Horacio.

Video documentation of Mapa Teatro's production of Heiner Müller's "Horacio," created with prison inmates of La Picota central penitentiary in Bogotá. This video includes takes from the rehearsal process with the prisoners at La Picota. Rehearsal was interrupted by authorities that peacefully requested that the group leave the stage location. Camera follows the group of actors and the director onto the street appearing to be unintentionally recording the activities with few prolonged and established shots. The camera obscurely captures this live occurrence of their removal and new found location in a prison yard policed by armed men, including friendly banter between the actors and police, large vehicles move in and out of the yard, footage of chained barred fence with groups of uniformed and armed police milling about on both sides as actors board a bus that pulls up inside the yard. Camera follows the group of actors and director from the prison yard by bus to the Camarín del Carmen theater and through pre-show warm-ups, ensemble and personal interviews with the actors. The production is staged in the context of the International Human Rights Day. The play begins 3/4 through the tape. Under a large spotlight on a sparse stage with rope, wire and flowers hanging from the ceiling, the play experiments with the representation of an enclosed space. The project demonstrates the work of the actors' imagination of both mental and physical space as they enact their role through movements, gestures and the manipulation of objects. The video ends approximately 15 minutes into the performance. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics

One of the foremost artistic companies in Colombia, Mapa Teatro (www.mapateatro.org) has been producing theater, performance and art installation projects since 1984. Founders and directors, Rolf and Heidi Abderhalden have created a wide ranging repertoire of theater, opera, mixed-media performance, and site-specific installation. Their work proposes richly textured visual metaphors in which they consider often complex psychological, social and political relationships. Committed to experimentation, and less interested in the actor as an 'agent of fiction', they describe their project as 'a laboratory of social imagination' that offers a space for presenting community issues and human concerns in media and performance. This combination of real-life situations and sites along with highly stylized aesthetic staging produces a tension between real action and (re)presentation. Mapa Teatro draws from live events captured on video such as the demolition of a neighborhood in Bogotá, ritual practice, and texts that explore the relationship of postmodern subjects, myth and metaphor. Mapa Teatro has performed by commissions, festivals and collaborative projects world-wide. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics