Photo/Foto: Julio Pantoja

The Final Rehearsal

In an old theater, which was also once a cinema hall, a group of artists craft an homage to a legendary diva whose life story parallels the history of twentieth-century Peru. Time is pressing, both literally and figuratively: on the tightrope of the present rest the specters of the past and the imminence of the future. The reality of the stage, which has the virtue of being at once physical and illusory, allows seven performers to interweave and embody the escapades of an artistic group and the imaginary travails of two key figures from the modern Peruvian tradition (writers César Vallejo and José Carlos Mariátegui) along with the apocryphal biography of a popular exotic singer (Yma Sumac). A collective creation by Yuyachkani with texts by Peter Elmore, this performance casts a ludic look back on twentieth-century Peru. It proposes a mode of theatricality grounded in a writing of signs and sensations that values and regards the relationship between actor and spectator as a form of convivencia, or coexistence. An experience that goes beyond the simple facts it narrates, it invites the audience to become a creator who can confront what the stage puts forward in accordance with his or her own sensibilities.

Performers: Augusto Casafranca, Ana Correa, Débora Correa, Amiel Cayo, Julián Vargas, Rebeca Ralli, Teresa Ralli
Stage Design: Jorge Baldeón
Technical Director: Alejandro Siles
Associate Producers: Socorro Naveda, Milagros Quintanad
Assistant Director: Valeria Tello
Concept and Direction: Miguel Rubio Zapata

Biography

Since 1971, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani has been working at the forefront of theatrical experimentation, political performance, and collective creation. "Yuyachkani" is a Quechua word that means "I am thinking, I am remembering." Under this name, the theater group has devoted itself to the collective exploration of embodied social memory, particularly in relation to questions of ethnicity, violence, and memory in Peru. Founded through the initiative of Miguel Rubio, Teresa Ralli and others, the group is recognized throughout the world as one of the most premier exponents of Latin American theater. For the past 38 years, they have created performances intimately aligned with Peruvian society, involving the spectator in an act that is at once reflective and emotional. Yuyachkani creates a theater for all that reveals Peru's great diversity, drawing on rituals, the sacred, and Andean space to provoke an introspective investigation into the past that can help us understand the present.