Interview with Jacqueline Vidal.

Interview with theater practitioner Jacqueline Vidal, director of renowned theater ensemble Teatro Experimental de Cali (TEC), conducted by Chicano theater scholar Alma Martinez. In this interview, Jaqueline talks about her passage from her native France to Colombia with her husband (TEC's founder Enrique Buenaventura), her life as a theater artist, her collaborative process with Buenaventura, and the influences of her international and Colombian experiences in shaping her unique directing style. Collective creation is discussed, paying special attention to considerations of space, the dialogue between the dramatic text and the actors, and the presence of myths in theater plays; Vidal has always felt passionate for the spatial, non-verbal communication between people and how these elements shape a theater capable of making the everyday shake, rendering the invisible visible, and opening a space for imagination, for the possibility of living in an alternative, organic world in a time where fragmentation permeates social interaction. In conversation with Martinez, the artist discusses the aesthetic and political points of contact between Chicano and Colombian theater. Luis Valdez and El Teatro Campesino's interplay between 'wonderful theater' and 'responsible politics', argues Vidal, has been influential to the joint efforts by prestigious Colombian theater practitioners to bridge their artistic and political practices through collaboration, the organization of festivals, joint seminars, etc. Issues of mestizaje, art, politics and gender are also discussed by Vidal, paying special attention to the role and participation of women in Latin American and Latino theater and their relationship to feminist struggles. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics