Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani : theater work demonstration.

Peru's most important theater collective, Grupo Cultural Yuyachkani 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. Their work has been among the most important in Latin Americas so called New Popular Theater, with a strong commitment to grass-roots community issues, mobilization, and advocacy. Yuyachkani won Perus 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. In this pedagogical demonstration, presented in the context of the first Encuentro of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, held at Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 2000, Teresa Ralli and Miguel Rubio explain Yuyachkanis acting process. The artists discuss the training of the actors body, as well as voice and character development; body training stresses body memory, composition and accumulation. This pedagogical demonstration also includes aspects of character development, discussing the relationships between everyday body practices and bodies onstage; weight, balance, volume, flows of energy and centers of balance, showcased in this demonstration, are central aspects in Yuyachkanis (re)search of what they term an actor múltiple or multiple actor. The interplay between technique and sensitive/bodily memory is central to the acting and pedagogical work of this Peruvian theater group. Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics