussions about the meaning of gender, race, and sexuality in stories told in rituals performed involved a co-exploration into the meaning of embodiment and the construction of the self that is intertwined in layered oral performances. In this regard, Afro-Cuban religions are intersectional in regards to the understanding of the self as a multi-layered being that is embedded in multiple social registers and hierarchies of power. For vernacular Cuban religious communities, this intersectionality also implicates the self in a range of spiritual realms and relationships that are deeply embroiled in various metaphysical claims. In other words, the attitudes towards what constitutes the self as being and becoming are in constant ontological negotiation because of the range of performative selves that people invoke in the cultural, social, and spiritual worlds they inhabit. And just to give a little bit of historical context, Aral Roman's work on Republican Espiritista in Cuba in 1901, he talks about the mestizo logic of spirits and workers. And he looked at newspaper articles and legal cases. And he thinks about this point in time in Cuba where Espiritismo was developing some kind of trans-cultural logic even in the public sphere. And within that, Espiritismo, because of its basis on a lot of the work that Alan Kardec and other spiritists did, had conflicting modernities and class associations with them. So it is definitely within itself a very layered, it has layered history and it's a layered practice. So during my visit to Cuba last May, I can do it, I can do it. Just use it. I wanted to point it. That's what I want to do. Okay. During my mediums, Tomasa Speigler, Mercedes Samora, Albuquerque, Jose Diaz Casada, Sonia Bostamonte, Maximil Bostamonte, before Misa's in Speigler's residence in Vana Cuba, a bogada was set up with colorful flowers, glasses of fresh water for spirits, rosaries, candles, tobacco, perfume, and prayer books for the ancestors and spirit guides who were coming to see and visit. A bowl full of water with flower petals was placed at the foot of the table for cleansing before the start of the ceremony. The masses were set in honor of the dead of the family of some of the participants, as well as a later Misa to Coronada medium. Those who had immediate ties to the dead were given a clear glass of water to place under their chairs. The figure of an Indian spirit held two rosaries at the head of the bogada, a symbol that reflects how Amerindian spirits are represented after Atlantic spiritual work from New Orleans to Brazil and in Cuba. After an opening round of prayers and songs, the spirits who came to give counsel included a range of beings, a departed grandmother, an Afro-Cuban palero palera, a Spanish sitana, a monja, a Native American, and spirit guides associated with the Orishas Elegua and the Catholic state San Lássaro and the Orisha, Lugumi Orisha Babaluaya. The mediums engaged in code switching, amalgamation, and cross-referencing between different religious traditions, nationalities, and ethnicities in co-constructing the life histories of the spirit guides they saw in the Misa. Some of the spirits themselves were disguised as having multiple valences in terms of sources of spiritual power, as having both Yorva and Congol ritual implements in their spirit world to work with, and the divergent, conflated, and conflicted discourses of these many voices illustrate how the performative expression of the idea of transculturation creates an opportunity for the study of these moments in their most messy, conflicted, and interesting sense. So I'm going to read a little bit about this interorality and how people bring together these voices, and how many people here understand Spanish? Everybody? Almost? Okay, I'm going to read in Spanish then, okay? Oh no? Okay, so maybe I'll do it in English then, but you'll lose the flavor. So this is Sonia Bustamonte. She said, now I see after we just sang, now I see after we just sang Los Clavelitos, which is a song to bring down a gypsy spirit, a gypsy's tendency with pink polka-dotted skirt of many colors, with large hoop earrings. She does not play the castanets, but I see her circling you with that full, ruffled polka-dotted skirt, that gypsy has her own tendency with olla, with sencella, and then José Dia Casada, another medium, interrupts, and he adds, and whereby that spirit that you see is joyous, I see as well she had a double, like a nun spirit, that gypsy spirit has a spirit double that is a nun, a nun that I'm receiving as wearing brown with a white hood, as if she's a missionary, one of the sisters of mercy, dedicated to helping the sick, doing good works. I'm sorry, I lost my, I spot lost my place. So the Hitana spirit guide that is described in both the past and present tenses here is uniting the narrative memory of her living days with the moment of the Misa in many different ways here. And here I want to go through some of the slides that images, those images that we saw. So in that conflation we see that we have the Hitana spirit being associated with the monja, as well as being, there was a place where she's associated with olla, and then also associated with sencella and doki. So here you have Yorva, Kongo, Spanish, and different traditions coming together in a complex interlaying, interlaying. So Elizabeth Parris sees the the participants of the Misa as living bovidas, living spirit tables that reflect the idea of the self as individual rather than unitary for participants. I would move that these suggestions say that the self in his spiritismo is conceived as always becoming, in multiple ways, and attached to diverse dimensions of seen and unseen worlds in moments that challenge the present and layered conjunctures. The difficulties, tensions, and unresolved representations of race, ethnicity, religious difference, and as well as sexuality and gender in the Misa direct us towards contemporary issues in human society that also require special attention. And I'm very influential in how I'm looking at this work and the other work I'm doing is Ramon Rivera Cervera's analysis of intellectual latinidad and the frictive moments of communities of affect. And I really like how he talks about utopian performatives and how for the Misa I really see there's a similarity in terms of moments of spiritual unity that are fraught with racial, ethnic, sexual, and class-based tensions that underlie the idea of guanidad here. So he has a quote that I love and he says here, and this is from his latest book, quote, moments where the aesthetic event becomes temporarily a felt materiality that instantiates the imaginable into the possible. And here we have a moment where you have the spirit guides with different valences and constellations coming together and breaking into the phenomenological realm, either through cohabitation, which is a word I prefer than possession, because I feel like it's kind of this embodied experience where people are cohabiting. And having that represent a lot of differences and conflicts that are not only now, but also have to deal with historical racially encoded issues. So here in the Spanish Itana, the group, I wanted to say that Itana in itself is a racialized and sexualized subject, right? The wrong people have been used and represented in multiple ways, and we need to see that it's also racially coded and tropicalized in specific ways. And I didn't have time, but in the transcript she was also related to La Candelaria, the bien de la Candelaria from Tenerife, who's called La Morenita, and she actually appeared before the Castilians came to Tenerife, and she's been combined with the indigenous religions there, and she represents another kind of fierce Black Madonna, and so there's a really interesting kind of connections there with these different, I didn't have time to talk about some of the other conflations, but a lot of these Black Madanas have a lot of these kind of sharing the spiritual work. So as Romanen covers again for the 19th and 20th century in Cuba, quote, not only do African Norrishas and Masquerades Catholic saints, but seemingly European spirits also camouflage their hybridity in a variety of guises, end of quote. So the transcultural merging and tensions represented by this constellation of spirits connects the present to the past in a co-construction of spiritual life histories for the living and the dead. In voices that are doubled and quoted, the participants in the MISA show us that the dead are watching, listening, and asking us to engage with the past in visceral and real ways. The revelatory narrative process of the MISA reaffirms relationships, conflicts, warnings, powers, and work yet to be done with spirit guides and the worlds they represent. Here the ontology of coexistence pushes past the boundaries of the binaries of self and other, body and spirit, and into the dense compilations of associations that emphasize spiritual movement, negotiation, and creativity. And Raquel Romberg, in her work in Espiritismo Puerto Rico, sees some of the work, the way that people mix ethnic associations and Espiritismo as creolization with an attitude. So I like that. So I also want to conclude I know we don't have we don't have that much time. I want to conclude with a quote from Munoz as well and he said in Just Identifications that Seminole book quote, it is my contention is my contention that the doing that matters most and the performance that seems most crucial and I think short of the actual making of worlds. The MISA spirit guides that briefly appear may contain the same kind of repertoires of ephemerally coded performances that can and cannot be read from the official archives of history. Here of course I'm talking from Diane Taylor's work. The tensions inherent in binding the folk Catholic, Paulo, Santeria and Espiritista traditions together in the image of creolized passing spirits signaled to gendered race, sex, and ethnic haunting that the memory of colonization, transnational immigration, and transculturation and contemporary Cuba engenders. The labor of trabajo and it is called spiritual work trabajo that the spirits come down to do in the MISA and in the tierra is also organized in a manner that suggests the kinds of work that especially people of color, women, and sexual minorities have done and continue to do spiritually and sexually with their body in Latin America in terms of producing certain goods, results, and experiences for others. As with the voices in Taylor's archives, some missing, some whispering, some resounding, the voices that come together in the MISA give us a guide as to how to read what is left of a partial story based on a phenomenological continuum of experiences. And we'll have time for question and discussions at the end. Okay, the second presenter is Carolina Caballero. Carolina received her PhD in romance languages from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Inspired by her experience growing up in a Cuban family in the U.S., Carolina explored the performance of exile in drama of the Cuban diaspora in her dissertation. Her other research interests include manifestations of violence and gender construction and the construction in Cuban-Cuban diasporic and U.S.-Latino-Latina drama and narrative. She has published articles and essays on Cuban diasporic theater and performance in several journals. Since 2008, she teaches at Tulane University in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, and she's currently Associate Director of the Cuban and Caribbean Studies Institute at Tulane. Her presentation today is titled, Orphaned, Coming of Age in Blind, Mouth Singing and Bird in the Hand by Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas. Good morning. I think I have to lift this up a little bit. Can you all hear me? Yeah? Kind of? A little bit closer. No? Yes? Okay. I want to thank Eric for asking me to participate on this panel and tell you guys a little bit about how I came upon this, well how I decided to write about Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas. Last spring I had the pleasure of seeing Bird in Hand, which is one of the texts I will be talking about, that Jorge directed in New York City. And I remember sitting there, the theater was packed, and I went with a Cuban, I would consider him a Cuban exile, Pedro Monje Raffles was with me, and it was fascinating how, and it was a very diverse group that was there. And although the play takes place in Miami and it's about Cuban American, and the main characters are Cuban American, I didn't, that wasn't what connected me necessarily as a Cuban American with the play, it was the sentiments, it was the emotions that they were projecting, right? It wasn't my connection with the identity, cultural connection with the characters, but it was the emotions. So when I saw the description for this panel, how is art marked by diaspora and its