Peru's most important theater collective, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani has been working since 1971 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. Their work has been among the most important in Latin America's so called "New Popular Theater," with a strong commitment to grass-roots community issues, mobilization, and advocacy. Yuyachkani won Peru's National Human Rights Award in 2000. Known for its creative embrace of both indigenous performance forms as well as cosmopolitan theatrical forms, Yuyachkani offers insight into Peruvian and Latin American theater, and to broader issues of postcolonial social aesthetics. In this keynote address, celebrated in the context of the first Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2000, Yuyachkani's director Miguel Rubio Zapata and performer Teresa Ralli talk about the role of the director in the creative process of the group, as well as about the creative process of Yuyachkani's play "Antígona," also showcased at the Encuentro. The artists frame their work in the context of Latin American experimental theater practices and in relation to Yuyachkani's outstanding trajectory.