Community Theatre in Colombia: Origins and Trajectories

There has been renewed national interest in socially-engaged arts since Colombia’s 2016 peace accord, but the legacy of community theatre is largely ignored in pedagogy and scholarship. This article considers origins and trajectories of Colombian community theatre starting from the 1960s. While methods such as El Nuevo Teatro and Theatre of the Oppressed have come to dominate the Latin American theatre cannon, we show how the influential ideas of Augusto Boal and Enrique Buenaventura were shaped through dialogue and exchange with collages who are much less known. We examine debates from the 70s about whether “popular theatre” was by or for “the people,” which have evolved into a contemporary commitment to working in community. We consider key international encounters that occurred at regional festivals like the Festival de Manizales, which was a laboratory for the development of an anti-hegemonic Latin American theatre. Despite the extrajudicial persecution of “leftist” artists carried out across the region during the 80s, aggressive commercialization and persistent institutional amnesia regarding creative practices of resistance, we find that “popular theatre” has endured by adapting to changing (now neoliberal) contexts, becoming “community theatre” in the 90s. We highlight the work of three active Colombian groups with long-term trajectories: Teatro Experimental de Fontibón (Bogotá), Nuestra Gente de Medellín, and Esquina Latina (Cali). All show a commitment to transgenerational collaboration and have proven resilient in contexts that are often life-or-death. This brings us to a Latin American understanding of applied theatre based in building affective connections and repairing torn social fabrics.