Santiago (en) Vivo - City, Site and Memory: Santiago through the lens of street performance
Marcela Oteíza
Santiago (en) Vivo or Santiago (a) Live, is a documentary that explores the scenographic permeability of Santiago, Chile, during the street performances of the Festival International de Teatro Santiago a Mil (FITAM) between 2012 and 2015. Santiago (a) Live elucidates how site and spectators ultimately inform the construction of meaning of theatrical events, by incorporating the contextual urban space in which the performances are situated. The documentary covers five years of interviews with practitioners from multiple countries, such as Chile, Peru, Spain, France, and Poland, and footage of over twenty street performances, including walkabouts, processions, and sound journeys from different companies, such as Clowns the Shakespeare, (Brazil), La Patriotico Interesante, (Chile), Compagnie Off, (France), and Antigua I Barbuda, (Spain), among others. Running time: 40 minutes; language: Spanish, English subtitles available.
City, Site and Memory: Santiago through the lens of street performance
A city is a layered site used and lived by many. It is a space where everything has multiple meanings: a building serves as a destination for some and a metaphor for others. Public spaces become overcrowded with the ghosts of politics, old and current. The city where street performances are enacted becomes a permeable scenographic space by incorporating its characteristics into a given production's dramaturgy. Here I analyze the exchange that occurs between street performances featured at Festival International Santiago a Mil and the public sites they occupy. I show how the exchange between audience and site promotes the blurring of the audience–performer space, by reclaiming the performative qualities of a given urban space for the community.
El Desplazamiento de la Moneda, by Roger Bernat, Santiago, Chile, 2014 (FITAM)\Photography by Marcela Oteíza
Marcela Oteíza
Marcela I. Oteíza is a visual artist, scenic designer and scholar. She specializes in
collaborative and non-text-based work, such as Wes out Loud, 2016, created and
directed by Prof. Oteíza. Her video-documentary: Santiago (en) vivo, based on street
performances, was screened at the Centro Cultural Palacio de la Moneda as part of the
selection of the Teatro International Santiago a Mil, 2018. She collaborates with the
Judy Dworin Performance Project (JDPP), for which she has completed several scenic
and media designs, such as ColorFields, commissioned by the Helen Frankenthaler
Foundation at the New Britain Museum of American Art. Her articles in Street
Performance-Scenography have been published in the series Scenography Expanded:
An Introduction to Contemporary Performance Design, edited by Joslin Mckinney and
Scott Palmer, Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, and in Theatre and Performance Design
Magazine, Routledge, 2018. She participates in the International Federation of Theatre
Research (IFTR) Architecture and scenography working groups, with projects such as
Feminist Scenographies 2022 and Performing Rage: A Rapist in Your Path Feminist
Scenic Barricade, a Public Space Intervention by Las Tesis Collective, 2019, and at the
PQ Symposium Where are we? 2022 with the object tells the truth: Baquedano’s statue
as a witness for social change at Plaza Dignidad, Santiago, Chile. PQ talks include
Street Performance Contemporary Objects Project: The Self and the Automaton. She is
currently an Associate Professor at Wesleyan University in the Dance and Theater
departments, the College of the Environment and Latin American Studies Program, in
addition to the Integrated Design, Engineering, and Applied Sciences (IDEAS) program.
Prof. Oteíza holds an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts and a BFA in fine arts
from the University of Chile.
