Y no Habia luz
July 2018
The workshop at Y no había luz is a place of magic. Its walls and corners are filled with creations, puppets and masks that you just can’t tear your eyes away from. Here, you feel like playing. You feel a pull to work with your hands and want to climb onto the stage to tell a story. Y no había luz is a theater company founded in 2005 in Puerto Rico that provides communities a firsthand experience with visual and scenic arts through workshops, theater and other cultural offerings. Its mission is to provide interdisciplinary artistic experiences that awake sensibility, beauty, creativity, social conscience and solidarity in the public. Through their work in education, they have visited many districts across the island to give workshops on creation and use of masks and puppets made with papier-mâché and recycled materials, among other materials.
Transcript
CJ (0:20): My name is Camila, I have nine years. I don’t like to hear the hurricanes. It’s like, screaming noises, and the door is like [boom noises] because the wind is like able to break the door. And one tree fell down and it was like [BOOM], and I was crying so I don’t like the hurricanes.
CJ (1:00): It’s devastated and all the trees fell down, and it’s so like…empty and just a little bit scary, because it’s like a ghost town. A ghost town. When the hurricane passed, I [went] to the United States in Orlando. And I like to be in Orlando because I go to Disney, but I like more the rivers, the mountains of Puerto Rico.
CJ (1:43): Here is my family, my friends, my school, my house, my parents, and I like my dad performing, so I like the theater.
CT/YH (2:07). My name is Carlos Torres. My name is Yari Helfield. And we have a theater company in Puerto Rico called, Y No Había Luz. Y No Había Luz in English is like “And there was no light.” For us also, is this moment in the theater that is everything black. The darkest moment in your life, and then is this moment that the first light appears and you see the first image and you start the story.
(2:43): [singing and clapping]
YH (2:53): After Hurricane María that happened in September here in Puerto Rico, we created a new piece inspired [by] a mango tree in Orocovis. Orocovis is the heart of the island and over there in a beautiful big mountain, we had a mango tree called El Centinela, “El Sentinel”.
YH (3:29): People of this town make a line with kids and pass the Puerto Rican flag on top of the mountain and then they put the flag, the Puerto Rican flag, alone on top of the tree. They did this every year.
YH (3:49): After the hurricane, the tree fell down and we say that the tree talked with the Hurricane and said “Let’s do a deal. Take my seeds, and the star of my flag, and spread it all over. Because I know I will die, but spread my power, my spirit, through all the people to let them go and be the new sentinels. The people are now the ones that need to protect and be the sentinel of our land.”
CT (4:50): At the last moment we are alone, we just need Puerto Ricans to do their work, to do what we get to do to build our country, to build Puerto Rico like we want to be, and that is also what Y No Había Luz is. We’re an independent theater group; we do everything that you see here, we do it with our hands, and we write our own plays. That’s what a hurricane means for nature: Take out those trees that don’t work, those old trees, and let space for other trees to grow up.
(5:39): [Music crescendos, credits begin to roll]
