 We're starting amazingly on time considering the company we're in. What? About 20 minutes ago, Jorge said to us, I thought this was starting at four. I need to take a shower and say, well, you have time. I guess we will begin, yes? This also speaks to everybody. It's a good opportunity to learn something about something, which is what do we do with stereotypes? Everybody was expecting to start quarter after, here we are. So what do you do now? You need to start. Bob, are you ready? We're disappointed already. Welcome, everybody. This is part of the Double Edge Theater Conversation series. Today's conversation is with Jorge Anofri and Carlos Uriona. We're calling it From the Dirty Warm Beyond. This is a huge, incredible topic. I think this, I hope, will be the first of multiple types of conversations like this about this period in history, about this type of artistic response, and just a larger, complex, multifaceted period of time going back about 40 years and more until today and beyond. I think I know everyone in the room, but for those of you who I don't know, my name is Matthew Glassman. I'm the executive director of the Double Edge Farm Center and one of the actors in the group. And I'd like to welcome you who are in the room. I'd like to also welcome those of you who are watching online. This is being web streamed live thanks to New Play TV and HowlRound. I'd like to thank HowlRound for doing this. I'd also like to thank the NPN, the National Performance Network, whose grant enabled Double Edge to bring Jorge Anofri to Ashefield from his center in Chipoletti in the northern part of Patagonia in Argentina. I'd just like to start by just saying a little bit about both of you guys very briefly. And then we'll just start this conversation. So first, let me say Jorge Anofri. These bios are very tertiary. They're really just a little bit of the work. Both Carlos and Jorge have been working individually for somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 years each. So there's a combined 80 years, practically, of work between the two of them. Jorge is an actor, a puppeteer, and a teacher. He has worked with some of the master artists. So there's a combined 80 years, practically, of work between the two of them. Jorge is an actor, a puppeteer, and a teacher. He will not attempt to pronounce correctly. So I will leave them. For his work on an incredible adaptation of Strinberg's Ghosts and I Will Love Them, Jorge is an actor, a puppeteer, and a teacher, he will not attempt to pronounce correctly. So I will leave them. For his work on an incredible adaptation of Strinberg's Ghosts and I Will Love Them, Jorge is an actor, a puppeteer, and a teacher, he will not pronounce correctly, so I will leave them. For his work on an incredible adaptation of Strinberg's Ghosts and I Will Love Them, Jorge is an actor, a puppeteer, for his work on Strinberg's Ghosts and I Will Love Them, Jorge is an actor, for his work on adaptation of Strinberg's Ghosts and I Will Love Them, all sorts of great things. And since 2007, he's been directing La Cajamaica School for Performing Arts. Carlos Uriona, many of you know, here's the ensemble leader of Double Edge, the lead actor, both creators of Armed Performances. Since 2007, he's been directing La Cajamaica School for Performing Arts. And Carlos is also, many of you know, here's the ensemble leader of Double Edge 6. Before coming to Double Edge 96, Carlos was as founder of one of the most important theater companies in Argentina. Carlos also, you know, here's the ensemble leader of Double Edge 6. Before coming to Double Edge 96, Carlos was as founder of one of the most important theater companies in Argentina. Carlos also, you know, here's the ensemble leader of Double Edge 6. Before coming to Double Edge 96, Carlos was as founder of one of the most important theater companies in Argentina. Carlos also, you know, here's the ensemble leader of Double Edge 6. Before coming to Double Edge 96, Carlos was as founder of one of the most important theater companies in Argentina. Carlos also, you know, here's the ensemble leader of Double about it at all. I feel from my own experience, I know very little about it. I've been investigating it some way from our time together over the last many years. And it's also both a confusing history and I think even internally, in a confused way, it's hard to wrap your mind around it because there are so many different factions of people, so many different interests that we're colliding and mixing. It's hard to keep straight sometimes. So my own giving a background will be quite incomplete and even more dimensional, but just to get us started. The Dirty War was a period of time, a period of state terrorism in Argentina against political dissidents with military and security forces conducting urban and rural guerrilla warfare against anyone that was close to becoming or being thought of as a political dissident, anyone who was believed to be associated with socialism. Between 1976 and 1983, there were between 10,000 and 30,000 people who were believed to have been either killed or disappeared. Disappeared is used in quotes often because it is a term where someone was taken for sometimes a period of time, sometimes forever, in which case they were never seen again. And what happened to them falls into a few different possible categories. The exact chronology of this period of repression is also hard to trace because a lot of this political and civil warfare that was happening began, it's even hard to say, going back earlier into the century, but easily into the 60s if not into the 50s or the 30s. And lastly, why is it called the Dirty War? It was originated by the military which claimed that a war with quote unquote different methods including large scale application of torture and rape was necessary to maintain social order and eradicate political subversives. And although they said it was their objective to eradicate guerrilla activity because of its threat to the state, it was a wide scale repression on the general population. And it worked against so called all sorts of political opposition considered to be a different political ideology. So we have a sense of what this historical moment was in a certain period of time. I'd like to now turn the attention to you guys. I'm interested just to start because you both started very early in your artistic work as teenagers. But let's just begin with where you both met, even though that's not when you began, but you've known each other a long time. We met in Buenos Aires, 1978, one year and a half after the militants take the power. So we were in the middle of this situation taking, being part of a group of theater that was working with this teacher that we remember so well, Alberto Saba, that you are in touch again. And that was the first contact. In a year of terror in Argentina, 1978, maybe was the worst moment of this military, what was he saying? It was dictatorship. And we were very happy guys anyway, even if we are living in this terrible situation. I remember myself and I remember you and your group and your brother and all these amazing people like young, enthusiastic, happy guys trying to make theater an art even though we have this situation and this reality that out of these doors were like terrifying. That was the way we met. 1978, how old were you? I was 19. 19. And you were? 223, I think. Yeah, great. And what was that meeting like when you met and described yourself? I remember him opening a door. We were downtown in this thing and he had long hair and I did not have this long hair yet. And I remember that he opened this kind of glass door like that one there and he came in with, what's his name? Ugo. Chilean friend. Chilean friend. And they both had ponchos, like rear ponchos. From the Andes? From the Andes. Not rain ponchos. Wool, indigenous. Yeah, a park or a vincunia wool. And immediately he was super excited and started talking. Of course, he was younger, you know, 19, I was 22, I was a senior. And I was trying to, I had been already with Alberto because I started with Alberto in the National Conservatory and then joined his school and then we created a second school with him. You weren't there because he continued after us. And a little bit I was in charge of doing what interns do now here, you know, talk about what is this. But he had already a lot of things that he was doing. And I don't know how you perceive me, but I do remember clearly that time that you worked in that school. I remember that, I remember that moment. But when I came to Buenos Aires in 78, I was already playing theater and puppets for a long time because I started when I was 13. And I studied in a religious school, all my first part of my primary school. And then I moved to this public school with boys and girls and a group of theater. And a man that was a great, great master, my first teacher in theater that is Omar Fosati, a great, great master. And we had this experience during five years playing all kind of theater, a lot of physical theater. And at the same time we start with puppets. And it was from the beginning of the 70s. It means that when we arrived to the 78, we have already done a lot. Many performances, many hours rehearsing and many tours and many political engagement with different artists. And I think that with different situations, political situations that we were facing every day. So we, as young students, we were very much involved with the teachers that were fighting for the rights. And that was maybe the worst thing I did because I was very compromised with this fight, committed with this situation. So it gave me a lot of problems, really. What, give me just a little bit about, in 1978, let's say, when you met, what was it like outside the doors of the theater? What was the reality? I think it's good to explain that because there are very interesting movies from South America now that explain, and they're very graphic in explaining how it felt because literally you walked out the door and you didn't feel anything. Like the city looked normal. People were walking, working, things were like, you know, normal. But all the sudden, a car would come rushing, normally a Ford Falcon. No, that was the, because it was disagreement between the military and Ford, and they got this incredible business that was selling for Ford to the military in the color, in the green color of the military, were made for the military. They would come dashing, not always military but there was a mix of federal bureau and military and a lot of psychopaths that were recruited that would learn afterwards. And they would, like, you know, it happened to me several times they would grab you by the hair and pull you down and put the guns in and sometimes you get kicked and then they would go if you were lucky. Or you would be in a bus and all of a sudden, you know, I was coming from work many, many times and you would see helicopters and tanks and everything out of the blue. And the bus was stopped and other bus were stopped and we were lines of workers against a big wall that simulated a fire squad with lights. And, you know, we were interrogated individually most of the time and then let go, like I was lucky or so was let go. And they're always looking for someone who they were, they're always looking for dissidents or or activists or socialists? I don't think so. I think that they were, they were looking for to give us terror. Yes. The feeling that we, you are not secure, that we have the power and you are not secure. Be careful all the time. You have to be careful. Don't do anything wrong. It does because it's sad, it happens every time suddenly out of the blue as you said for nothing just because it happens. I remember being walking once in the street in Lomas, which is an outskirts of Buenos Aires, big town. And Manuel, my son was one year old and we were walking like this and we were a group, you know, the Olomundo was all together and we knew by then it was 1980, so we already knew how to behave. And one thing that you needed to do at that time is to deny that you knew anybody, the very person, to give somebody else time to run. So we were walking and from the stores, this is like 8 p.m. and, you know, the stores open until 9, because it's, you know, summertime and 9, 10, from the stores, people came out with Oozies and machine guns and AK-7s and it was an army and there were no cars, there was nothing but them. And all of us, which were just pedestrians and shoppers, you know, like a mall, imagine that all of a sudden from within it's like a movie. You're surrounded by this. So I just kept walking and hold on to Manuel and I said, you know, this is it. I need to go. So I went and then my wife, she is clear of me just in case and we dissolved the idea that we were a group immediately. My brother was taken that night and I just left and I walked and I walked and I remember walking like 30 blocks and then I called the lawyer and the lawyer said, don't call anybody. You should not call anybody. Let me handle this. This lawyer was an expert in detain people. Let's not do anything. Let's wait. Then I walked around, I went to my mother's house and left the baby with my mother and luckily my brother appeared the next day. But we were like all disbanded and we didn't know where we were and then we got regrouped again afterwards. But that's an example. So you're both teenagers or in your late early 20s? Yeah. So burgeoning, artists, rebels of a sort. And there's a war happening but there's a sense of dailiness as well and it's all sort of internal. There's a daily way of life and at the same time at any moment there was finding yourself in a true military, militaristic war type of context. Going backwards a little bit. You are, let's say, urban in Buenos Aires and you're in Chipoletti in the country and somehow you find yourself engaging with puppetry. How does this happen and why? Why is it important? Why did it call you ultimately? Because we have this theater group in the school. We play theater every day from Monday to Friday and the weekends with performances in the school or outside or touring. Was this a strange thing that this was allowed or that this was... It started before. So no, it was not strange that it was allowed. No. It was allowed. It was arts in the schools. Yes. It was the only one experience I know at that period it was a very special school, a public school that had this teacher making theater with all these students. So that was not usual. But anyway, I had the luck to be there. So suddenly a weekend came a woman who was a dentist and a puppeteer, an old woman, Bertha Finkel is the name. And she also was a write books for children. And she came to Cipolleti to make this workshop for us. And we had this amazing weekend with her with making puppets, very simple puppets, glove puppets. And she came with all these texts that she had written about puppets and theaters, small puppet theater pieces. And we discovered New World. It was like to make our own theater company that we could put in a bag and travel around and go to these neighborhoods. And it was something great for us. And also it was great because we could found at that time a theater written for puppets that tell things that we were interested of. I mean, we could find something to say, very clear. So it helped us to prepare a show and go directly to the audience we wanted to meet and tell them what we think they should hear about life, about our society. And then we start to work a lot. So I went to school just to say that I was a good kid and the rest of my time was for puppet theater and theater all the time. Was there a revolutionary message? Was there a protest message? Oh, yes, of course, of course. That was a great experience because we were in different places in different cities and other cities. The mother of one of the girls in this group was a person that then after many years until now she's fighting for