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Granma. Trombones de La Havane

Stefan Kaegi

Grandchildren of Fidel’s Castro comrades employ the words of their grandparents to reconstruct the Cuban revolution… as they play the trombone.

Details

Fidel Castro is dead and the Rolling Stones performed in Havana. Yet if in Cuba revolutionary rhymes paradoxically with octogenarian, the country is being transformed under the fascinated eyes of the world. Like their elders, young people would like to create a utopia that galvanizes the planet, but how to do so? Onstage, the grandchildren of Fidel’s comrades incarnate their grandparents and reinterpret the Castroist adventure as they question their heritage and imagine the future.

In keeping with his documentary approach, Stefan Kaegi of the Berlin collective Rimini Protokoll – producers of the delightful 100% Montreal in 2017 – met with some fifty grandchildren of the revolutionaries. He employs four of them onstage, as well as the contributions of young Cuban artists set to the sound of trombones (merrily liberated from their military stiffness), to paint a portrait of their present and their future, their reality and their dreams. An illuminating overview of Cuba from the 1950s to today.

Credits

Produced by Rimini Protokoll + Maxim Gorki Theater
Conceived and directed by Stefan Kaegi
Performed by Milagro Alvarez Leliebre + Daniel Cruces-Pérez + Diana Osumy Sainz + Christian Paneque Moreda
Dramaturgy Aljoscha Begrich + Yohayna Hernández
Set Design Aljoscha Begrich
Video Mikko Gaestel
Music Ari Benjamin-Meyers
Research Residencia Documenta Sur – Laboratorio Escénico de Experimentación Social (Havana)
Research and interviews (Cuba) Taimi Diéguez Mallo + Karina Pino Gallardo + Maité Hernández-Lorenzo + José Ramón Hernández Suárez + Ricardo Sarmiento Ramírez
Set Design Assistant Julia Casabona
Video Collaborator Marta María Borras
Production Manager Maitén Arns

Coproduction Festival TransAmériques + Emilia Romagna Teatro Fondazione (Modena) + Kaserne Basel + Onassis Cultural Centre (Athens) + Staatsschauspiel Dresden + Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne + LuganoInscena-LAC+ Zürcher Theaterspektakel (Zurich)
With the support of German Federal Cultural Foundation + Pro Helvetia, Fondation suisse pour la culture + Swiss Arts Council + Senate Department for Culture and Europe + Goethe-Institut Havana

Presented in association with Monument-National + Carrefour international de théâtre (Quebec City) With the support of Pro Helvetia, Fondation suisse pour la culture + Goethe-Institut Montreal + Federal Minister for Foreign Affairs of Germany

Written by Paul Lefebvre
Translated by Neil Kroetsch

Premiered at Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin, on March 21, 2019