Patricia Ariza (Colombia)
Patricia Ariza, theater director, playwright and co-founder of renowned Colombian theater ensemble Teatro La Candelaria (www.teatrolacandelaria.org.co), is one of Latin America's foremost artivists (artist/activist). Aside from her extensive theatre work, she has organized huge events around the issues of violence and human rights violations in the country. | Image
Interview with Patricia Ariza, theater director, playwright and founder of renowned Colombian theater ensemble Teatro La Candelaria (www.teatrolacandelaria.org.co), conducted by Chicano theater scholar Alma Martinez. "Creación colectiva" (collective creation), political theater, feminism, and current Colombian sociopolitical and cultural issues are some of the topics covered by Ariza. The artist talks about her role in the creation and trajectory of La Candelaria as well as the joint effort of this ensemble and the Teatro Experimental de Cali (TEC) to create the Corporación Colombiana de Teatro as a mechanism to facilitate a theoretical and practical forum for the discussion, organization, and support of Colombian theater. Furthermore, Patricia comments on her activist and artistic work with marginalized sectors of the Colombian population (women, indigenous people, immigrants, prisoners, etc.), developing interdisciplinary artistic projects designed to empower these communities, exploring the possibilities of collective creation in order to elicit social change. Ariza also discusses the cultural ties and political affinities between Latin American and Latino theaters in the light of shared hemispheric issues like drug traffic, guerrilla warfare, political corruption, immigration, and globalization.
Video | Huge event in Plaza Bolivar (Bogotá) involving 300 survivors of violence and mothers and wives of Colombia's "disappeared" presented as part of the Hemispheric Institute's Encuentro in Colombia (2009):
http://hemisphericinstitute.org/hemi/en/urban-interventions/item/121-09-patricia-ariza
This event helped make visible to Colombia and to the world the disappearances and forced displacements, the systematic assassinations of political leaders in the country, and the youth who are presented as "false positives." Those who are missing will be remembered by walking through a series of panels which will reflect the void created by their absence.
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