human rights in a way that nobody had done in Argentina. Noemi Labrune is a great, great person. And she helped us a lot to travel and to find a way to move this puppet theater group in the schools, you know, in the countryside. We made these long tours in the countryside with our guitars singing revolutionary songs and you're trying to change and move all these situations with a lot of happiness and completely unconscious that we... Named. In a few years we will have so many problems as we had. Yeah, right, we were named. So it's the early to mid-70s, you're a teenager, you've somehow, because a dentist puppeteer has arrived in your rural town and has inundated you, has immersed you in almost a daily routine of play and artistic exploration. You then have these tools and you and this group of people start this work around the neighborhoods and around the region traveling and singing revolutionary songs. Were you nervous? Did you ever feel there was danger? No, no, no, at the end, in 75 we start to feel that we were too much engaged in some things that could be dangerous. Because some people start to be missing before the milliliters came. The milliliters came the 24th of March, 1976. And I knew people that was missing in 74 and 75. People that I knew, I mean, close to us. So that was a kind of, wow, wow, something's coming. Something very dangerous is coming. We never imagined that was such a big criminal situation that we will leave after. I mean, for those interested, I will propose. I mean, certainly I'm not a historian and I have some probably some mistakes in the facts. But I was reading just to refresh my memory on certain data. Wikipedia has a pretty good description. But although accurate, taken from National Geographic is incomplete. So there was a situation of war going on before. In Wikipedia you will read there were all these groups that we had friends in terrorist groups. I would call them social movements more than terrorist groups that then degenerated into terrorist groups. But to make it short, and then if you want to ask me, I can talk about that or we can look into materials. What is not being told in Wikipedia, unfortunately, is that what brought this situation to the end of the 60s in the beginning of the 70s. And what brought this situation was an in-season, almost every two or three years, interruption of the constitutional order by the military. And by economic groups not always just centering Argentina. Although the Argentinian being the pivot there, they were not the only ones. For instance, the oil corporations were part of the coup d'etat against Perón, who many people say he was a dictator, but he was elected every time he got into power and there was a Congress and there was a justice system working, which could have been changed in a different way with another election. But there were interruptions also in liberal governments like Ilya from DC. I mean, we can name a series of presidents that were deposed by the military and coup d'etats from militers against militers. Now, I bring this to your attention today because nobody talks of the effect of the interruption of the law. So if over a period of 40, 50 years you keep interrupting the law and there is no system anymore, people go to the Wild West mentality and it's like, okay, these guns, where can I get the guns? Middle East, I get them and I defend myself and that's how we started. So when we got to 74, the thing was wild, but in my belief it was encouraged. And the other thing I want to bring to your attention is the international picture, right? Cuba have had in 1958 a revolution, successful revolution and it was part of the Cold War and there was the ghost that Russia was going to go into Latin America, which is debatable. And in 1962, in the School of the Americas, the doctrine of national security was developed as a response to this ghost. And in 1966, our general in command, being traded at West Point here, went back and took over and created the doctrine of national security. And that's why during the 70s, we had 10 years or a little more of military in every country of South America. We didn't have one single democratic government. Which is a sign. This is not a conspiracy theory. If 15 countries in South America, they all have a military dictatorship, there's something together there. Of course. Now you can find this information in books, it's everywhere. It was a very clear project for South America and it works. And we were in some way part of it and victims of this because we couldn't decide that. We thought that we were doing something to change our reality and we did. But at the same time, we were victims of a big, big project on top of us. We change our lives. So you're both at this age and in this context, in this small local context and in this global context. And I just want to try and talk a little bit or hear from you a little bit about your beginnings, your impulses and then some of the work that came out of this. So to get back on track here, you were doing this work with puppetry and music and theatre, travelling around on tour in communities. And then it started to get a little bit more dangerous and a little bit more perilous. There was some real interruptions that happened, right? And then the military came and I left the country for one and a half years travelling with my puppets. I was 17 and I took my puppet theatre on my back with a friend of mine, which his father was missing after the 24th of March. The day that the military came, his father was taken. So we left the country in April and we were travelling in South America in an amazing situation. Because in every country it was the same or worse than in our country. We went to Bolivia and the schools didn't want to open the doors because we looked strange. We came from Argentina and they supposed that we were terrorists, so it was very difficult. Then we went to Peru and it was almost the same. A little softer there because it was a military but it was a leftist in Peru. But then softer than the others. But it was growing. And that was a big experience because I could feel in my own experience what was happening in South America during the 70s. Then I went back in the beginning of the middle of 77 and then I was taken by the police. And then I was missing for one week in Neuken, the city behind my city. And I was very scared and my mother had the luck to find a way to take me from them after a week. And then I... So what do you do after a week of being detained and abused and before that you've been an artist? What's your next stop after that? Did you get the group back together? No, in the beginning I was a month in my house. I sent my brothers to buy cigarettes near my house. I didn't want to go to the street. I didn't want to see outside. I was so scared. It was a terrible week. It was the worst week in my life. So many, many awful things happened during that week. And I tried to forget that. I tried to not tell anyone. I went back home and my sister, that she was something like 24, she said to me, what happened? And I said, nothing, nothing. I'm okay. And we never talk about this again. Never. With her and my brothers and my mother. We never talk. It was like, you have a situation. You have a situation. Let's continue with our lives. And that was until three years ago when I was called by... You must help me with this in English today. I'm not in a good day for English. He was called by the attorney general of Neuken to testify in a case of a friend of his that disappeared. So the attorney general called him and sat him in a room to say, you're going to be our witness, one of our witness. So they said, do you want to continue or should I continue? No, you. So they said, they brought these things and they said, do you recognize this person? Right? Yes. And all of the pictures, of all of the pictures you recognized, two of them. And they looked at each other and they said, well, you're here not because of this case, but we want to talk about your case. And he immediately said, what case? I don't have any case. Right? Exactly. So they said, no, no, no, you do have a case. You were detained. You didn't disappear in the end, but nobody knew where you were. And they went back and brought a file, this thick with pictures, papers, everything from back then that talked about him. And there was a case that the military had opened against Jorge as a either drug user or drug even pusher maybe. I don't know. Something he was not at the time. As a puppeteer. But that was like the beginning of the case was to justify them because they had an eschew justice system, a military justice that was imposed over the country. So they would present that to their judges, which were part of the military system. And they would initiate the action, which then would, what they said this will learn afterwards is that the action should be cut loose from the command. This is the way they operated. So the group that would take him would never respond to a command. That's why they talk about excess and abuses in their defense. When the trial happened in 86, they said there were excess and abuses because people would go wild in repression. Anyway, that's now Jorge has been a part of the case that the attorney general of Nelten is 17 people like Jorge that are alive. And they can testify against this group of people that are still free obviously because they're trying to get that free. And he becomes one of the witnesses or the evidence or there's an emperor to, is a dignified person and almost like a class action too. But the problem is that four years ago in another suit like that, another person are disappearing today because these groups continue to operate. In a very low profile. Okay, so we're now at the present because I've skipped about 30 years of work and actions and things have happened. And what I think it's important to know that there's been a lot over the years that, you know, let's say that there was, even though these lines are so blurry, there was a return to democracy in 83. And then years later there were beginnings to be trials against the people that the oppressors and whatnot. And then those were put down until very recently. So this is it reaches into the present and that's important to know. But in 76, you come back from this period, this, this terrible. You were taken for a week and and 77, 77. In this period of time, in the mid 70s, you were not doing protest songs. Carlos, you know, you were, you were being called by something else. Yeah, well, my beginning is very different from Jorge. I went to a preppy English high school. And at age 18, I didn't know what, what was I doing? I was very disconcerted. Somebody who were in an apartment with somebody and they put a record. Back then we used records with them. And, and I lied on a bed and I heard like seven or eight times on repeat the dark side of the moon. And it blew my mind. And I was kind of like that type of guy. Although everybody thought I was a hippie, I wasn't, but I was very moved by all these movements and it was very older than Jorge. I had witnessed from up from a far Woodstock and I was like very moved by things that were happening in the world. But I, but, but then I needed to figure out what I was doing and I went to different schools and I met these guys that were doing this research on Gaucho Theatre. And I joined them. It was a group that were graduating from the National Conservatory and with a project called Quamoreira, which is the major piece, theater piece, epic about Gaucho. Gauchos are like Argentine cowboys or sort of a rural and an old rural culture. Yeah, Chile, Argentina, Uruguay, South of Brazil, Paraguay and a little bit of Bolivia has Gauchos who is nomads. Basically they're a mix of native, born of lives together of Spanish descendants and Indians. But they were not accepted by each, this white civilization or their tribes, so they were left roaming and their main job was to herd wild cattle. They were less organized and I would say less violent than cowboys in a way, although they were pretty, they are there, but they were very, very quiet people. And miraculously, by the end of the 19th century, this group of Italians came to South America for the first Montevideo and then Buenos Aires and they brought Camero del Arte. So there was a combination of, this is now, you're being called by sort of the puppetry and revolutionary song and going to the communities and schools and getting people to, you know, it's a real upfront social change. And you're being called by rock and roll Pink Floyd. You told me before Circus. Circus, what, this? Yeah. And Gauchos. Yes. And inherently to that comedia. Yeah. And Mardi Gras. And Mardi Gras. Yeah. And that's because, was it, had to do, was it, did you want mass change? Did you want entertainment? Was it about wood stock? I was also inspired or imbued by a spirit of change that I still think it should happen. And I thought, or I saw, or maybe because of my own proclivity is to lean towards, you know, conglomerates of people. I was always organizing in school and, you know, I was an organizer of, you know, agit, right? Agitator. Agitator. Yeah. That's what I did always. Still agitating. Still. So, so I looked into these things and I thought, you know, what is it that is in, in my culture that relates to wood stock? And I found this Circus Theater, Gaucho Theater, which is Circus. Circus, Gauchos, all together, they were intense, going intense around the country. And they ended up in 1925 with a performance that gathered 20,000 audience members in a hybrid room. I think you would rarely see another theater performance in the world that have had that type of convenience. 20,000 people. So I thought, this is what I should do. And that's why I started. So we created a group off of this graduate group from the conservator who created a group that was called the Agrupación para el Teatro Rio Platense. The Rio de la Plata is a region, it's a river. Teatro Rio Platense is the theater on this region, the Rio de la Plata, which is where Buenos Aires and Montevideo are. And it's all the Pampas, the big Pampas, which is a big plain lands, flat lands, where the cattle roams, and it's the town of... And that's what we did. So these two callings are happening and then it's, we're getting a little bit into the 70s now, 77, 78. You've both met, you're both sort of a bit ramshackle in one way or another, and looking to find out how to... It seems like you're both identifying yourselves as artists, but you couldn't necessarily organize formally and go out and just perform. There was a, one way or another, formal or informal, there was a repression going on. Yes. You needed to find other ways to make your work and to make people be together as an audience. How did you find that way? Can you tell us something, an example of a way that you found performance in this context, when it was very dangerous to go out and, you know, make a performance or perform a protest song or organize a convening of sorts? Well, I think that Sawa had the first thing showing us, this teacher. I've heard a lot about this guy over the years. If you can just say in one or two sentences, keep his name and what his work was. Alberto Sawa was coming from France at the time from studying with Etienne Crou. It's a mine. And he called him, say, at the time, a mine, but I think he does mine. But then he was also, I don't know that, but I think he was an indirect or direct disciple of Augusto Boal, who very studied in this country now, and started creating invisible theater, which were, he started with things at the university of medicine in the elevators, creating situations where there were performances and what would happen if, you know, there's a pregnant woman stuck in an elevator, so they would go with no permission and do the, you know, stuck in an elevator with a pregnant woman and create a whole situation with the doctors or doctors. I know what