Carlos Giménez (born in Córdoba, Argentina, on April 13, 1946, Aries) is the founder and director of the Caracas International Theater Festival, together with María
Teresa Castillo, one
of the major drivers of culture in Venezuela, who has not hesitated to support
him since 1971, when the first festival was held, and who then hired him as Art
Director for the Caracas Athenaeum, an institution she has helped
create and of which she is the president. Carlos is also the
founder and director of the Rajatabla Group, with which he has
traveled around the world, winning hundreds of awards, and which put Venezuelan
theater at the center of the global theatrical stage.
Working as
a director since he was a teen, in 1965 he participated in the First Nancy
Theater Festival with his group El Juglar. He was 19 years old
and he achieved something impossible at the time: without any previous
performances in Buenos Aires, he gained international exposure directly from
Córdoba to Europe. After that, they traveled to Poland, where the group shared
the Honorable Mention with East Germany in Warsaw and received
the First Prize in Krakow. Back in Argentina he faced the
indifference of the capital's theatrical world towards his achievements in
Europe. In response, Carlos created in Córdoba the First National Theater
Festival, but was excluded from its organization in 1967, when political
repression was starting in his country. This event decided him to abandon his
home country.
This
interview took place in the context of the Pirandello
Festival, which
is held in every auditorium and every space within the Caracas Athenaeum, and
which he is in charge of organizing. According to Carlos Giménez, the “main
idea for organizing the Festival comes from the need to connect theater as a
social event within the community it is inserted in”—in this case, the
significant Italian immigrant population—, to involve private business in
cultural activities, to take culture to all social classes, all aspects in
which Venezuelan theater has stayed a bit on the sidelines. With this purpose,
the Caracas Athenaeum plans to organize annual festivals about other important
figures in world theater.
If you had
to create a minimal autobiography, what aspects of your life would you choose?
My arrival
to Venezuela in November 1969. Because this defines a lot, not only
professional aspects in my life, but also personal aspects, that is, what I was
going to do with my life and my career.
Then, as
this event divided my life in two, going back to my experiences in Argentina,
one of the most important moments was my high school graduation in 1964 and my
departure to Europe. There I discovered a world that was completely unknown to
me and I was dazzled by it, which meant, at least for me, that I was not going
to stay locked within the parameters set by the city or the country I was born
in. I realized there was a mismatch between what I wanted and what my
environment, my habitat, gave me.
During that
time, I met Jack Lang, who is the director of the World Theater Festival in
Nancy, and now Minister of Culture in France, so that was how in 1964 I came
into contact with international festivals, which was going to be really
important, because Jack Lang invited us to participate in 1965 in the First
World Festival in Nancy. This invitation also extended to the group of people
who at that time were in Europe without having constituted the El Juglar group
yet - the creation of which is another important moment in my life, even though
El Juglar never had neither the influence nor the impact that Rajatabla has had
in Latin America. This participation was extremely important if we consider
that this group that went to the Nancy World Festival and to festivals in
Warsaw and Krakow, Poland, in 1965, was a provincial theatrical group that had
not left Córdoba to go to Buenos Aires, but to participate in these really
important events.
Moreover,
1965 was the year when all the movements which would have a huge impact in the
theatrical world started all at the same time, like Nancy, Grotowski, Eugenio
Barba, Jack Lang, Els Joglars from Barcelona and La Comuna from Portugal. In
Poland, we presented a play which won one of the awards of the International
Theatre Institute (ITI-UNESCO), called “El Otro Judas” (The Other Judas) from
Abelardo Castillo, one of the most eminent Argentine intellectuals from that
time and director of “El Escarabajo de Oro”. With this play that I directed we
won the Honorable Mention together with East Germany in Warsaw and, in Krakow,
we received the First Prize.
How important
was your success in Europe for your career?
It was
crucial. That moment and then the cold reception we had in Argentina when we
presented the same play decided me to leave my country.
And did you
come directly to Venezuela?
No, I
started in 1968 with what would be another fundamental event in my life: a tour
by land from Córdoba to Caracas, which took us 3 months. We went to the
main mining centers in Bolivia, where we presented our shows. I vividly
remember the experience we had in Chorolque, a peak that is 5,000 meters
above sea level and has the highest tin mine in the world. There, since there
was no electricity, we performed using the miners' lights - that is, surrounded
by 40 miners who provided us light with their helmets while we performed a
children's play. This tour meant a terrifying discovery of Latin America, not
just skin-deep. We came into contact with utter poverty in Latin America. We
also performed in fishing centers in Peru, we did a wonderful tour around Peru,
we performed in Colombia and in 1968 we arrived at the Manizales Festival. In
this festival, we presented a play called “La Querida Familia” (The Dear
Family), a baroque anthology by Ionesco, and the jury formed by Ernesto Sábato,
Pablo Neruda, Jack Lang, Miguel Ángel Asturias, awarded us the prize. However,
we still couldn't get to Venezuela - we only managed to do that after
participating in the Second Manizales Theater Festival in 1969, where we met
Omar Arrieche, Director of the Barquisimeto Educational Experimental Theater,
who got us a visa to enter by land.
