Músicos Ambulantes/Traveling Musicians (2002): Video documentation of Grupo Cultural Yuyachkanis performance Los Músicos Ambulantes (Traveling Musicians) presented as part of the 3rd Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, celebrated in July of 2002 in Lima, Peru under the title Globalization, Migration and the Public Sphere. In this performance, Yuyachkani is an exploration of Perus rich folkloric traditions, using animal masks and music, humor and a child-like concept of a farm animal cosmos to tell the parable about four aging domestic animals that run away and form a quartet rather than be put out to pasture or face the butcher's block.Based on Luis Enríquez & Sergio Bardottis Los Saltimbanquis and the Brothers Grimms classic fairy tale The Town Musicians of Bremen, the performance tells the story of the journey of four musician animals from four different regions of Peru: an Afro-Peruvian hen ('La Plumosa'), a donkey from the Southern plains ('El Burro'), a cat from the rainforest region ('La Michicha'), and a dog from the Northern coastal area ('El Chusco'). The animals abandon their hometowns in search of their dreams in the capital city; upon meeting each other along the way, and after many adventures and exploits, they decide to form a music group, the Músicos Ambulantes (Traveling Musicians), and to tour the country telling their multiethnic story. The resulting performance, by now a classic piece in Yuyachkanis repertoire (performed since 1983), is a popular musical theater celebration of Peruvian cultural and ethnic diversity. View the video

Antígona (2000): Video documentation of the theater piece Antígona, directed by Miguel Rubio Zapata and masterfully performed by Teresa Ralli of the Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (Peru) in the context of the first Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2000. This one-woman performance of José Watanabes version of Sophocles classic tragedy is a breathtakingly sad example of the devastation twenty years of civil violence in Peru caused; although it is the story of only one character, it speaks for the nearly 70,000 disappeared men, women and children of Peru. View the video  |  Image 1 |  Image 2

Primera cena/First supper (1996): This play, directed by Teresa Ralli and created in collaboration with Ana Correa, Rebecca Ralli and Lucia Lora in 1996, explores the interplay between women's subjective realm and the social sphere, in the line of the broader ongoing investigation on women's issues developed by the female members of the Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani. Three friends meet up to cook and share a supper on the last day of the last year of the XXth century, honoring a pact made twenty years before. Only two of the original three friends arrive (the third, a militant worker for human rights, has been murdered); in her place, her daughter (played by Lucia Lora) arrives to honor the pact made by her mother. All three women are in different stages in their lives. The first character (played by Ana Correa) was the top of her class in High School but, upon graduation, she quickly married and had five kids who are her entire life now.The second character (played by Rebecca Ralli) realized her High School dreams by becoming an artist, but stopped painting when she entered into a bad marriage ten years after graduation. The third character, the daughter of the third friend, is resentful because, although her mother had time for the rights of other children, she feels that she never had time for her. The three women revisit their lives and the moments they feel that changed the course of their destiny. They decide that this will be the first supper ('la primera cena') of their new lives. In the middle of dinner, the 'Goddess of the Kitchen' appears (in this play, the kitchen functions as a metaphor for life); the characters revalue the knowledge and wisdom of women (in the context of the space of the kitchen), ultimately inviting the audience to share their first supper with them by eating the soup they were actually cooking on stage. View the video

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