to do and they would get into fights and show how ridiculous people are. He did crazy things like that. Then he did something in a soccer club, but in the area of the social club there was a huge Olympic swimming pool and they emptied out the swimming pool. It was a swimming pool for practice, for competition. So they had races and they summoned up people and they started a performance inside of the swimming pool. And as the performance started, they opened the water. So they flooded the actors and the performance was about the flooded people that were, you know, how they were sold land. And the audience was like, wait, wait, wait. And they kept performing and they kept drowning. So that was the enundación, which I wasn't part of that. Directly I was tangentially part of it. I was like, you know, like a student there. So you found this teacher, a real character? He still is. I mean, he created, then he got sick of everything and he went to the National Insane Asylum, who was banned from being, for being closed. He didn't go there as a patient. No, no, no. He wanted to start working here. He wanted to work. But he does, he's not even a doctor. He could be. He could be. He went as a teacher. He was a composer. They tried to lock him in. But he created a theater there. And it's a theater that has international, you know, like, you know, they are called from France to go to Belgium festivals because it's amazing what they did. But he was an inspiration somehow to both of you. And what was one of the projects you did together with one of the projects inspired by Sabah? We didn't have any work together. We were part of the subway somehow. Were you part of the subway? What's the subway? I've heard a little bit about the subway over the years. We did the subway this year. We were part of the subway. So the subway was, one of the things that we detected is that the military, you know, was instilling this fear. And that one of the things that people were not doing is daring celebrate anything in public. And we are, as you know, like Brazilians or Argentinians, we are people of, you know, partying in the streets and, you know, like a lot of Latin Americans. So we figured out this thing about celebration. So what could we create in a public area that would bring a shock? So one of the things, one of the actors that were part of the main group came up with the idea that what we need to celebrate is a wedding in a public space. And the chosen space was a subway. But the thing was, how do we set it up in order to make it happen without nobody noticing that it was happening until it was happening and then disappear as move away without being caught. So the thing started with, in the first train station, this couple would come in to actors and debate that they don't have money and that they don't have the conditions to have a wedding. And get a coach, rally it up. And the second coach, and the second staff, would come a priest that would say, another actor, say, well, everybody has the divine right to be married. And instilled, you know, and people say, yeah, yeah, yeah. By the time that, you know, there were musicians coming in, by the time you get to the six or seven stop, the doors would open. People were waiting in the stations and instead of having a guy playing the violin in the platform, the music would come out of the coach and people were dancing and it was crazy and it would keep going. And people thought they were part of a wedding. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everybody thought it was a part of a wedding. And we did this in a bar too. Yes. We made that in a bar. Oh, I forgot about that. And we did that in the street. I didn't go to that. And also in the street. I was part of a failed project that we tried to do it in a mattress factory. I want. No, I was. You was. Yes, with my group. And we failed. We didn't manage to get the workers somehow, rally it up. But it was interesting. Yeah, we did it in a bar. The thing on the train, the wedding would happen. And then what would happen? Would it just become a big celebration of performance? Yeah, a celebration with the people that was on the train. But weren't you afraid of getting caught? Yeah, of course. How would it end? That we were leaving the train slowly. Like as everything started in the same way, we were leaving the next station. Some of us left the train and the next station, the others. And the situation was like... So it would disappear. And you would just sort of leave into part as if you had just been a part of... Not as an orchestrator or conductor. I'm not repeat. Not even say that you did that. Some places, I think in the bar, they left a car saying what you just saw was a performance. And then would you get back together in some location? Or is this just my imagination of how it sounds like? Not the same day. Normally you would wait. The next day we have a meeting. Right, because... To talk about the experience. One thing that you learned is that... Which was very similar to the experience that happened in Algeria in 1957 against the French occupation. Is that you operate in small units. So in order for the small unit not to be captured, what you need to do is... Which they're called cells. You don't go back to meet your folks. So if one of them is caught, you'll have time to get out. Or if you're caught, the other ones can run away. Right. Now I want to ask one question and then we're not going to get so far into the beyond part of this conversation today. But I'm interested and curious about... Although you grew up in rural and urban places. Although you never necessarily consciously worked together to make a project. Both of you were very drawn in this extreme context to folk arts. I mean to puppets, to folkloric popular traditions. Your performance which was a covert act that could have resulted in great violence happening to you. Or a repetition of great violence. Traumatic violence. That act was the staging of a wedding which is a very normal daily occurrence. I mean I was just in Boston yesterday and going through the public gardens there were multiple weddings happening. So you were staging something that would seem almost mundane but that was filled with meaning. And in some ways it was a folk tradition. Why the folk arts? Why do you think this coincidence of intention happened? In this time where the violence was so palpable and so real. And so like what you're doing was not to protect yourself from the violence in a certain way as if to sort of just walk a straight line. You went off the straight line and obeyed some I would say at least radical artistic impulses. I think I was a little provocador. Provocator. I was somehow I feel that I have to continue doing what I feel that I have to do even in this situation. Because I continue after this situation that when I was these few days very bad treated and everything. I went back to schools to play theater to play the same pieces that I played before. I didn't change my message. I didn't do another thing. I continue working, visiting schools, fighting with the directors of the schools because they didn't want to have these messages. And I was insisting that that's what we do. And it was it went like that for years. And in retrospect to either of you see the the the gravitation towards folk art with any new perspective. Now that yeah looking back like why the folk arts why puppetry why I think it's you know like everything is a complex. There's not one answer one single answer. I think that I identify with core thing the sense that you know I am also a provocator or provocateur. I was very angry at what was going on and still am. And I did believe that change and I do believe that change is possible. Also my family is a dysfunctional family. And or I don't know if it's it's fair to call that but we had a lot of mine is a great family. But I think there is there is there is a I understood or I believed and I still believe that there are there are things