Teatro Papalote: Havana season

Mireya Castañeda

WITH fine sagacity, the Teatro Papalote (Kite Theater) of Matanzas has announced that it is "making its August" in Havana’s Guiñol Nacional Theater. This popular refrain is convincing because both children and adults in the capital are aware of this puppet group’s excellent performances and that every one of its functions becomes an instant success.

The Matanzas Papalote is taking over Havana’s summer, presenting three of its most applauded pieces: Una cucarachita llamada Martina, Little Red Riding Hood and Tres somos tres, all directed and written by the maestro René Fernández, National Theater Prize 2007.

This version of the classic La cucarachita Martina, is from 1991 and during it, live actors alternate with puppets designed by Zenén Calero.

Little Red Riding Hood (2009) is a very Cuban vision of the story by Charles Perrault. This fifth version, which Papalote has created from the classical children’s story proposes, according to the program, "to talk in the voice of new times."

Another innovation in this production is the introduction of Little Red Riding Hood’s father. Design is by Jacqueline Ramírez (puppets) and René Fernández (scenery), with music by Raúl Valdés.

The third piece, very much a puppet show, full of oral and scenic games, is Tres somos tres, likewise an extremely Cuban version of the story The Three Little Pigs. Its staging once more appeals to the recourse of theater within theater, which identifies so many Papalote works, and has received prizes in the UNEAC Caricato and the Small-Format Festival.

Teatro Papalote, founded in 1962, has brought more than 100 works to the stage, both Cuban and foreign, with their origins in themes of universal classical literature and popular traditions.

Examples of this wide-ranging and large repertoire are: Pedrito y las semillas mágicas, 1967; The Pied Piper of Hamelin, 1967; Convocando a Carilda. Leyenda de una mujer, 1994; El Poeta y Platero, on the works of Juan R. Jiménez, 1993. Quimera, La zapatera prodigiosa and Amor de don Perlimplín con Belisa en su jardín, by Federico García Lorca, 1963; Ensayando a Molière, 2002; Ugly, based on The Ugly Duckling, by Hans Christian Andersen, 1999, and Danilo y Dorotea. Otra historia de amor, inspired by Ibsen’s The Doll’s House, 2005.

Critics place Papalote "among the most outstanding groups in the Cuban children’s theater movement, given its innovative theatrical language and puppetry in which dramaturgy, music, design and staging are all combined." The group has performed in Mexico, Colombia, Yugoslavia, Poland, Sweden, Russia, Spain, France and Venezuela.

It took its name in 1971, based on the text El papalote que llegó a la luna, by René Fernández himself, premiered in 1970 in the Sauto Theater, Matanzas. In 1984, the group definitively assumed the name Teatro Papalote.

René Fernández (Matanzas, 1944), its general and artistic director, is also president of the UNIMA (International Marionette’s Union) of Cuba.

Teatro Papalote is having a season at the Guiñol Nacional and, with its puppetry art is "making its August" in Havana. It is taking advantage of an opportune moment and making use of an old Cuban saying (formerly "making one’s August and grape harvest).

Miguel de Cervantes cites in La gitanilla (1613): "And thus they rained down upon her (Preciosa) cuartos (coins), too many for the old woman to pick up in her hands. Thus her August and her harvest was made…"