dramaturgy, effective practice and emotive patina, I thought, huh, this might be my chance to explore a little bit how I connected with Cortiñas, and how everybody in the public connected with this play by Cortiñas. And also I've kind of changed the title, it did not really, I just put imagining diasporas instead of orphaned, although being orphaned plays a small part in this paper. Cuban American and Latino playwright Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas imagines the diaspora through unrooted characters who yearn for mobility, in blind mouth singing and bird in hand. The protagonist, Rey de Rico and Felix, are disaffected young men coming of age, strange to those around them and estranged even to themselves, alienated rebels with a cause, their cause, placement, but on their terms, their mission, comprehension and rootedness. Their chance of success, it's never made completely clear. What is apparent is that in these plays Cortiñas succeeds in appealing to a wide range of audiences, while at the same time dialoguing specifically with the Caribbean, Latin American, Latino context. And this is where I think I'm trying to go and I'm sure we'll become, I'll be able to tease out a little bit more. And I believe he does this by stripping diaspora of ideology and nationality and presenting it through basic elements and emotions. And these basic elements and emotions that we will see in both plays is the idea of movement, rootlessness and desire. And rootlessness, I use rootlessness and unroot, which is different from uproot and unroot doesn't appear, it doesn't exist as a word necessarily, but as in not having roots at all while uproot is pulling them up, but rootlessness. And here I'm going to talk a little bit about Jose Esteban Muñoz as well because Jose Esteban Muñoz also talks about the way Cortiñas manages to connect emotionally with the spectator. And he does this in his article, the article is called el imposible encubrimiento de la cubanía. Jose Esteban Muñoz focuses on Cortiñas' proclivity for writing and I quote obra sobre sentimientos, so text about feelings, sentiment. For Muñoz, Cortiñas expresses what he calls latinidad in a globalized context as an essence instead of an identity. And he describes it in this way, latinidad es una manera de ser en el mundo and also, and perhaps more importantly, una forma de sentir en el mundo. So Latinas as a way of being in the world and as a way of feeling in the world. Muñoz further argues that the theatrical worlds that Cortiñas creates and the motives that drive his characters are not always evident, but that he uses and I quote la imprecisión para completar la pertinencia afectiva que une las vivencias de varios pueblos interpelados por los coordinadas de la llamada latinidad. Close quote. In this way, in Cortiñas' plays the characters and I quote again from Muñoz, nos hablan en un tono que alcanza nuestra experiencia interior, nuestro entendimiento, que interpala directamente a los espectadores. So when I'm speaking specifically of these two texts, Blind Mouth Singing in Bird in Hand, there is little doubt that his latinidad and obviously his cubanía influenced Cortiñas. Bird Mouth Singing takes place in a tropical island space prone to hurricanes. While Bird in Hand occurs in Miami, Florida with self-identified Cuban American characters. Yet contrary to Muñoz' emphasis on his expression of latinidad and he talks about how him as a man of color and as a cuban man how he talks to him in that sense, I assert that what Cortiñas communicates goes beyond any specific geographic and national identity markers. Precisely because these plays deal with, and another quote from Muñoz, el ser y el sentir, el sentimiento de existir, el sentir en el ser. So again it's the fact that these that Cortiñas focuses on sentiment, on being instead of on cubanía or latinidad in my estimation is what makes these, what is what he's doing with diaspora, right? He's universalizing diaspora. For that reason I believe that in these texts the playwright develops and creates a diasporic art as defined by Eliana Rivero because they are based on and I quote, viviencias nutridas en raíces funda funda fundacionales pero que se proyectan hacia un futuro pluralista. So it goes from the local to the general to local to the universal. And as much as the sentiments displayed by Greve Rico and Felix ring true for some people more than others, I argue that the characters perform their diaspora condition as a phenomenon no longer contained in specific groups but as a globalized experience shared through universal sentiments easily recognizable by most people. And so now I kind of want to go through how in both plays these protagonists actually perform diaspora in the in the same way and how the the playwright uses probably the same themes, the same structures, the same performative elements to present this diasporic condition. As a defining element of identity rootedness the world over but particularly in Latin American cultures the unified family as refuge and haven suffers greatly in blind mouth singing in bird in hand. Both Greve Rico and Felix are orphaned in a sense displaced and out of sync with their kin. They seek the opportunity to break these conventional bloodlines that keep them artificially tied. Resigned to a bitter and stagnant existence mother of the late afternoon and this is Greve Rico's the name of Greve Rico's mother the character's name in blind mouth singing keeps her sons in a line in a stern and regimented household. Cortinius introduces this character by stating she and I quote is sharpening kitchen knives. This is a kitchen full of knives. In another scene while Greve Rico attempts to speak to her she uses these knives to cut off the head off squabs letting them hang to bleed out onto the floor. Similarly she has castrated Greve Rico and her older brother requiring them to stay close to home. Gordy uh Greve Rico's older brother older brother has also made this home inhospitable for his brother. In Gordy's quest to become a man through drink smoke and violence he doesn't understand or accept his brother who is and I quote good with words end quote and makes up stories and stares endlessly into the bottom of the well in the garden. He tells Greve Rico and I quote you you do things Ray just the way you talk it offends us just the way you talk it insults us. Why do you act like that? Close quote. While Greve Rico struggles to find his footing in the toxic family environment and his taxes in this toxic family environment Gordyneus emphasizes Felix's rootlessness through the fact that his family never appears on stage. Bird in hand revolves around the protagonist who works at a theme park and the name of the theme park is Birdland Family Theme Park owned and operated by his father. Felix's relationship with his father is tenuous at best while Felix is extremely intelligent and almost perfect score on his SAT and will most likely end up at an Ivy League University in the fall we surmise that his father remains unimpressed after his best friend Gabriel tells him that he cannot hang out because he has to date he cannot hang out on Friday night because he has a date with his girlfriend Felix responds and I quote I guess I'll spend Friday night at home so my Cuban dad can stare at me and wonder why his only son is bad at sports and has no friends. Also close quote. It is not until Felix has sex with Susan which is Gabriel's girlfriend that he gets his father's attention instead of his father being disappointed in him for sleeping with his best friend's girlfriend his dad just looks him up and down and and I quote his hands stuffed under his belt the way he does close quote and tells him that he quote was finally developing a head for business close quote and asked him to join the parks management so in so in essence Felix's only close relationship is with Gabriel unlike Felix Gabriel struggles academically is not sure if he's going to college and this all takes place basically like the spring semester of their senior year in high school in several scenes in fact in several scenes Felix helps Gabriel study for the verbal section and it's interesting like re the vehicle Felix is also good at words um Gabriel is really the opposite of Felix he is well adjusted dates and seems to have a good relationship with his extended Cuban family and the city of Miami Gabriel often defends his hometown against Felix's negativity and I quote from the play Gabriel this town is where we're from where we have roots Felix news flash Florida is 50 landfill you can't have roots in landfill close quote it is in Gabriel only that Felix combines his revolutionary plan and he calls it revolutionary of freeing the flamingos that are in the park so they can return home to Cuba the principal tour guide of the flamingo exhibit in the park Felix stopped clipping the bird's wings and has given them flying lessons and this is a conversation when he when he reveals this plan to Felix Felix I have this oh no Felix I have this theory this town is killing those that bird Gabriel my grandmother is the same way she's always like I cry every day I have to speak the English Felix except I'm calling that bird's bluff let's see if he has the balls to stop complaining and actually take off Gabriel answer my question what do you think the odds are that this lonely flamingo this lonely flamingo actually takes off Felix I've been throwing and flying lessons I figured the bird has motivation Gabriel you really think that flamingo is going to fly away Felix not up to me it's up to the bird Gabriel I bet you it stays here why would anybody leave Felix I bet you it gets the hell out obviously Felix's attempt to liberate the flamingos from captivity is a metaphor for his desire one is metaphor for his desire to fly away migrate escape as well okay so in 60 seconds um so this continues so um so this unrudeness is also displayed in the the these characters the their displacement they're actually destoblado they're split on stage right um Rodrigo has a double on stage lucero so he's split into while Felix also he's he's narrating like so the the play is actually looking at him um him looking at the past looking at the summer several years later and while even though it's his words the other characters are speaking for him it's the other characters are saying it so we see this this kind of unrudeness in that way the lack of comfort in this in their own skin and then they both have tried to they both attempt to leave but what's interesting about their flight and and and they see all this opportunity in this chance um somewhere else is that they both end up coming back um um for for several reasons and um and and and and it's very sad in a way i'm very kind of melancholic and nostalgic um but um and this is probably a good thing because my conclusion is because i was like in my conclusion i'm not really sure but this is what this is what i have and and and so denied its traditional ideological and national ties the diaspora condition performed in these texts is imbued with emotions that can be and i quote experienced by anyone anywhere um it intrigues me that both lucero and felix come full circle back to where they started back to their early selves their radical wanderings only serve to crystallize the rootlessness marked by loneliness and longing that is what makes these texts so poignant their power lies not in their distrable markings of latinidad or cubanía but in the feelings their search elicits in all of us um and and i think that's um that's his diasporic imaginings right going from the local his diasporic ness to i'm communicating it to the universal to all of us um in that way so thank you very much you'll okay um so i am the can you hear me it's okay you can hear me all right so um i'm the third speaker uh it's kind of um odd to introduce myself so i'm just gonna say a few words uh yep so uh lillian mansour i'm a social professor uh in modern languages and literatures at the university of miami and i'm a founding director of the cuban theater digital archive which uh originally i mean in the first version was the cuban latino theater archive and by the way uh the first two conferences of no passport no password one no passport two or archived um uh there um and um i uh published on um cuban cuban america and caribbean uh diasporic work um eric has in here that the volume latinas on stage uh which i co-edited with alicia rison uh it says it was one of the definitive volumes creating the field of the study of latino theater and performance um which yes uh it's true and um i will uh leave it at that i will be talking today uh the title of my presentation is digital archives and interconnected diasporas and in the tropics um and i'm going to start with a quote from stewart hall they bear upon them the traces of the particular cultures traditions languages and histories by which they were shaped the differences that they are not and will never be unified in the old sense because they are irrevocably the product of several interlocking histories and cultures belong at one and the same time to several homes end of quote and um there has been quite a bit of debate as to whether the concept of diaspora is applicable to the cuban case um and this debate comes uh i mean especially from sociologists and political scientists who believe that categories such as exile and migration are a better app to approach cuban that diaspora is not really um uh conceptually or theoretically an applicable uh concept or construct rather than entering into this debate my starting point for this presentation is the assumption that cuban cultural expressions from the very beginning operated within a diasporic space that crossed and question national boundaries thus whether we look at her through this gomez abeyaneda in the 19th century and i say her through this because everybody's celebrating the uh uh the anniversary this this year or the contemporary work of us cuban playwright such as orgy naso cortinas um that carolina has talked about caridad's bitch and nilo cruz we realize that their theater performs the very fact that and i quote you can live in a place with that totally or solely subscribing to the national heritage or dominant national discourse of that place and this creates a space for both conflict and creativity and quote in this presentation i will focus specifically on the space that digital digital initiatives offer for bridging cuban diasporic communities taking the havana miami theatrical production of anna in the tropics as a case example although the focus of this presentation is cuban diasporic cultural sensitivity i need to briefly address the place from which we're working to situate our work on and with cuba from miami from miami one has to understand that in order to work with cuba one has to navigate two bureaucracies there are rods with each other actually that are enemies this is the result of a series of sanctions imposed in the midst of the cold war a cold war that of course is supposed to have ended however the u.s economic embargo towards cuba and the continued policy of isolation towards the island is a relic of the cold war in our midst in the miami havana border zone a real and conceptual space in which acts of real and symbolic violence continue to be perpetrated this complex political scenario is worsen because miami in general and the university of miami in particular tends to be associated with the politics of aggression isolation and disengagement that is characteristic of the older and more affluent sector of the cuban exile community havana by the same token not by the same token but on the other hand tends to homogenize miami and characterize miami and its inhabitants as the home of quote unquote the uncultured cuban mafia i have started with this brief sociological remarks to social political remarks to underscore that our cultural work is not divorced from the study of other institutional forms and i quote from the mundane discourses of bureaucracies armies private corporations and not non-state social organizations and of quote um so uh the first uh cuban theater digital archive it's an interactive worldwide web research site for cuban theater and performing arts it was developed in order to address the documentation challenges artists and scholars face vis-a-vis the writing of a theater history that takes into account live performance it is conceived as a research teaching and learning program that integrates classroom education and community engagement in cuban theater new media art and archival primary research with an online scholarly publishing effort that provides a unique view of contemporary cuban culture this digital cultural heritage initiative focuses in its initial phase on the works both written text and live art performance of theater practitioners in greater cuba that is on the island and in the diaspora and i use analogous construct of greater cuba to suggest that border zone in which citizenship is reformulated as a result of the encounter between competing national jurisdictions and the global economy the archive is managed as a digital humanities partnership between the university of miami college of arts and sciences and the libraries in cooperation with cuba's national council for the performing arts and also in cuba the center for stage design studies as a community archive it works closely with playwrights and theater artists regardless of their place in residence in order to document preserve and offer access collaboratively to artist archives and it has been funded in part by the andrew by the andrew melvin foundation so in spite of the socio-political and cultural divide that exists between the different cuban communities in the u.s. and in cuba ctda the archive is the virtual space where artists coexist regardless of self-identification or political inclinations and i'm just going to show you a few samples of some of the materials of the artists that we have to give you a sense of the varying range of diasporas that are incorporated not incorporated but that are represented in the archive so um first one is ector santiago the materials of ector santiago ector santiago is a playwright and choreographer who um was um actually formed in the early revolutionary period was very active in founding the children's movement in cuba and by the end of the sixties was uh persecuted for being a homosexual uh his work was banned he disappeared from cuban i mean the island um uh cultural realm left cuba in 1979 and has been i mean working in new york uh since the late eighties and we i mean have his uh his materials uh in rare he would consider of himself an exiled writer and there are several i mean there's a whole uh constellation of writers such as him we also have uh uh include the works of people like manuel martin jr manuel martin jr left cuba in the early fifties not for political reasons he went he came to he went to new york uh to study uh to study acting he was instrumental in um a you know forging the off-off broadway theater movement in new york especially the off-off broadway theater movement in spanish went on to found uh teatro duoduo theater which is one of the earlier um uh spanish uh theater groups in new york and so we have uh like manuel martin kind of an early uh diasporic uh subject to whole range of materials from artists uh similar to manuel martin um we also have i mean incorporate the works of writers like abel gonzales mello these are cuban artists that left cuba probably not probably like since the mid nineties and have been able to uh kind of live and work in dual places the gonzales mello is between habana and madrid we have artists that are between mexico and cuba um and uh so these are artists of i mean kind of dual citizenship um and uh i mean who's um whose work is also um i mean not just because of the dual citizenship but whose work also um i mean falls within um this i mean the contemporary diasporic consciousness and then we have uh the work of artists like adidas vich um eduardo machado luiz antero even jorgen asia cortinas um and these are um artists who uh are part of the u.s. theater scene artists whose work is primarily in english uh but who have also worked in spanish um artists with um i mean a clear uh diasporic consciousness and i mean this is the the page of um caridad vich i guess is the first page of uh the materials that are visual like photographic materials um the archive includes uh photographs as well as um filmed theatrical productions um and uh as a matter of fact the blind mouth thing that's the havana production of mind-blow mind-blow blind mouth singing that carolina was talking about uh the havana production is coming up in a few weeks at any rate so uh the quick sampling of selected materials of cuban theater artists gives us an idea of the complexity encountered when dealing with diasporic conscious consciousness in cuban theater although theoretically like all of the materials that have shown you could be considered diasporic some of the writers do not self identify as diasporic artists other reside in cuba um and actually have a diasporic consciousness um and um i think what's interesting is that overall theater artists um have been i mean very uh i mean active but interested in including uh the materials in the digital archive because as salvador lemis who is a cuban mexican artist has stated and he says the archive makes sure makes sure and i quote that things do not get lost in the shipwreck of our condition which i think it's a beautiful um uh phrase uh for what i mean we're actually trying to do um so the archive also cosponsors theatrical co-productions that are based on intercultural exchanges and we focus primarily on miami and havana because doing co-production is kind of upside of miami with cuba it's always difficult but it's much easier than working from miami and anna in the tropics uh in spanish anna in el tropico is uh one of the latest uh co-productions that we've sponsored the project involves bringing together um actors from miami and havana to stage a spanish version of milo cruces bullets or anna in the tropics um and it was going i mean it was directed but one of cuba's most important and daring directors carlos diaz from teatro del público the first step was a new translation from english to spanish by james lopez who um is i mean a translator uh professor in south florida but actually the grandson of an iber city uh cigar worker so the spanish translation in a way um you know we wanted without changing milo's words of course to be in a way kind of infused uh by the language of the late 19th century early 20th century spanish spoken by the iber city uh cigar workers um so part of uh the cast the director and the dramaturg went to miami uh in uh june and they worked with the three q and actors residing in miami we went to iber city and workshop the first draft of the of the translation in june 2013 the director then worked with three of the actors from miami during the month of july at the university and he also worked with other members of the theater group with them um he worked that you know have been dispersed in spain in mexico etc so the three main actors were from miami but other actors participated in the stage reading and their rehearsals and this is the director and one of the one of the actors uh the director then returned to cuba worked with the rest of the cast in august and september and then the miami actors traveled to cuba in october where they worked for three weeks the whole cast now and the play had a pre opening for three days to sold out audiences first at uh the trianon and then it came to uh miami in november for a three-night run at the colony theater so just a few notes on adding the tropics and the diasporic imagination and the production of anicotropic the play script itself as you probably know presents the story of cuban cigar workers in iber city as they recreate their trade traditions on the island they left behind all under the threat of industrialization a family brings from havana to tampa a new lector a new reader and as he reads anna karenina to the workers the novel impacts and intertwines with the character's lives so that slowly anna the novel and the character takes over the action only to be transformed in turn into a hunting evocation of love novella have a whole uh section that i'm not going to talk about here about longing sexuality sensuality and a set of i mean triangles in anna in the tropics in nido cruces anna which i'm i'm going to skip now carlos diaz the directors anna and el tropico um so the the the stage production adds several layers to cruces diasporic consciousness first of all the staging without changing the text at all underscored the uncanny parallelisms between these early 20th century diasporic subjects in tampa and contemporary cuban diaspora secondly carlos diaz conceived of the staging as an homage to roberto blanco one of the most important cuban theater directors who left cuba for venezuela in 1993 at the height of special at the of the special period and then i mean he died in 2003 1993 marks also the same time when two of the main act two of the main actresses lily renteria and mavel rush left for venezuela and miami uh respectively so lily renteria is to the left and mavel to the right um so roberto blanco was carlos diaz's first mentor and it was one of the uh of lily renteria's uh director and um both lily renteria and mavel rush the actresses had not been on the cuban stage since 1993 so i mean there was quite a i mean a bit of expectation in cuba from the audience of it's kind of like the return of these actresses that had been ax absent from uh from the cuban stages um so carlos diaz staging intertextually connected cruise verbal texts uh with blanco's productions and also cuban uh contemporary cuban theater so that even cruises canary if you remember i mean the the section in in and in the tropics about the canary and the white gardenias of the female characters where uh at the beginning of the play uncannily resonate with roberto blanco's yellow canary line and rakel revuelta's famous line in lucía una gardenia mama una gardenia and these i mean it was just i mean uncanny uh connections uh between nilo cruz and i mean and the staging that carlos diaz did ultimately renteria's acting style and diaz visual stage composition was reminiscent of roberto blanco's style and approach both unavailable to contemporary cubans in on either side of the floor in the streets and i'm just going to show you a few images and uh conclude this is um uh a section from the play when they're discussing and kind of deciding to vote on um whether uh the lecture is going to stay or go um and uh carlos diaz staged it almost like a kind of a fourth of july celebration and this humongous american flag came up which uh in q as you can imagine was uh like you know that you you could hear the sigh of the audience um these are uh i mean uh another state this is i mean uh an image from uh the end when uh the lector or huyan dies and then snows uh kind of falls and uh the applause so to conclude uh despite the challenge of usc relations the co-production of anne el tropico created a space that brought together early 20th century cuban diaspora in tampa and late 20th century cuban diaspora from many places through theater we were able to finally take nilo cruz as well as return lily renteria and mavel roge mavel rush to the cuban stages um the cuban theater digital archive and its goal of preserving and providing access to eban as in performance materials fosters scholarly communication between different communities and helps create the space for theatrical pro co-productions such as anne el tropico in which cooperation and common artistic goals brings us together outside of the cold war rhetoric that continues to guide usc relations on both sides of the florida straits in both virtual and real physical ways we're able to transcend the political does the diasporic imagination continues to draw a map of greater cuba that goes beyond the national and is firmly anchored or perhaps uh poetically anchored in the theatrical thank you are you going to present or should i okay so just um a couple of minutes to set up the performances that follow and then i'll introduce the performances okay so i'm going to take over moderating for our two performances sort of in the spirit of no passport we're going to put scholarship with performance directly and so what it regarding um my introduction it's in the packets so you can look it over i study cuban theater in the u.s. um especially cuban avancard theater and between miami have anna york um so uh but it's my pleasure now to introduce margaret camp and talk about her work a little bit in respect to the diasporic imagination margaret camp is a performance artist who currently has an appointment at lsu in the department of theater and whose work i have been lucky enough to get to know over the past academic year camp's performance confluence formally entitled a negro speaks of rivers offers several glimpses into how the diasporic imagination manifests itself in theater and performance and addresses some key questions of this relationship um diaspora is one model for understanding how a population with a common origin or homeland spreads across the globe through migration forced and voluntary camp's confluence complicates this notion in looking at both the intersection of multiple diasporas and the diaspora of the diaspora as the second generation of diasporic populations uh the children of immigrants uh uh continue to spread and move to other regions an autobiographical performance confluence deals with multiple diasporas of camp's own family whose mother immigrated to the united states from panama and whose father came to the u.s. from the bahamas diasporic populations as camp's work reminds us even for herself as a second generation bahamani american and panamanian american carry homeland memory and displacement with them and how they make sense of themselves and the world around them often a harsh world that marginalizes their voice and culture this coordinates them as foreign foreign immigrants and racial others regarding immigration or i'm sorry regarding imagination and theater i am drawn to uh think first of benedict anderson and homie bobba's work in thinking about how diasporic communities or nations in case anderson imagine themselves in theater and performance um for anderson and when he's talking about print culture especially um and national imaginaries all nations are imagined political communities because no one can know every other person in in a nation face to face therefore quote yet in the minds of each citizen lives the image of their communion and quote homie bobba critiques anderson's imaginaries that are ordered by a homogeneous modernity and Eurocentric concept of nation explaining that subaltern experiences and voices emerge betwixt in between times and places to rupture modernity and the false solidarity of the imaginary from alternative time spaces camp's work imagines in such ruptures in between betwixt as as bobba explains quote betwixt in between times and places and as she imagines from these ruptures with the ruptures which is understood by a radical theoretical historicity embodied by the actor in performance where diaspora is imagined before the audience through a living presence of the actor confluence tells the story of the of the internal life of camp in separate moments as she prepares for her father to visit her in her home in los angeles in multiple detours of stream of consciousness camp's narrative interrupts a progressive linear structure the detours take place when her father's voice on the phone of a long distance call becomes um a minute uh meditation on the strains of long distance and displacement on family bonds and relationships or when she's driving to the airport to pick up her father the city's high many highways tell the story of colonization as their flows are associated with the underground flows of the paved over la river covering over the hidden history of colonization beneath an oppressive history whose colonial power relationships of race and gender are not unlike those that split camp's family apart and it's this river beneath the surface that camp wishes to uncover recover and submerge the audience in throughout the many detours leading to kemp's reconnection with her her father the audience hears the story of her father's migration to the united states where he is racialized differently in different regions of the u.s uh finally ending up in boston where he's um given he's labeled as negro in the 1940s camp kemp's youth growing up in a pan caribbean neighborhood in deadly square boston massachusetts and the system at um the systematic racism and xenophobic isolation of that neighborhood that brings about its destruction through poverty lack of public services gentrification development schemes um are part of this story a part of what she uncovers and these uh these systematized racism and and and violence and in the end in this deadly square neighborhood make it a place plagued by um violence and um which which eventually leads to the traumatic splitting apart of her family um so kemp also brings into her work um segaria or flamenco singing which i think is another interesting thing um so when she was working with marie marie mariella chiari argon um in los angeles she she was um she had she was a panamanian folk singer or she had uh so she directed kemp who wished to include that into her into her work um to to to learn segaria because it was probably the closest thing to that style of folk singing um so here it's really interesting and in thinking about the diasporic imagination how um how kemp takes this other tradition and transplants it into um into her aesthetic as a way to um fill the absence that her her mother has left um or that that is left by her her missing the missing presence of her mother um and that that she holds um these these deep and watery memories of her mother singing to her but they're they the the break and the displacement is in the rift and memories is is too much so the segaria comes in place to to fill the the void there um but in addition to that sort of as a uh learning spanish as a second language um that there's a a distance that she incorporates not just in the way she pronounces the spanish in the segaria that she sings but also in how she chooses the to translate the lyrics that she's written first in english um making choices that are strange um and for for this reason you know to to to express that estrangement that she has in that distance um so without further ado i'm uh i'm gonna we'll go ahead and and let margaret show you an an an excerpt of of confluence um that she's prepared just for this conference human body is about 70 water and water has perfect memory is forever trying to reclaim the valley it runs through the base there were its original place beneath the river time stretches like breath there was a neighborhood we're on indian summer nights you might hear singing sometimes go to university if you can't wake up for fifth grade what's that in your pocket a dream at a stick of juicy fruit time that we call them it rained and rained and rained until it rained for years and in the midst of that rain grew an island of trees and trees and trees trees that grew as thick as families and there was a river that flowed through the island and a lovely maiden who liked to sit on the bank of her river but she didn't know that she was sitting on twisted confused wet roots filled with all sorts of floating growing collecting and seeds on her river bank and then one night she heard bump bump heartbeat from beneath the river oh she she covered her ears and she moved her body but still bump bump heartbeat beat finally she opened her eyes and what a sight she saw splish splash the water nap like feet were pressing their souls to break out of the river she reached out to rescue the invisible body and just then tree roots and fingers became fingers and snatched her into the river and she fought the back of the grass and then vanished into the earth she reached into the earth and it vanished into her flesh she called into teaching these little girls and whenever it rains for months or rains and rains for weeks i think of her just another minute for omnis on a franca to set up their projections okay the next performance coming up is by uh louise eligio de omni and gezi macias of omnis on a franca uh these are performance excerpt omnis on a franca is a multidisciplinary collective from cuba omnis on franca is known for its work with unconventional methods theater omnis work is a unique blend of performance music poetry spoken word rap visual art graffiti video and public art working together since 1997 they have produced several music poetry cds and videos including the groundbreaking cd alamard express they produce an annual music art theater and poetry festival uh festival poesia sin fin in cuba they have taken part in the havana biennial and international exhibitions and festival festivals throughout cuba and europe omni is being is has been a recipient of many residencies including art residency a ira air laboratory center for contemporary art uja zhuzadowski castle war saw and art residency as 220 at um la mama experimental theater brown university and art residency at glasshouse gallery williamsburg new york patria alma viva en ti con dolor tu silencio llega al fondo rompe miedo mar is la que te hagas en tu propio mar y me miras cáncer artificial de la naturaleza gente conectada venimos a millón para permitirnos conocer el estado de las almas y yo que bello rome o autos máquinas gente es máquinas más autos que gente gente más metalizada que los autos new york estatuas llegamos a new york llegamos a la libertad en new york somos más libres de la isla país al catraz ismo desesperanza cuba amamos los cantes de libertad postricho martin mujer descalza porto muerto en central park chis del parin isla vana waro isla miami isla willy canta isla celia mancatruf isla dolemn el islam squad isla metalinares ilusión divas isas miraba y esotero christy isla pavor isla bousa isla pimple isla orisha yerba buena isla arena isla todos bajando por new york no pa york this is something new york have an aspect of life hi bye baby i don't know fetching liberation liberation this is the idea idea machina copper in a coca in a natural thing liberty please raise you for me peace about my country qa qa is the woman dancing pink and fetching liberation liberation liberation which is apt segue it's jazz in plays this is also