that we're talking now here. But they are happening are happening in a in a in small ways in the nucleus of the of the groups in the families in the in the friendships that there is a certain S&M going on. That is not it's not fine. Right. That is not for pleasure for play is it could be a real thing. Violent like it happened in the Byman Republic. Right. I think that that that I I was drawn to see what was going on because of my family because of myself what was going on with other people. And in that I discover roots of behavior or then I started looking into history. You know I was very passionate about the the the aborigines history and the the European history in this part and how you know acts of violence get repeated systematically. You know then as the inquisition was happening they were invading brutalizing the Empire which were not saints. They were not angels. There was sort of a going to a source. Yes. They were led to a similar source there in response to violence to a root. Yes. Both a root of maybe a history of of it but also there was a need for people to celebrate together in response to violence. Yeah. Or a response to or of rejoining to story which I think that as you said the puppets were were important because they they held stories they could hold the stories the texts. That you couldn't necessarily find for that that specific period of time. Well and you know interestingly enough with years I brought an anthropologist to see one of his memories dreams and illusions performance which was about that period. And and the guy said he was crying when the performance finished and he came to me he said you can do this because you're using puppets because nobody would be able to talk about this so close to what happened. Three years ago if you weren't using and he called it that the terminology in the field was a cold impersonal chamber. The puppet creates a world that is impersonal. It's not personal yet is intimate and it's like a chamber. It allows us to be in a chamber together and it's a metaphor. You know your puppet theater and the play with puppets and objects allowed you to to work with metaphors and to say things that you with an actor probably couldn't say or couldn't do. And that's why I choose after that period almost completely puppet theater as my way of expression. Since then the democracy came back to a possibility to have an elected president and everything came back in the beginning of the 80s. And I continue working only with puppets because I think that I have many things that I could say with this technique. And I start always up to now I'm working in a mixture of political social artistic projects. Because I then I start with this work in the in the neighborhoods taking young people to make a group of puppeteers that we had for quite long time all the 80s in my town until I moved to Europe. And I was trying to to make a most the most professional puppet theater I could with this young boys and girls that came from the most poor neighborhoods in the city and around also in the in the part in Urbana and the country and the suburbs and but then I was tired after few years of this fight and trying to do this work the social work I was tired. I have the feeling that I was 28 and I had the feeling that I'm I'm losing my time not working in the so as deep as I needed in the artistic creation. I was too much engaged in the social problematic and I didn't have the time and the energy to go deeper right in real puppet and theater in as I needed. And this is now we're now in the 80s at the end of the end of the 80s. So I want to try and do two things at once. One is bring everyone up to the 80s now. I want to go back also for a second. I'm faster. I'm already in the 90s. No, no, we have to be very with our time right now. I want to also stop and I'm going to try to do four things. One is I want to go back for a second and try and make some sort of thematic point about folk arts and the puppetry. Then I want to do something about bringing people up to speed about the 80s and what happened in between and then perhaps take some questions about what we did before that. So the first thing is and I don't know. This is there's something interesting about visible and invisible that the puppets make something that's invisible or puppetry, not the puppets. It makes them seem like they're their own faction. Like doesn't matter that they are bringing something that is invisible to light that we can't see or we can't hear or we can't say. The celebration on the train is also bringing something and making it visible that was not allowed or couldn't be seen or felt. And then in both cases there's a process of making them invisible again so no one gets in trouble. You disappear it. You disappear yourselves in a way. And the army or the military is doing something very similar where they're also trying to disappear people and make them invisible and take neutralize that. But for very different reasons. For different reasons but throughout these periods of time there's all this weight. There's all this struggle around how do you make the invisible visible and how do you make the visible invisible in lots of different ways in sort of a prism way. I think it's interesting and it continues in both of your work I want to say later on. That was point one. Part two is sort of to jump out of the period of the war. And we talked about this this morning but both Carlos and Jorge were extremely ambitious coming out of the end of the 70s and early 80s after doing this resistance work through art. And they both have said today that their work was multifaceted in that it was artistic and also a social work and a work around collective action and a work around collective thinking and political. And in your case Carlos even economic as you wanted to research capitalism. Well that was later. So in some ways the war let's say for all intents and purposes came to an end although it didn't. But democracy was sort of restored in 83 with another presidential election. You had already established the movement of popular theater in the region of Rio Plata. You had also already established another organization. And then this this group in 83. And you talked about having witnessed the work of NASA. And what was NASA in 1983 where democracy is being restored. What was NASA. As an as an spectator I have to say that was amazing experience to see this young group of actors with so many abilities you know so so many good things on stage. I mean they could sing they could act they could play amazing with puppet theater and and with this message so strong so concrete on stage. Now it was like a win the fresh wind on on on theater in Argentinian theater when I saw that I said OK now now we have really a new fresh wind in on on stages. And this was an early version of and maybe more expansive version of what ends up being Diablo Mundo. So Diablo Mundo sort of officially becomes Diablo Mundo in 85. And was the continuation of the the largest group of that group that research the circus the Gaucho did NASA and then a smaller group did Diablo Mundo. So it's three stages of the same story. Right. And you and your brother Roberto were sort of primary leaders of NASA bringing together all sorts of artists to incorporate and collaborate. Yeah. And perhaps in a more robust galvanized way now that democracy was sort of happening. Yeah. We were we were less well I wasn't scared because the groups were still operating somehow. But there's some momentum. There was a little bit of freedom. And we went out for the first time in the open in. So the president took the government took the House the Democratic government that December 10th 1983. And we went out in the main downtown street Florida and performed with costumes and everything without telling anybody without making any advertisement. December 19th we went out and we performed. And this is the first time we were able to perform somehow like that. And it must have been. Well it sounds like it was. It was amazing. Yeah. It was because people were like some people reacted. Of course there was some violent reactions from because you know society has everything. And if you're out in the public in the streets you will find everybody. So there were people screaming at us. There were people like crying. It was a party. It was a party. It was a party. A month. A month. People were so happy. Yeah. The streets. So coming out of this period of time there was this ambition. I think on both of your parts to organize and to create there was some movement going. There was momentum even if there was still the fear the reality of this even though there was democracy there was still repression. I'd like to stop for a second and see if there's a quick question about this. And then what I'm going to do is try and show a glimpse of both of the work just very short excerpts as a way of taking us closer to the present before we stop. You take a minute for the commercial. Yes. Yeah. Yes would you like me to introduce you? Well I would I wanted to say a couple of things. So it's not quite so much of a question. Okay. I always am astonished at your courage. Both of you. And I just wanted to say that. I think that a voice is the only thing that human beings have to fight destruction and whatever the destruction is in the moment. And it seems like we're destined to be fighting destruction all the time. You had a voice then and you continue to have a voice. So you are part of the creation and not the destruction. I was thinking during while you were talking that it's always astonishing to us that people were creating art during the Holocaust. And it's the same thing. We only have our voice so we're not disappeared if we have our voice and keep having our voice. So I really appreciate also that you are willing to share your voice today because I know it's a very difficult thing to share beyond the art just the words of what happened. Thank you. Any other questions or comments about this chapter? Basha. I appreciate your question about to hold her about about folk tradition and the puppetry and celebration and public space. And it may in the face of historical political violence in society. And it made me think of the work and thinking of a Russian thinker philosopher of culture, Mikhail Bakhtin. I don't know if you're familiar with Mikhail Bakhtin and his work, his concept of the carnivalesque of the carnival. And for him it was a cultural concept that he derived from literature and saw in literature. But you can transfer it to theater situation. So the carnivalesque in the face Mikhail Bakhtin lived in Soviet Russia under incredible oppression, cultural oppression. And his response to political violence and cultural oppression was through this idea of carnivalesque and dialogue. The carnivalesque would be a reversal of repressive hierarchies. And he traced this to the history of medieval carnival in Europe where it would happen the folk culture had the celebration in the town square in the center one day a year. And where there's a crowning of the full and the king becomes the full and the full becomes the king. And it was symbolically an act performance in the public square where those oppressive hierarchies are reversed. It's interesting for all those that are studying the combination between carnival and comedy and art. The relationship of how comedy was born and puppets out of carnival and what carnival started around the year 1000 or a little earlier, which is by the end of the Roman Empire and the beginning of the church. It is a response to some church but there is something very important at the time that I think triggers some of these things. Besides the repression is the idea of the apocalypse coming right then. There's one of the major feeders of this manifestation is the end, the idea of the end. Maybe in Latin America the carnival. In Europe started in the year 900 or 1000 and we took it from Europe. I'm not sure if that was part of Becate's thinking about the carnival, you may be right, but I don't. I'm just saying historically, I mean who could research that, it is interesting. Thank you for that Vashya, that's great. And I think, do we have? Yeah, we have a couple questions from online. Yes, what are the factories? Oh yes, yes of course. During the 90s in Argentina, something terrible happened that most of the fabrics and industries went down. Factories. Factories. So then in the beginning of the year 2000, 2002 more or less, the workers tried to continue with the fabric. The factories. The factories, I don't know, sorry, I have a bad day with English today. And they started a big movement in the country trying to continue with their works. And they did. And some theater groups helped them a lot. Artists in general, not only theater groups. We have a great painter in Eugen called Marta Such, which is a great, great, great painter. And she has been working with these people very, very near. And many musicians and actors that went to support them in this fight. So I think it's a very brave people. And they have done something that is amazing because this government, during the last 10 years, they helped a lot these projects about the workers taking the source. The work source or the means of production. I'd like to now share a little bit of the work that Carlos and Diablo Mundo and Jorge Periferico did in this period of time between 83 when democracy was restored. I say that with some quotations or some understanding that it wasn't a clean anything until the mid 90s. This chapter of work. First, I'd like to show something of Diablo Mundo. Do you know what we're seeing? And I think it's created with a group of people. David Burin was part of that. That we were already, before the 90s, we were already working with cooperative workers. So these videos are cooperative workers of media that came to do this video. If that's the one I'm thinking about. It's the one you showed me, right? Yes. Yes. I'm still working with them. It was like a presentation of Diablo Mundo. I don't know if it has a name. The piece is probably Memories, Dreams and Illusions. But there is a documentary about Diablo Mundo and our little warehouse. Carlos, can you just say just a word about that? Yeah, that was, I thought it was going to be a different part. But that was El Fuego, the fire. And it was part of a long, so all this work has had an arc that transcended all these periods that we were talking about. So we started in researching and living with indigenous communities. This is a combination of pop book, which is the sacred book written by the Mayan culture, and some of the Latin American, Argentinian stories and people that we met in Argentina. And it was the story of, it's a mythology similar to any mythology. And it talks about a subversion of a tribe against their gods. It was very, I mean, it talked about the same thing. Yeah. And now we're going to see a couple of short clips from, and what year was that Carlos? That started in 85. But what Jorge saw that time with Nas with the previous one was a change. So we started in 83, presenting the other one. And this was premiered in Balcarse in April 1985, I believe. Yeah, it was April 1985. I see what you mean now about the use of metaphor with pop books. Yeah. So Diablo Mundo was working prolifically from this period of time into the 90s, to the mid 90s and beyond. But definitely this is a very rich time. Jorge, after doing a lot of social organizing in Chipoletti and organizing and trying to teach young puppets, ended up going to Europe and working with a master of puppetry. And then coming back and working with this group Periferico. And much of the theme of this work now by the mid 90s, early mid 90s is about the disillusionment. After a decade of quote unquote democracy and of having voice, there was a real visceral, palpable sense of disappointment in what was happening. I think that's important as we look at a few clips from Makina Hamlet, Hamlet