Vueltabajo

July 2018

In the search to find a space to work and investigate, Vueltabajo arises. A group of colleagues with the vision of creating efforts that promote healthy encounters between artists and communities. Given the limited access to formal spaces in the art world, we chose to work from a specific site: the street. The street is diverse. Every day is a variable. The change is constant: the weather, the passers-by, the shops. Vueltabajo is a collective of transdisciplinary artists that adopts its name with the initiative of enabling and activating a space for research and artistic training focused on theater as a medium. We create networks, collaborations, presentations and community. Theater is our tool.

Transcript

EGO / ZSR (0:17): Hi, my name is Eury González Orsini and I’m part of Vueltabajo Colectivo. Hi I’m Zuleira Soto-Román and I’m part of Vueltabajo Collective. Vueltabajo Colectivo is a collective of artists. We mostly work with theater, we travel all around the island doing our shows, our presentations, workshops, and community work. We’re trying to decentralize art on the island. Because mostly people go to San Juan to get access to art, so now we’re trying to bring people to the west part of Puerto Rico and have a view of the work that other artists are doing.

(1:22): [Trumpet Playing]

EGO (2:05): By the time of María, we were just starting to work in this space, in Taller Libertád. So, the workshop served as a storage for donations that came from Diaspora. We encountered a lot of sad people and there was no communication, there was…nothing. And then we started doing shows at the plaza of Mayagüez as a support, as a therapy. It was really hard, it was really intense, for everyone. But I think that [if] we stay together, we are stronger.

ZSR (2:56): Today we are going to be moving from our workshop in a parade with giant puppets, accompanied with the community who worked to construct them and we’re gonna be playing, singing, having a giant party celebrating art and celebrating diversity and life.

(3:31): [Drums, Instruments and Cheering start]

(4:25): [Techno Music Playing, Cheering]

ZSR (4:44): The spaces here in Mayagüez, everywhere in the island, are very empty. They’re—in this use they’re abandoned. Occupying the plaza, it’s a way of making the space a safer place. Circo de la Plaza, it’s not only a show. It’s a way of telling people, “The space is yours, you can use it, and this is a way to use it”. And from that it has developed into, like a giant spectacle; a giant community, like, overthrow of everything.

[Violin / String Music]

(6:08): [Person talking in Spanish over megaphone to crowd]

(6:40) Something we repeat a lot in the circus, and we have used this since the beginning, is: Anything you can imagine is real.

(6:56): [Credits begin to roll]