When was
Rajatabla founded?
On
February 28, 1971, when “Tu país está feliz” (Your country is happy) was
premiered. At that moment we expressed our desire to form a group with a
regular cast, a permanent producer, our own auditorium for the long-term, which
would allow us to evolve our aesthetics and have a very unique repertoire based
on the needs of the group. All of these expectations were surpassed by the
reality of our work. At that time, some important things happened, like the
Caracas International Theater Festival.
Was
Rajatabla already part of the Athenaeum at that time?
Rajatabla
has always been dependent on the Athenaeum in a rather informal way, but with
the success we achieved with our performances—“Tu país está feliz”, “Don Mendo”
(Mr. Mendo)—and finally after presenting the first show we prepared with the
name of Rajatabla, which was “Venezuela tuya” (Your Venezuela) by Luis Britto
García, we became the regular cast in the Caracas Athenaeum.
How
important is the Caracas International Theater Festival considered in
Venezuela?
I
personally believe it is of critical importance, because it consolidates a
whole perspective and a philosophy regarding theater. However, this is a relatively
misunderstood fact in the Venezuelan context, because of the investment it
implies. It's true that it would be really beneficial for the country if the
government invested that money in other important priorities, such as creating
a National Theater School, a National Theater Company, but we know that's not
going to happen. Our country is the empire of consummated facts, of de facto
culture. Furthermore, I believe that this Festival projects and creates an
international relationship for Venezuelan theater, it opens up new structures,
it raises the level of reflection, it powers and qualifies the work of our
creators and it means opening up to incorporate an enormous class to theatrical
activity, especially young people.
We remember
that in 1979 you suffered a serious accident. What did it mean for you?
That was
another fundamental event in my life. Because through that accident and through
the response and support I got, people's emotional attachment, I established an
important connection with the country.
This year
you're going to direct “Chuo Gil” in the United States. How are you preparing
for this new experience?
With great
enthusiasm, because it means entering the United States professional theater,
with a very important cast, within a different framework and with a huge
production team and an almost mechanical production. It means entering a state
in my profession that is perhaps less human but very interesting to go through.
What do you
think are the most important values in your theatrical work?
Firstly,
I'm getting more and more terrified of formulas. I find it hard to rationalize
my work method. I can use 4 or 5 of Stanislavsky's concepts, introduce elements
from Brecht's technique, but I'm not an educator, I'm not a teacher.
But are there
specific formulas you reject?
No, that's
something I did at the beginning, but I'm rejecting less and less. There's an
already trodden path that you need to travel sooner or later. What's wonderful
about theater is that inapprehensible sense that you never know what's going to
happen, that intangible element for which an actor might perform in a
completely different way than on the previous day. There are some topics that
I'm invariably interested in, such as timelessness - theater is not a video, it's
not a movie, it's something absolutely temporary in essence. When the curtain
comes down, we know that we've seen a performance that will not be repeated
ever again. Another fundamental topic is that of space and time, and the
reaction to these two elements from the director, the actor and the spectator.
That is why I have paid special attention to staging and to keeping away, as I
believe great creators have done, from acting mechanically, from reading the
text in a literal way. For example, Stanislavski, who made a comprehensive
analysis of actors, did not dissociate the work of the actor himself from
external elements, for example smell - he said he wished smell would come from
the stage. And that is what I call paying attention to reading plays non-literally.
Why have
you decided to set up “Tu país está feliz” again?
Because my
aesthetical proposition is not dissociated from my ideological proposition. I
want to set up not only that play but also the 20 shows I did there once
again. To perform a kind of live dive to see what happened with everything that
has been done before. Reflecting from a long distance allows you to see things
much more deeply, and personally it allows me to discover what hidden territory
I can tread on to make a new recreation. I've been accused of being reiterative
and it's true - I am a kind of Manichaean who has enclosed himself within a
series of personal codes and I will not be free until I have exhausted them.
They are like the ghosts I accept I'll have until I get free of them.
© Viviana Marcela Iriart and Ana María Fernández
Photo by ©Marta Mikulan-Martin
Translation by ©Luciana Valente
Caracas, Intermedio Magazine, May 1984
Note by VMI: Although all articles about
Carlos Giménez say he was born in Rosario, which is true, when we interviewed
him Carlos was very busy organizing the Pirandello Festival, so he asked us to
leave him the questions saying he would answer them in writing. He loved writing
and he did it very well. And he wrote:
“Carlos Giménez (born in Córdoba, Argentina, on April 13, 1946,
Aries).”
People are not from where they were born but from where they
feel they were born. And he is as Cordovan as he is Venezuelan.