machine. It's a piece that is based on a piece of Haney Müller, the great dramatur from Germany. And it was, you know, the piece of Müller is only three pages. Almost nothing in words. But what is in these three pages is incredible. So what you're going to see is just a little bit of this project that has to do with violence as a way of relation in a society. What we are talking about in this show is how all what happened before, the military and the democracy, the week democracy that came after. And everything put us in this situation where the media has the power and they tell us how to live as a society. So I don't know if this piece tells exactly what I tell, but. Maybe things to observe. You know, sometimes, again, it's not conspiracy theory. We could be really scientific about observing social occurrences. Hamlet Müller wrote that in 1980 in Germany. So that's 40 years after the Holocaust. And he's still talking about this society having this violence problem. And Periperico starts this in 1995, only 15 years after he wrote the piece. Yes, and after our own, I would say, tragedy or, however, dirty war. The Holocaust is dirty war. Which I think there are lines and there are similarities that we can establish all over the world. We're talking about these two countries, but we could look even further. And if I have a moment, I want to say, can I say something one more time? Yes. Today, Mati was asking me about repression. You know, how does it feel and what happens? And I have this memory that I have read. And again, you know, everything is up for research. I don't have a program, but who should research these things if we are inclined to do so? The Nazis in Germany took the model of the American repression of the Indians, what I read. According to what I understood and what I read is that the creation of the concentration camp was too high from the German people that they were doing that because they wouldn't have enough consensus. After the Holocaust, the world knew that that didn't work. So how are we going to repress now? And this is when they came up with the idea of disappearing people. So there is a continuity and there is a research that is being done on how to repress. And I think that, you know, Michel Coquot, which is a thinker in French, described this that the best way to repress and the way that it was being used in the 70s and after was to instill fear by operations like these that were very meticulous, very specific and very surgical. A particular kind of performance by the state. Right. Yes. Here we go. It's too dark. I can't see now. You can see it's too dark. It's too dark to see it here. Well, the scene is in a... Try to show in a cinema, it's... How do you say it in Spanish? The screen. The screen. And in the screen you have all the information and the media sense about the terrible things that are happening in the world. Violence all the time. Different situations of violence. And you can see images from different news channels that send this information. And this is a cinema with all these... Like you are sitting. It's a mixture of puppets and actors. And suddenly the actors, which has masked exactly as the puppets, start to bite. And it starts like a war, you know, they start to kill them one by one and put all the bodies at the sides of the cinema. And then they just left. The idea was to show... It was a very violent show. And what we were trying to tell is that we are dominated by violence. It's the sign of our time and of this period of the humanity and that we are driven by this force. And, well, it's not very funny in English, but it was a great show, actually. It was amazing, amazing show. We didn't obviously get to cover all the ground. I wanted to, but I think there's a lot more. The work that's continued over the last two decades is really noteworthy. There's been other forms of crisis in Argentina, economic crises, where other models of adaptability, other modes of production, artistic production and community organization have emerged that are really noteworthy. And I think, obviously, the work that you've done here, Carlos, that are around the autonomy of the artist, engaging the community, our first summer spectacle ended with a song from the Argentine carnaval. And so this response to this historical moment, the drive to create a meaningful culture has continued to evolve in really fascinating ways, both of you now with your own centers on different parts of the hemisphere are really great models and I hope we can talk about these things in the future at some point. And I'm grateful for this conversation. I have something to show. Can I? Yes, please. Is it going to be dark like that? No, no, no. That should be for real. Please, yes. Can you move there? Yeah. You know, I think, I was thinking right now, when you tried to show what you have done before, it always looked dark. Always. When you told about your past, it used to sound dark. And the reality is that we found the truth. Usually we have to look in the garbage. Most of the truth is in the garbage. And it's a very interesting place to go, even if it's dirty. Sometimes the memories are dirty. Sometimes not, or it's a mixture of it. Sometimes we found in the garbage what we really are, because our life is made by things that we put in the garbage bag. And I have something in my garbage bag. What I have is what nowadays is my truth. What am I doing here? Where am I? Who are you old people? What am I doing here? Mama? Eight years old? What am I doing? Alone? One single memory from my past? Look at this memory for you. I've got to go back. Mama. Thank you very much. Thank you for some coffee, tea, whatever's left. Thank you for being here. If you're online, thank you for watching. Sorry to bring it to all of your questions. Feel free to email them. And you can connect online about emailing your questions or continuing this conversation in other ways. And again, thank you to the HowlRound at Arts Emerson. Thank you to National Performance Network. And have a good day. Thank you. Please, rest in time. First of all, I want to thank Carlos and Jorge and Matthew for this wonderfully entertaining and important presentation and dialogue, and I'm pleased to have been a member of the audience. I just want to let you know that Kate Doyle, who has spent many years at the National Archives in Washington, who has done research on the dirty war in Argentina and whose research and reporting on the scorched earth policy against the indigenous people of Guatemala during the ages, and it was truly a genocide against the indigenous people. Her reporting has contributed greatly to the verdict against Rios Mont, the president of Guatemala, the genocide that led to his conviction. Kate Doyle is going to be at Wellspring House, a retreat center that I operate up the street for the month of July, and I've arranged for her to speak one evening at St. John's Church, which is up the street. So I just wanted you to know you'll have a chance to hear from Kate Doyle, of this archivist who has really spent years studying about the crimes and atrocities of the right-wing governments in the Western Hemisphere. Thank you. Well, if any one of you want to see this wonderful puppet, it's one of the puppets I, with my group, we have done a group of old guys and women and men that they are part of a show that we are working in. And her name is Rosita, and it's a puppet made by an amazing constructor that we have in the group called Silvina. And it's a story about memories. All people in a hospital die and having fun together. And it's a very well-done puppet. It has many, many great possibilities for manipulation. We are still developing some of them for the movements, but it's amazing how she can do it, you know? She doesn't need a woman. She doesn't need a man. No, no, she doesn't. She works perfectly. And if you want to try, you want to try her, move her, just do it. And if you need some help, they can do it. Well, thank you very much.