In our 2023 assembly, these parts of fashionable theatre and social practices weren’t named as such however had been current all through the week we spent in Santiago. For instance, the Matrilineo exhibition curated by Lorangelis Thomas handled related points for ladies and menstruating individuals with strategies for reappropriating the medical gaze over the our bodies of individuals with uteruses, like self-exploration and artwork made with menstrual blood. Or Helen Ceballos’s discuss her performances that carry her queer Caribbean physique and migration expertise in a profound, political, and poetically shifting style. Or the summary however politically dedicated artwork of Yuri Seoane in his exhibition Sinfonía de Presión by which a each day object—a strain cooker—turns into a metaphor of the issues that deliver folks collectively whereas additionally experiencing numerous strain coming from the political, social, and financial state of affairs of the world and the way Cubans expertise it. Likewise, there have been performances from Caja Negra Teatro that adapt classics like Shakespeare to the present political state of affairs in Cuba and the present disaster that the island is dealing with.

As I most likely mentioned to Mat Schwarzman in considered one of our many conversations in Santiago about Open Channels/Canales Abiertos, I imagine that the collective endeavor that we’re constructing to unite theatre and efficiency artists from the Caribbean has been progressively evolving from that first time that we met on-line in 2021, to the next yr by which it was a blended occasion, and eventually in 2023 by which we didn’t have a digital assembly and every part was performed in individual in Santiago de Cuba. However the query transforms itself into a brand new one: Now what? How will we maintain the work in the long run and the way can we maintain renovating it annually?

Open Channels/Canales Abiertos has modified and can proceed to take action within the coming years. The chances are limitless however as a gaggle we have to begin questioning its future and design a plan for the challenge to be sustainable. As each Juan Edilberto Sosa and Mat Schwarzman have expressed, we should consider methods to measure the social impression of our work collectively as a group in several nations within the Caribbean, our impression in Santiago de Cuba, and the impression that it will probably have again in every of our nations after every yearly assembly.

We need to create a spot the place youth and younger artists can work together with mid-career and established artists, that broadens the angle and community areas for Caribbean artists.

Whereas we worth the intimate expertise of a residency and can endeavor to push it ahead as a deeper manner of engagement between artists from the Caribbean, there are nonetheless challenges that we should tackle. The target is to not create a self-indulging area for like-minded theatre artists and students that meet annually to compensate for their tasks and private lives, however an area for fixed development and change that’s permeable sufficient to permit common and new members annually. We need to create a spot the place youth and younger artists can work together with mid-career and established artists, that broadens the angle and community areas for Caribbean artists. 

Within the phrases of Juan Edilberto Sosa, one of many challenges we face is the stability between the work we do contained in the residency, its outreach, and impression. He thinks that we should discover methods to broaden and open the decision for artists throughout the Caribbean and, notably in Cuba, from different provinces so we are able to have a myriad of recent voices within the challenge. Juan Edilberto additionally considers that we should goal to create an area that may foster skilled relationships and outcomes so the experimental work that we develop within the residency may be proven and mobilized in new creative circuits. The primary activity at hand, in his opinion, is to attach the El Cruce residency in December with the Pageant Desconectados 969, permitting the residents to work on their tasks for about six months to allow them to be a part of this experimental, multidisciplinary pageant. He believes this may be achieved by discovering new companions, each in Cuba and throughout the area, that may help the sustainability of the challenge.

One of many efforts that Open Channels did within the first two years was to incorporate folks from the Spanish, English, and French Caribbean within the spherical tables. Our working languages have at all times been English and Spanish. Our reference to the francophone and creole talking nations of the Caribbean, aside from some members from Haiti, has been a weak point that should be addressed. We should develop a technique to maintain the dialog going throughout languages and the way we are able to construct a multilingual platform with all of the challenges that it brings.

Additionally, we don’t envision Open Channels/Canales Abiertos simply as a gathering that occurs in Santiago de Cuba however as an ongoing course of with steady actions all year long. In addition to the potential for taking part in a residency in December and connecting our challenge with the experimental theatre pageant in June, what number of of those actions can occur just about? What number of in different nations of the Caribbean? May we incorporate an Open Channels/Canales Abiertos establishment in every nation or keep as an umbrella area by which many associate organizations convene?