Guayabo (taller de teatro).

Video documentation of the first of a series of workshops conducted by members of Peruvian theater ensemble Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani in collaboration with local and international artists. The workshops, celebrated with children and youth of the Afro-Peruvian community of Guayabo (Chicha, Peru), were meant to explore and revalue the Afro-Peruvian cultural heritage through theater, plastic/visual arts, dance and music, in an effort to empower the community in the face of existing racism in the country, at a time when the African cultural influence and the Afro-Peruvian population was -and still is- looked down upon. Yuyachkani actress Ana Correa, director of the project, initiated this pedagogical and activist effort inspired by the exploration of Peruvian cultural diversity (including African influences in Peruvian music and dance) in Yuyachkani's renowned spectacle 'Músicos Ambulantes.' Peru's most important theater collective, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani (www.yuyachkani.org) has been working since 1971 at the forefront of theatrical experimentation, political performance, and collective creation. 'Yuyachkani' is a Quechua word that means 'I am thinking, I am remembering'; under this name, the theater group has devoted itself to the collective exploration of embodied social memory, particularly in relation to questions of ethnicity, violence, and memory in Peru. The group is comprised of seven actors (Augusto Casafranca, Amiel Cayo, Ana Correa, Débora Correa, Rebeca Ralli, Teresa Ralli, and Julián Vargas), a technical designer (Fidel Melquíades), and an artistic director (Miguel Rubio), who have made a commitment to collective creation as a mode of theatrical production and to group theater as a life style. Their work has been among the most important in Latin America's so called 'New Popular Theater, ' with a strong commitment to grass-roots community issues, mobilization, and advocacy. Yuyachkani won Peru's National Human Rights Award in 2000. Known for its creative embrace of both indigenous performance forms as well as cosmopolitan theatrical forms, Yuyachkani offers insight into Peruvian and Latin American theater, and to broader issues of postcolonial social aesthetics. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics