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Buenos Aires: culture fades in the metropolis

2020-05-10T21:54:10.979Z


The confinement has decreed a cultural blackout in one of the capitals most attached to the theaters and bookstores in the world. Its exponents tell us how they deal with the crisis.


It will never be known with certainty how many theaters there are in Buenos Aires. Officially there are about 300. But there are quite a few more. And at any time, in any patio or living room, a new one appears. This is a city of theater, of bookstores, of strange and nocturnal people who discuss philosophy. The pandemic closure has inflicted a very deep wound on the Buenos Aires soul. Under one of the most severe confinements in the world, with very few tests carried out, with the country economically devastated and on the brink of suspension of payments, with a hospital system in suspense that awaits the worst moments for June, Buenos Aires looks out into the abyss .

It happens, however, that the Argentine capital is very made to disasters. Claudio Tolcachir, 45, a playwright, actor, director, and teacher, is a well-known representative of the new Latin American theater. He was 26 years old when he opened a room next to his apartment, in the popular neighborhood of Boedo. We are talking about 2001, the year of the “corralito” and the financial catastrophe. "There were people," he recalls, "who dressed elegantly to come to our theater, a very humble place in an area then quite dangerous." "In times of great crisis, porteños go to the theater," he says.

The word "need" often comes up when talking about culture in Buenos Aires

In this new hecatomb you cannot go to the theater. The theater, therefore, is served at home by telematic means. At eight o'clock in the afternoon, Claudio Tolcachir greets the public from the screen, asks that telephones be turned off and the light be lowered, and presents a recorded work. Or broadcast live a work performed, for example, in the home kitchen. "The theater was not made for the camera, but it is what there is." Nor was the school of Timbre 4, Tolcachir's company, made for the students to follow it from home. Again, it is what it is: every morning, the playwright and his teachers connect with the students and continue with the program. "It is not easy for boys to rehearse in these conditions, sometimes with the family in front," he admits.

Who can pay, pay. Who doesn't, no. The same as with the functions: there is a “virtual cap” that the actors pass and each one leaves in it the money that seems to them. In one weekend, the audience can exceed 100,000 viewers.

Claudio Tolcachir is one case among many. Think that crises stimulate creativity. Especially in an activity as embedded in Buenos Aires history as theater. According to him, the identification between Buenos Aires and the scene arose from immigrants, in need of reuniting with their culture. Each community had its theaters and its moments of catharsis. From the Spanish sainete, for example, the Argentine sainete emerged. Dictatorships and the many dark ages reinforced the role of the theater as a place of communion and resistance. "We work close to today and make a theater of survival, without production, without wages, simply because we need it," he says.

mariana eliano

The word "need" often comes up when talking about culture in Buenos Aires. To cite one case, Pablo Braun, the scion of one of the richest families in Argentina, should not be fighting with the distribution of books: he could occupy an office in one of the Braun companies, as he did for a short time. But he needs to save his bookstore, Eterna Cadencia, perhaps the best in the city (there is not a single volume that is not worth it), and the small chain of bookstores in shopping malls that he recently acquired, and his publisher. And you need to regain personal contact with your customers. Pablo Braun is that kind of bookseller you ask what you should read.

He founded Eterna Cadencia in 2005, when Argentina was beginning to recover from the great crisis of 2001. He believes that what is now is worse: "What is coming is a disaster, something dramatic that forces us to reinvent ourselves." He has returned to work. Distribute books with a biker. You feel in more spirits than a few weeks ago. But he wonders if the pandemic will force culture to take refuge in the arms of large digital corporations. "Culture itself will have to reflect on this and reflect it," he says. And sighs: "I suppose it is even worse for the theater."

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Source: elparis

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