Andoba Returns to Theater in the Neighborhoods

December 13, 2022

Next the 19th the play will be presented in Trillo Park, and on the 22nd in the La Güinera neighborhood, in Arroyo Naranjo, under the direction of Huberto Llamas

"Fierce among the fierce," Oscar had to move "very smoothly" through the streets to support his family. He doesn't understand, then, how his brother can disagree with his intention to continue living off the "hustle" after getting out of jail. "Your time has passed and it won't come back," Guillermo tells him.

Will "the tough guy" integrate into the new society born from the changes that occurred after 1959? Will he be able to escape the antisocial elements who are looking for him to settle old debts, or will he keep taking a different route each day to get home?

Andoba, as he's known in those circles, doesn't know fear until in the neighborhood he has to turn his face toward the walls so as not to be seen. However, for him "cowards are the ones who go make reports to the police." How much longer will he think that way?

Life in a Havana tenement from the early 1960s is reflected in Andoba, written in 1979 by Abrahám Rodríguez, and which next the 19th will be brought to the stage in Trillo Park, and on the 22nd, in the La Güinera neighborhood, in Arroyo Naranjo, under the direction of Huberto Llamas.

Known as Master of the Americas, for his extensive educational work throughout the continent for more than three decades, this theater artist and professor, awarded the National Prize for Community Culture in 2003, has remained in the Greater Antilles for several months to revive some of the great classics of our theater.

Thus, in August we were able to enjoy –under his guidance– Santa Camila de La Habana Vieja, and now he has brought together "young enthusiasts with figures who have been on the boards for more than 40 years" to, with colloquial language, "speak to the papaya seller, the lemon seller, to the popular world of Havana's streets. I don't direct –he assures–, I show the feelings of Latin American reality."

"This work is a model for youth, so they are aware of their social responsibility, and so they know that they can choose the path they will follow."

Now that "the silence of the pandemic has finally ended" and presentation halls have returned to their usual bustle, Huberto Llamas is certain that it is the time to revive popular works like Andoba.

"Life is a cycle and the actors who are speaking for those characters from more than 60 years ago, did not live in that era," so they can get closer to it this way, just as the people can. Precisely for them it is dedicated, "because I am faithful to Cuban culture, where I was trained," he insists.

Master of masters, who for the second time will take the baton of this symbolic text of the stage and of national history, has brought theater to "the terrain" where very few artists have gone, to the neighborhoods, to vulnerable communities, to the streets where many Andobas lived.