We begun this project in 2002 when through a series of games we devised diverse ways of playing out performatic narratives, using video and dance as our main instruments.
Before we wrote the script for Blak Mama we presented two versions of the play. The first -premiered in 2002 with Orts Theater from Toucson- we called Blak Mama/Abandoned Boundaries. A second, more elaborate version, we presented in November of 2004. In both cases we worked with a cast made up entirely of professional dancers. In August 2006 we shot the film version of Blak Mama which will be premiered in movie theaters in Ecuador in late March 2007. For the film version we wrote screen play and incorporated to the cast two professional actors.
Blak Mama springs from our interest in certain hybrid cultural expressions that are visible in folk festivals such as the Mama Negra celebration which takes place twice a year in the highlands of Ecuador. This ritual -which some scholars say originates in Northern Africa- was brought to South America by the Spanish conquistadores. Here it has undergone many transformations, incorporating to its mise en scene a visual and ritualistic baggage that has colored it with profound yet mysterious significance. This sort symbolic layering of identities is complex, hybrid, unfathomable and fascinating.
We've come up with a tragic-comic of sorts, a discourse moving somewhere in between the cliché of a supposed tragedy that originates mestizo culture and its explosive counter part: the bizarre, the hilarious, the baroque and the absurd.
Just like in many comic books our characters express themselves from the crust more than they do from a deep and complex soul. They are not essential beings, they project something that is read from the outside, in the wrapping, in the costume and the pose.
Blak, I don Dance and Bambola are the protagonists of this fantastic tale of transformation. During their voyage they will fashion their identities on models taken from Ecuador's pop culture: Carishina (the she/male), Mama Negra (the black male-mistress with the black Barbie-doll), Star Angel (the hermaphrodite), the Virgin Mary, the Cop, Urcuyaya (the provider)...
Personal transformation stems from insatisfaction, desire and fantasy. When becoming the desired other, cross-dressing can be the first step. Dress like him, dress like her, we'll see what’s next.
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- Miguel Alvear and Patricio Andrade, 2007
