ABOUT THE BOOK
Women in the war (Las Mujeres en la guerra) is lhe collection of different and subjective truths that trigger the conftict when they come across each other.
But this book is not about the truths of men, the perpetrators of war. It is about the trulh of those who suffer it: women and children. We, women are not made for war. We don’t feel al ease in it. Not even the warrior women that speak here. None of us likes guns or weapons. War is being imposed upon us by men full of ambition for power, full of greed because they need to feel rich and strong and to assert themselves as machos. But, listen sirs, you put forward reasons to justify war; where are they leading us? To the triumph of your barbaric display over life. And life is incamated by the women, the children and the earth. You think you are conquering the peoples with your strength and your weapons because they make you believe they do accept you. No sirs,they just bend under the pressure of power. But force does not cooquer. Just like rape, she crushes everything and substitutes herself for affection and family.
Know, lords of the weapons, that we don’t want you. The evidence of your infinite clumsiness is that your main preoccupation lies narrowly in defending your tiny piece of power or your portion of land. But al this rate, be certain that none of you will win the war and, on the contrary, you will soon end up destroying the source of life.
When I saw in San Vicente del Caguán the faces of the soldier women of the FARC who were armed but still bore the faces of girls and the pain of the mothers suffering with the absence of their sons, the idea carne to me of writing women in the war.
The stories portray not only the main characters in the book. but also the men who make war, with their blood filled and egoist guts, their mad drive for power and their machismo. The men with the guns are not aware of the enorrnity of the pain they are causing. The aim of his book is to show them and make them conscious of this infinita pain, and to implore the women to get really united against war.
Lords of the weapons: thereis no reason that can justify so much pain. Don’lyou think we have already experienced enough of it? Lets all stop the war at any price. Look at its fruits: watch them portrayed in the heart of this book. And remember… you were also children once.
Patricia Lara
ABOUT THE PLAY
What do we artists have to say in this dark moment, being immersed as everyone else in a cruda reality? How can we pulforward our small contribution through our art in order to build a better society? How can we bring ourselves and help others to see that light at the end of the tunnel?
With these questions inscribed in our lips, our skins, and our hearts we met these testimonies of life collected by Patricia Lara in her priceless book Women in the War, which constitutes a true act of peace. These testimonies have a lot to teach us; they give us an example of courage, of hope, of a yearning far lite, and thay tell us that the answers are indeed within our people. We chose three magnificent and courageous women among the ten who tell their stories in the book. The seleclion was very hard to make.
Dora Margarita, the warrior: “If before starting to kill each other we just had the opportunity to talk, if we just were able to see the human being behind the armed man facing us, lf we could communicate, we would stop the war and save the country.
Chave from the paramilitary army: «My best friend on yale is the wife of a FARC’s chief. She has lot of solidarily, is very tolerant. Both of us know that we are in a war. Outside she will be a military target. She has told me that if she needs to do it, she should kili me, because war is as this…. For me few things are wrong. I think to kill is wrong.
Margot, the mother: «I think the destiny of each human being is already written… The greatness of my home, Johny being a soldier, is the respect there is far my children…The Lord tells me that life isn’t easy, that I must be courageous, that this is what we carne here for.”
Juana, the homeless, displaced mother: “I only ask God to let me live until my daughters can look after themselves, and I ask Him to make peace in our country, to end once and for all withlhe armed groups, forit is them who make the conflict, they struggle for power. But it is us who pay the bill, we who have nothing to do with all this. We, who are caught in the middle,being neither water, nor fish.»
These are accounts given by women who have lost their loved ones and their place in the world, but who are still full of love and solidarity. Through them we try to reach the womanly spirit who, notwithstanding the suffering and the pain, believes in a better future for the country and for the oncoming generations, dreams about children growing amidst mutual respect. These are stories that enlighten us and show us the exit, portions of reality that art cannot change. But in them we can look for a metaphor inciting us to reflect.
We are helped in our endeavor by a metaphoric scenery created by the painter Cristina Llano: a circular shape that links the actor to the spectator, the curtain of an embrace between humanity, the sea and the sky, a sculpture portraying the embrace linking the three women: Margarita, the brain; Margot, the heart; and Juana, the guts. Embraces that are ona of the constants we find in their accounts. Embraces meant to be forms full of love and solidarity. Embraces that bear light and strength.
The power of evocation of the words of our women; the song of our peoples and of peoples from other places that have always moved mountains; a myth about the creation of the world told by a branch of our lndian ancestors, the Kogi, collected by master Reichel Dolmatoff, in wh ich they repeat to us once and again with their great wisdom: «In the beginning there was only the mother… She was the spirit of what was to come, and she was thought, and she was memory… The sea was the mother”, and our desire to be carried by favorable winds, are the other tools. lt is an homage and a petition to Yemayá, the goddess of the sea and of the woman, that brings us to the end. The woman is clearly set as the principie of life, the principie of strength and support, and the principie of hope.
Carlota Llano – Femando Montes
TEXTS AND SONGS
The texts recited by the three characters are edited versions of their testimonies, extractad from the book Women in the War by Patricia Lara, Editorial Planeta 2000. The texts of the actress were taken from the Kogi myth “The Creation of lhe World” that appears in the book Los Kogi by Gerardo Reichel Dolmatoff, Procultura 1985, and they include sorne words of our own.
Edited words of the following songs:
– Dónde están las flores (Where hava al/ tha f/owers gana), by Pete Seeger
– La llorona (The woman who cries), Mexican folklore
– Oh, hilando (Spinning) folklore from the Chocó Department (West Coast)
– To the olive tree, spanish folklore
– Únicamente tú (Only you), by Felipe Pirela»
– Matide Lina, by Le o Díaz»
– Ya se fueron por los valles de Barraca
(They went away through the Valleys of Barraca),variation on
the words by José Domingo Garzón
– Plétano maduro, Colombian Caribbean Coast folklore
– Un bergantín velero (A Clipper), Chilean folklore,
compiled and arranged by Violeta Parra
– Jamaica farewel, by Lord Burgess
– Summer Time, from the Opera Porgy and Bess by George Gershwin
– Coplas de Jorge Manrique a la muerte de su padre
(Verses by Jorge Manrique as a homage to his father),
musicalizad version by Paco lbáñez
– Yemayá, Cuban “Santería» song
PATRICIA LARA
Since 1974 she has been working as a journalist in Colombia, always working in the front lines. She was one of the founders of the weekly magazine Nueva Frontera where she worked as manager and editor. She studied Philosophy at Los Andes University, did graduate Journalism and Communication studies in Paris and then got her Masters Degree from Columbia University in New York. She was correspondent of magazines Alternativa (Colombia) and Proceso (Mexico), and also of the daily journal El Espectador as well as of the Colombian radio network Caracol. She wrote for the magazines Cromos, Semana and Latin American News Letter. Since the 1980s she has been writing for the daily joumal El Tiempo. She was co-founder of magazine Cambio 16 where she worked as President for 5 years and Editor for 2 years. She was nominated to the National Journalism CPB Award in 1982 for her book Siembra vientos y recogerás tempestades (Sow Winds and You Will Harvest Storms). She earned a special mention at the Simón Bolívar National Journalism Award, 1983 edition, for her interview to Colombian senator Augusto Espinosa. In 1994 she shared with journalists Antonio Caballero and Dario Restrepo the National Joumalism CPB Award for her report on drugs trafficking. She received the Planeta Joumalism Award 2002 for her book Las Mujeres en le Guera (Women in the War).
FERNANDO MONTES
He studied in París with Jacques Lecoq, Monique Pagneux and Ryzard Cieslak during four years, and then in ltaly for five years under the direction of Master Jerzy Grotowski. He is co-founder and artistic director of the Theater Groop Varasanta. Among the plays he has staged, special mention must be made of La conferencia de los pájaros, an adaptation by Carriére of a poem by Farid Uddin Attar; Brothers Karamazov, an adaptation of the novel by Fiador Dostoievski; El Primer Hermano (The First Brother), an apocryphal fable; Flores Fieras (Fierce Flowers) a collective creation of the group, and kilele, that won the main scholarship of the Colombian Cultural Ministry for Theatre in 2005; Una temporada en el infierno -Le livre da la folie, coproduction with France; Animula Vagula Blandula, Pieces of Liberty that won the scholarship from the Cultural Ministry 2009. Director of the Grotowski’ Project 2009 in Colombia. Director of both monologues, Women in the war and Where will the roed leeds. He is professor in various national and foreignin stitutions and a specialist in the training of actors.
CREDITS
Author: Patricia Lara
Dramatics and edition: Carlota Llano, Fernando Montes
Actress: Carlota Llano
Director: Fernando Montes
Design of scenery and costumes: Cristina Llano
Design of lights: Guillermo Pedraza
Technical director: Giovanny López
Photography: Carlos Mario Lema
The play has a total duration of one hour and 25 minutes, without intermission.
SYNOPSIS
The actress enters the stage singing a song against war. She then begins to tell a Kogi myth about the creation of the world, in which our ancestors tell us that in the beginning there was only the Mother and reveal how her sons finally came back to her alter many fights because she is both the beginning and the end. With this myth the actress interweaves the stories of the four characters: Dora Margarita, the former guerrillera; Chave from the paramilitary army; Juana Sánchez, the displaced mother of three girls, and Margot, the wife of an admiral and mother of three guerrilleros.
