The Tres Continentes Theatre Meeting will be held in the town's performing arts venues from Monday 14 to Sunday 20 with nine theatre, dance and clown performances.
Everything is ready in the Agüimes performing arts venues to host, starting next Monday, the 37th edition of the Festival del Sur – Encuentro Teatral Tres Continentes, the oldest performing arts competition in the Canary Islands and one of the most reputable in the entire national scene. It will be held from Monday 14 to Sunday 20 October at the Teatro Auditorio, the Teatro Municipal de Agüimes, the Teatro Cruce de Culturas, with performances also at the Casa Museo Orlando Hernández, in the Plaza del Rosario, the Plaza Primero de Mayo del Cruce de Arinaga and Avenida de Los Pescadores de Arinaga.
The most noteworthy addition to this year's program will be a production by Teatro del Barrio, the newly awarded 2024 National Theatre Prize winner. The Madrid-based theatre received this prestigious award just a few weeks ago, granted by the Ministry of Culture, for "its broad and varied programming and its conception of theatre as a home and a space of close connection with the surrounding community." Teatro del Barrio will bring one of its most recent shows to Agüimes, Infiltrado en Vox (Infiltrator in Vox ), which recounts the first-hand experience of activist Moha Gerehou, a journalist, writer, and social media expert, in his attempt to dismantle and denounce from within the racism entrenched in certain sectors of Spanish society. Given the considerable anticipation surrounding this production, a large audience is expected to enjoy it on Saturday, October 19, at the Teatro Auditorio.
In total, the Festival del Sur will offer nine performances open to the public, featuring companies and performers from Europe, Africa, and Latin America, hailing from regions such as the Canary Islands, Valencia, Murcia, and Madrid, and from countries including Argentina, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, and France. Tickets for the paid performances can be purchased on the tickentradas.com platform . The complete program can be found on the municipal website aguimes.es.
The Escrig, Alquibla Theatre and Hernan Gené
Escrig Producciones, from the Canary Islands, will present Ella y los cerdos (She and the Pigs ), a free adaptation of the novel Amuleto (Amulet ) by Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño, inspired by the true story of Alcira Soust Scaffo, a Uruguayan teacher and poet living in Mexico, who in 1968 hid for fifteen days in a bathroom at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) during the army's occupation of the campus. Alquibla Teatro, from the Region of Murcia, will stage No me falte el aire (Don't Run Out of Air) , an ensemble piece about young people in their thirties who leave home, moving from the countryside to the city, while simultaneously transitioning from youth to adulthood. The company of Hernán Gené, a prominent Argentine stage director based in Spain, will perform Tsunami , an allegory of The Tempest by William Shakespeare, which pays homage to theater as a space of resistance and redemption in the face of the madness and chaos of the world we live in.
Quartier libre and Txetxe Clown
Libr'Arts, a Franco-Ivorian company, will bring its dance performance Quartiers libres (Free Neighborhoods ) to Agüimes . The show reflects on spaces of true freedom for women in a context still dominated by violence and the patriarchal society's desire for female submission. The performance will star Gabonese actress and dancer Kaïsha Essiane, a regular on the French urban hip-hop scene. Her appearance in Gran Canaria is made possible by the International Choreographic Institute of Montpellier, under the direction of Christian Rizzo. The unique staging, constructed from recycled plastic bottles, is a collaborative effort between Gran Canaria's two eco-parks and the companies Martínez Cano and Aguas de Teror.
From Valencia, Txetxe Clown will bring two entertaining shows: Bambalina and the Circus , in three family-friendly performances for all ages, and Las Pelusonas , a single performance for those over 18. While the first focuses on childlike madness and imagination, the second highlights feminism and transgression as ways of asserting the right to have fun.
Parallel activities
In addition to the nine performances open to the public, the Festival del Sur will feature a variety of parallel activities. Argentine theater director Hernán Gené will offer a masterclass, and the production company Fílmika Galaika will screen its documentary film about Manoliño Nguema, the father of modern theater in Equatorial Guinea. The book * La vida interior de los seres planta* (The Inner Life of Plant Beings) , by José Luis Baños de Cos, winner of the first Orlando Hernández Martín Playwriting Competition, will also be presented, and a staged reading of * La noche del oráculo* (The Night of the Oracle) , by José Manuel Higes, winner of the second edition of the same literary competition, will take place.
Journalists José Naranjo (El País) and Nicolás Castellano (Cadena SER) will coordinate the Mesa Redonda Tres Continentes (Three Continents Roundtable), which will address first-hand various war conflicts, humanitarian crises and other situations of systematic violation of human rights in different parts of the world. It will feature direct testimonies from the Somali Hayat Traspas, a women's rights activist known for her fight against female circumcision and forced marriage; the Gazan Ahmed Abuzubaida, a Palestinian refugee in Spain and worker at the Spanish Commission for Refugee Aid (CEAR); the Senegalese Marie-Louise Ndiaye, a journalist specialising in the migration phenomenon seen from the other side; and the Nicaraguan Claudia Neira, one of the most active cultural and literary programmers on the Latin American scene, who has had to seek refuge in Spain due to political persecution in her country. There will also be a specific programme of talks and theatre for the school population of the municipality of Agüimes.
Bridge of cultures
Since 1988, the Festival del Sur – Encuentro Teatral Tres Continentes de Agüimes has turned Gran Canaria into a privileged meeting point for companies and performers from Africa, Europe and Latin America, a space for tricontinental artistic collaboration in accordance with the vision and founding spirit of its creator, the writer, playwright and professor Antonio Lozano. It is a way of internationalising Canarian theatre creation, while offering local audiences the chance to enjoy international works and artists that would otherwise be very difficult to discover.
