The well-known play by William Shakespeare will be performed by actors from the Shuar community, after several months of rehearsal.
The playwright’s best-known love story William Shakespeare will add one more version to its list of universal adaptations. The Capulet family and the Montague family will relive their eternal rivalry from the territories Amazonian of Ecuador. For the first time the play Romeo and Juliet will be staged in the shuar language and with the interpretation of community actors. Its premiere will be this Friday at the Municipal Theater of Macas.
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The direction and conceptualization of the proposal came from the Cuenca Maria Ochoa Argüello, who explains that the first thing that was done was the adaptation in a short version of about an hour and then the translation, which in the arts is called translation. “When making a translation you also have to contextualize some words, some themes or some key symbols, understanding that an England of 1500 is not the same as a Shuar community in 2021 ″, indicates Ochoa, and explains that the work was even more complex because it is a work that uses many metaphors.
This work was carried out together with Your Naked Maiche (actress of the Yapankam group) and Diego Ortega (playwright from Cuenca).
He points out that this version in Shuar invites us to rethink the true concept of interculturality. “On the one hand, we have a classic English play that is brought to a community that does not always have access to this type of artistic expression, in turn we translate the play into their native language. And from this we take it to other spaces, in this case, Macas “, dice.
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“The idea is that mestizo people will be able to visualize the Shuar community from another aspect, not from the folkloric part, but from the languages, from the flavors, and also from their new proposals”, he adds about the work that will include the projection of subtitles in Spanish.
That is why they aspire to present this pair of Shuar lovers in various corners of the country. “Right now we are going to be born the bus, and that it begins to walk alone,” he says, referring to the premiere. “We are considering a national tour. The idea is to create two provinces on the Coast, two provinces in the Sierra and 3 in the Amazon ”says Ochoa.
The stage montage will feature a musical production composed by the artist Karen Espinoza; while the scenery will distance itself from the realistic, to opt for the versatile and practical. “It is a more geometric scenography, we are only going to play with colors to be able to take the public to the different spaces of the work”, he points out.
Meanwhile, the changing rooms bring together a bit of both cultures. “What we tried to do is take elements from the Elizabethan era, the early Renaissance, and take Shuar elements to merge them”, bill.
In total they are nine actors on stage, of which six are Shuar speakers and the other three are actors from Cuenca. In this way, the cast is made up Yutsu Maiche in the role of Romeo, Nunka Maiche like Juliet, Sunur Maiche playing the nanny, Kasur Maiche in the role of Fray Lorenzo, Michelle Astudillo as Mrs. Montague and Sua Nua Maiche as Mrs. Capulet. In addition, Ama Maiche in the roles of Príncipe and Paris, Jefferson Castillo playing Mercucio and Fray Juan, and Mateo Salazar as Teobaldo and Baltazar.
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For Ochoa, who has been doing theater for ten years, working on this proposal with the community has been an experience full of learning. “I am happy with them… They are very dedicated boys, they see theater as a profession, really as a direction of life. They take it seriously, and they are also talented ”, express.
He confesses that for the Shuar actors it was the first time they had staged a play from a text. “All his stage processes have been through improvisation and collective creation”, he maintains.
The work is presented and financed by the Ecuadorian North American Center (CEN), as part of its 2021 schedule. “It was a proposal that caught our attention, since our mission is the union of the two cultures and what more symbolic than the union of the Anglo culture with the Ecuadorian culture …”, mentions Consuelo Hidalgo, cultural director of CEN.
“It is a proposal that marks a before and after, and we hope that there will be many other proposals that include international or Anglo-language works that can be translated into ancestral languages of Ecuador, such as Quichua or Shuar”, adds the manager.
Romeo and Juliet this is presented Friday and Saturday, at 7:00 p.m., at the Municipal Theater of Macas. Free entrance, with a capacity of 300 people. (I)
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