The characters appear in this order, always in front of the public, through small changes in costumes and some essential elements that characterize them. They tell us their stories with their spoken words and their songs.
Margarita was born in Medellin in the midst of poverty. Her most intensely engraved memories are about the hunger she used to feel when she was a chid. When she was still very young, she was persuaded by a priest to join the ELN (National Liberation Army). She then went to light for the M-19 guerrilla movement and finally, after many years of hardship, she decided to abandon the guerrilla in order to look after her mother. She finds in metaphysics a way of understanding life.
Chave was bom in the caribean lands and began helping the farmers and she was friendly with the guerrillas; but, because theirs atrocities, she began to work with the paramilitaries ‘in order to help the farmers’, in her words. Her testimony end when she is in yale.
Juana was born in the countryside. Ali along her lite she has suffered displacement. lt was first his father that had to leave his beautiful farm located alongside the Magdalena river because of the arrival of the guerrilla. That same organization forced her to leave the farm she had established with her first husband through very hard work. Then it was the paramilitary who forced her out with her second husband and her small girls. They were driven to the city where they barely could earn their living. Alter much suffering there they could get a small house. This acquisrtion gives them some comfort but it cannot mitigate the pain of having lost their piece of land.
Margot was bom to a well to do and beautiful family. She was the daughter of a colonel, and the wife of an admiral. She bore three children who later became guerrilleros and had to raise three of her grandchidren.She is above all a loving and caring mother as well as a practicing catholic. She had to live through the violent death of two of her children and through a murder attempt directed against a third son.
After developing the three characters, the actress tells us something about her own story. She then ooncludes with the end of the Kogi myth.The end of the play oonsists of an invocation-homage to Yemayá the goddess of the sea and the woman.
BRIEF ABOUT THE PLAY
The play is an adaptation of the same name book,laced with texts of the Kogi’ miths and differents source´songs. The mise on scene tooked 7 month. The play opened in Nalional Theatre in august of 2001, were it did two seasons with great success . Besides, we have done private performances for universities, ONG, ministeries, etc. in Bogotá and many colombian cities like Cali, Medellín, Cartagena. Mompox, Sincelejo, Popayán, Buga, lpiales, Pasto, Cúcuta, Villanueva, Maicao, Bucaramanga, Yopal y Quibdó.During 2002-2003 the play had another season in National Theatre, other in Medellín, traveled to Chicago,U.S A and Spain, and did other tours in Colombia. In 2004 performed in Venezuela and Panamá invited by our Foreign Affairs Ministery. In 2005 performed in La Maison de L’Amerique Latine in París, sponsored by the Colombian Embasy in France.
In november 2006 we oponed in the event Magdalena-Antígona-Bogotá the new version that is in repertoy yet, that includes the character of Chave, an roll that apeared in !he other monologue, Where that the roads leads,!he continuation of Women in the war.
In 2007 the best : season in Fundación Gilberto Alzate Avendaño de Bogotá and tour in Uruguay, invitated by the Embajada de Colombia. In the second semester, performances in Book Fair in Guadalajara México, as a member of Colombian delegation.
In november 2010 it had a season in Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo with the other actreess’play, Flying Swing. lt participated in many international festivals : VIII y IX Festival Iberoamericano de teatro de Bogotá, march 2002 and 2004; Festival Internacional de Londrina en Brasil. may 2002; Salamanca, Spain, Cultural Capital 2003; Cultural festiaval in Olimpic Games, Greece june 2004; I Festival de las Artes Escénicas de Panamá, julio 2004; Bolivia’s lntemational Book Fair, 2004; Festival de las Artes 2005 de Cali; Teatro Stage Festival de New York, junio 2008, XXI Festival del Sur, Islas Canarias, july 2008, and in Colombianists Congress,Charlottesville, USA, julio de 2009.
In 2011, she participated ein Teatro Netto festival in Israel and performed in Casa Amércica, Madrid.
ONU Mujeres y comisión de Memoria Histórica celebrated in Bogotá the tenth’s aniversary with a performance and homage for the real women in centro Cultural Gabriel García Márquez in november 2011.
Nowdays we have presented the play plus than 295 and twenty times.
WE THANK ALL THOSE WHO MADE POSSIBLE THIS WORK, DEDICATED TO EVERY MAN AND WOMAN WHO IS IN SEARCH FOR LIGHT FOR OUR COUNTRY.
TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS
FOR PROSCENIUM THEATRES
Stage
Minimum stage area: 1O x 6 mts.
Minimum proscenium width: 10 mts.
Minimum proscenium height: 5 mts.
Minimum s age depth:6 mts.
Maximum apron width: 1.50 mts.
Battens to hang the painted cyclorama: 3
Dressing rooms: 1
