Opsis Theater: Young People on the Stage

Opsis Theater group of Guantanamo
 is as young as its members.
(Photo: Leonel Escalona)

Will lies in doing and the love you give to things. Opsis Theater is an example of this combination of efforts. Its work shows talent and committment with the stage art.



By Eyder La O Toledano

Made up by young members of the Jose Marti Artistic Brigade, they participated in the 19th edition of the Guantánamo-Baracoa Theater Crusade, with which they recovered the creation and appreciation workshops in that social and cultural project.
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However since more than three years ago these youth headed by art instructor Leander Vega Torres reap the fruit born from the desire of taking what they learned to the Theater students in the School of Art Instructors.
“Opsis, was created on January 22, 2009, Day of the Cuban Theater, and it is precisely a tribute to Cuban stage”, Leander explains. “That day several members of the Jose Marti Artistic Brigade who needed to make art and were concerned because of the lack of stage projects in Guantánamo, met to analyze the social and cultural problems in the city.
“At the beginning we wanted to do street theater to go looking for the people in public spaces. “Historia de un carnaval”  (History of a carnaval) was our frist play, born from a research on the origins and characteristics of those popular celebration in the city. “
Opsis Theater deserved a recognition for that play in the International Amateur Theatre Association, held in the province of Sancti Spíritus, where they also atended the Olga Alonso International in 2008. Another achievements was the first place in production in the Humberto Fernández event, in Guantánamo, in 2007 y 2008.
Vega Torres says that even when they do street theater, they also create plays for theaters.
For the eight members of Opsis Theater the participation in the Theater Crusade meant other fruitful experience, necause it allow them to know the characteristics of that project, and at the same time to put on its plays in stages different from the usual.
Besides “Historia de un carnaval”  they took to the mountains  “De cómo la muerte fue burlada” (About How Death Was Outwitted, a version of the story ”Francisca y la muerte” (Francisca and the Death), by Onelio Jorge Cardoso.
“Communitary theater is also a purpose of our work as art instructors, it is something we have never left behind. Undoubtedly,  the Crusade  fullfiled our expectations, and let’s hope that from no won we can attend every year”, the young director of Opsis Theater says. 

Source: hpt://www.venceremos.co.cu