By Vivian Martínez Tabares

Translated by Margaret Carlson

About “small” with a small “s”

I like smallness because it gives me room to make mistakes. Being small, it can’t enter “established and official” spaces. The question is, how to make something transcendent out of this. Choosing smallness is to pay homage to the intimate, because it allows for a doing, the unanswerable question, the delight in the imagination, and control over your franchises. The bigger you are, the more franchises you have, and I’m not happy with that equation.

It took me several years to decide to become a small artist [. . .] Sometimes I regret it, but I enjoy my small artistry, and try to be realistic, without losing my sense of humor or my ideology.

Vindicating smallness is my newest calling. They’ve made us believe that small isn’t enough, isn’t complete. By recognizing the strength of being “incomplete,” by valorizing it, I’m taking a stand for what I believe is our essence: we’re almost. . . but. . .

That’s the reason why I’m a small, local artist.

—Teresa Hernández

Teresa Hernández writes, acts, dances, and sings if necessary. She thinks with her body and gesticulates with her hands and face. She moves while constructing phrases from motions and forming chains of actions that don’t tell a story in a conventional way. Rather, they trigger associations and provoke new sensations towards the live event that takes place before our eyes. She shapes her own space or invades another one and inhabits it, while underneath she inherits, processes and reformulates the scenic, literary, and cultural traditions that make up Puerto Rico and the Caribbean, as well as the countless difficulties that have defined the era she lives in.

The actress-dancer trained in dance and dance-theater at the University of Puerto Rico with her fellow Puerto Ricans Petra Bravo and Maritza Pérez (in the groups Danza Brava and Pisotón, respectively) and then with the dance and performance group Pepatián, formed by the artists Merián Soto and Pepón Osorio. Her greatest influence, however, has been the dancer and choreographer Viveca Vázquez, with whom Teresa has had an ongoing collaboration in the “Taller de Otra Cosa” [Something Else Workshop].[1] From Viveca (an heir of Merce Cunningham and John Cage), Teresa learned a concept of dance that values silence, recovers the origins of movement, and is nurtured by such everyday actions such as walking, running, or jumping. She learned how to link movements together that seem contorted, disconnected, and fragmented, yet which are extremely effective in eliciting sensations and feelings that stay with the audience during and after the performance. She discovered the liberating power that comes from accepting her body as it is, and recognized that she could think with her body and translate any intellectual material with her physical weapons.

Teresa also studied post-Brechtian theater with Rosa Luisa Márquez, with whom she has developed sites of theoretical and practical exchange, such as her performance in Marquéz’ production of Godot (1997).[2] From Márquez, one of the most dynamic directors on the theatrical scene, Teresa learned about the theoretical referents of theater, and widened her horizons to include other perspectives on the Latin American scene, such as those of Miguel Rubio and the actors in the Peruvian group Yuyachkani (with whom she has taken workshops and who have inspired some of her projects) as well as other approaches presented in workshops at the Escuela Internacional de Teatro de America Latina y el Caribe (EITALC) , or in conferences at the Escuela Internacional de Antropología Teatral (ISTA) under the direction of Eugenio Barba. With Márquez she also came to understand the living, perishable nature of theater, a concept similar to the ideas put forward by the most demanding theoreticians of performance.

In the text included in this volume, Lo complejo del ser o el complejo de ser [How Complex Being Is, Or, The Complex of Being], Teresa, starting with the title itself -- uncertain and ambiguous, thought-provoking and incomplete, hesitant, suggestive of Hamlet -- touches a raw nerve by focusing on the socio-cultural and human context in which the performance develops.

Lo complejo del ser. . . is a hybrid that recycles or reformulates two characters from an earlier project (La nostalgia del quinqué. . . una huida [Nostalgia for oil lamps . . . an escape], which also utilizes multimedia language) and introduces a third character from a different source: Isabella, the unquestionable queen of Acceso controlado [Limited Access] (1995), who had been created for Viveca Vázquez’s performance piece Kan’t translate: tradúcelo [Kan’t translate: translate it] (1992), and who later reappeared in Isabella “en partes” [Isabella “in parts”] (1993).

This modular conception of characters, who are constructed in ways that allow them to adapt to different contexts, is a defining feature of Teresa’s work. In Kan’t translate. . . Isabella, a caricature of the conceptual void that conceals the false erudition of some art critics and theoreticians, litters her speech with “labels” and “isms.” She and her companion Fernando are suggestive of the King and Queen of Castile, symbols of the first colonial power that still weighs down on Puerto Rico. In Isabella “en partes,” Teresa returns to cultural themes and inserts numerous references to Latin American literature and popular culture.[3] She pays homage to important figures in contemporary Puerto Rican theater such as Luis Rafael Sánchez and Victoria Espinosa, and addresses the crisis facing the theatrical world she is part of, with a “closing ceremony” that bluntly describes the here and now:

. . . 1972, Teatro Cooparte, burned down. 1984, Teatro Corral de la Cruz and its workshop, closed. 1987, Teatro Sylvia Rexach, closed. The original movie theater in Viejo San Juan, Teatro Mascarada, closed. Theater-cafés: Los Campos Alegres, La Tea, Café Vicente, Casa de Teo, closed. Teatro Riviera, neglected and abandoned. Teatro Matienzo, still waiting for a new owner. The old telegraph office in Santurce, Teatro Savador Brau, beautifully restored and mysteriously closed. 1993, Our Theater closes. . . (Lights suddenly go out).

In Acceso controlado (1995) [Limited Access], perhaps her most polished project, theater itself is once again the fulcrum, but more in terms of the work's composition than its theme.[4] Isabella has transformed herself into the Queen; she is, without a doubt, Isabel de Castilla, hysterical, xenophobic, out of place in a century she doesn’t understand, a character inspired by Jean-Marie Le Pen and authoritarian theater directors. In an act of personal rebellion, the performance artist takes aim at her social and professional conditions through carefully devised transformations: she metamorphoses into Lieutenant Cortés, a security guard at a condominium, a simple, ordinary woman who represents the “voice of the street”; Milagros Vélez, solitary and methodical, overwhelmed by routine and suicidal (seen in a video transmission, to create a more distanced reception); “Primera Plana” [Front Page], a marginalized teenager, in detention and in the process of being “re-educated,” someone who listens to others but who can only express himself through body language; and the First Lady, ethereal, a prima donna, elevated and distant, operatic and politically correct.[5]

The Isabella in the text that follows is the direct offspring of Perdoname and Perpetua. She thus inherits the submissive, servile humility and permanent stress of the obese Perdoname, a religious fanatic who always feels she has sinned, eñangotada,[6] a victim of the war of languages (who maybe can’t recall which is the official one). Isabella also takes after the silent Perpetua, “a singer who doesn’t sing,” a Boricua who by using Anglicisms and other linguistic grafts, compensates for her “smallness” complex[7] with a hybrid accent, somewhere in between Italian and Portuguese. On her way back from the Old World, she visits the motherland, Spain, to help groom her global voice, although her vocal cords still show traces of “pre- and post-national territories.”

While Perdonme can hardly stand on her feet and collapses to the floor, choking, and Perpetua slips, falls, and slides herself forward on the stage, Isabella stands tall on high heels and strides elegantly forward as if on a fashion runway. She liberates herself to become a panelist in the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, addressing the theme of “Memory, Atrocity and Resistance.” “The atrocity is that we have lost our capacity for resistance and memory,” she declared. Using corrosive sarcasm, she once more spoke about being small and about the lack of memory that undermines the colonized subject, who is not a univocal being but is divided into a multiplicity of identities.

The text is full of local and global references, real and fictional. Interestingly, the majority of Teresa’s characters move in public spaces: Perdoname is a Senator! Perpetua is a singer, Isabella is an art critic. Milagros Vélez is, I believe, the only character who inhabits an exclusively domestic space, although she reaches the outer world through video projection. And the types of local references—including the national anthem “La Borinqueña,” Jehovah, Chuíto, (a popular and affectionate nickname for Jesus), the Commonwealth or “Free Associated State” (also called the only pre-state country), UNESCO, the Commission for the Protection of Tiny Countries, the controversial real estate magnate Donald Trump and his Miss Universe pageant (on the small Island of Enchantment that has already had four winners!), Saint Charlie, the secular Puerto Rican apostle, the first native-born saint (recently canonized) and, coincidentally, a possible allusion to a well-known politician belonging to the pro-statehood party, the Fuente de Agua Viva Church, a new homegrown congregation of growing influence—form an eloquent nexus of imagined spaces.

From the text alone (although we can’t fully enjoy it without Teresa’s presence), we can perceive how the author desires to speak through the body, which is submerged in a body-country that suffocates, or in another body that is objectified and wears a mask. She speaks through a body that can be inhabited by other bodies, and can conceptualize paralysis in gestures and movements. Because with her body, or with the bodies she transforms herself into, Teresa Hernández performs her place-in-the-world, in this world.

[1] With Viveca she has performed in “Mascando inglés,” “Tribu-To,” “Capicú, “En-tendido” and in the video “Las playas son nuestras,” part of the show Riversa 1997, which was a retrospective of Vázquez’s choreography -- solo or collaborative --between 1980 and 1989; Conciente privado o Mamagüela in which Teresa was also artistic assistant and the author of the theatrical segment “Brenda prenda”; and co-author (along with Vázquez and Eduardo Alegría) of Kan’t translate: tradúcelo . .

[2] In March 2002, five years after the opening of Godot (the final production at the Teatro de la Universidad de Puerto Rico, which still remains closed), Teresa and the actor Antonio Pantojas presented the book Osvaldo Dragún: Stories To be Told. Staged by Rosa Luisa Márquez. They performed as Gogo and Didi, who had been shut inside the theater ever since it closed, and were waiting for Godot to come and begin the promised restoration.

[3] She makes references to the character in the short story “En el fondo del año hay un negrito” by the Puerto Rican writer and essayist José Luis González, to Gabriel García Márquez´s magic realism, and to Eduardo Galeano’s images, as well as evoking the popular local legend, La Virgen del Pozo.

[4] Teresa reprocesses the monologue structure of Quintuples, by Luis Rafael Sánchez, with six characters from the Morrison family written for two different actors. She raises the ante by playing five characters herself and appearing as the sixth at the final curtain.

[5] A closer analysis of this and other projects can be found in my essay “Teresa Hernández: artista de la acción, performera caribeña,” included in the book Lo mío ese otro teatro, forthcoming from Ediciones Callejón, Puerto Rico.

[6] According to the noted playwright, writer and essayist René Márquez -- who gave sociological importance to this adjective by linking it to the national identity -- eñangotado or ñangotado (meaning stooped or bent over) is an linguistic term invented by Puerto Ricans “when they still enjoyed the privilege of being frank with themselves.” See his essay “El puertorriqueño dócil (Literatura y realidad psicológica),” in El puertorriqueño dócil y otros ensayos, 1953-1971, Editorial Antillana, San Juan, 1977.

[7] As with Pardonme and Perpetua, the colonial dichotomy between “big” and “small” comes from La nostalgia del quinqué. . .una huida (1999) and before that, La Gran tragedia y las personas calzadas (1996). In the program notes for La nostalgia del quinqué. . . she vindicates smallness:

Message?!!!

About “small” with a small “s”

I like smallness because it gives me room to make mistakes. Being small, it can’t enter “established and official” spaces. The question is, how to make something transcendent out of this. Choosing smallness is to pay homage to the intimate, because you can do things, ask countless questions, delight in the imagination, and have control over your franchises. The bigger you are, the more franchises you have, and I’m not happy with that equation.

It took me several years to finally decide on becoming a small artist [. . .] Sometimes I regret it, but I enjoy my small artistry, and try to be realistic, without losing my sense of humor or my ideology.

Vindicating smallness is my newest calling. They’ve made us believe that small isn’t enough, isn’t complete. By recognizing the strength of being “incomplete,” by valorizing it, I’m taking a stand for what I believe is our essence: we’re almost. . . but. . .

That’s the reason why I’m a small, local artist.