culture special

Specters of child labor haunt Panama's streets and stages
by Katie Zien

May 12 marked the debut of Raúl Leis's play Curados de espanto at the Panama Canal Authority's Ascanio Arosemena Auditorium. The play, which was presented before an appreciably large audience in a limited engagement --- one night only --- was a noteworthy event for several reasons. First, its production process and content merge the performing arts and the situation of labor in Panama --- an unusual combination for this country, which does not have a strong tradition of workers' theater. The play was co-sponsored by the Panamanian Ministry of Labor and Development (Ministerio de Trabajo y Desarrollo Laboral) and the Panamanian Institute of Labor Studies (Instituto Panameño de Estudios Laborales, or IPEL). Its cast consisted largely of working people --- in other words, non-professional actors with day jobs --- and young children. Moreover, its director, Noel Pinzón, had his start working with the Teatro Estudantil Panameño (TEP) in 1969 and has since assumed the role of the IPEL's cultural coordinator. The medium-sized cast's dedication production of this caliber --- high-tech, with a variety of facets to be expounded below --- was impressive, and the audience appropriately appreciative of the fact.

Another aspect of the play worth unpacking is its title. Curados de espanto is an ambiguous phrase --- according to Raúl Leis, fairly common street slang in Panama --- with several interpretations: it literally means "cured of/from fear," but it could also mean "healed by fear," as if being in the vicinity of something that you feared would cure you of said fear.

Espanto means both "fear" and "ghost." Indeed, the title refers to the play's central plot, in which three characters seek to publish a travel guide to Panama's tourist attractions by infusing historic sites with the presence of ghosts: unrequited lovers, wandering lloronas, that mawkish sort of thing. This haunted history fad has worked in other countries, they reason, and so it should attract tourists to Panama, even if the ghosts have to be fabricated by the guidebook's authors. As the three travel to Panama's scenic locations --- the Plaza Catedral, Chiriquí, beaches, and the like --- they encounter child workers in every location, offering to shine their shoes, selling food, catching lobsters, working in kitchens, or just panhandling. These, of course, are the real "ghosts," though the three do not notice these ubiquitous tragedies, so intent are they on uncovering (and inventing) romantic histories of adultery, murder, suicide, and revenge. Finally, however, they are unable to ignore the presence of child workers, when a fourteen-year-old prostitute stumbles into their home, pursued by her pimp and fearing for her life.

I found the production's use of scenography and text intriguing: although I knew of the subject matter beforehand, I could easily see how the play was attempting to educate and inform audiences about the problem of child labor without engaging in panfletismo, or a more direct and propagandistic, and therefore ostensibly off-putting, approach. Notably, in many of my interviews with political theatre artists, interlocutors have mentioned --- sometimes defensively --- their desire not to engage in panfletismo but rather to find new ways to create political performance, as if direct didacticism is a major faux pas. I for one sometimes think that it is appropriate, and Raúl Leis is one of those playwrights who is not afraid to sprinkle it atop his work to give it a certain zest, shall we say. At the same time, Leis is a talented and well-read author clearly influenced by Brecht, Freire, Boal, and a slew of others and also looking to concoct his own blend of political theatre.

Avoiding the ills of panfletismo, therefore, the play succeeded in its goals to educate while entertaining. My fears of being led through a cringingly painful cautionary tale had bloomed at the beginning, as a young girl (Geli Vargas) sang a sad song about ten dogs who each met painful ends, but they were quickly quelled, and I found myself happily pulled into the tale of three friends (Benjamín Avila, Dimas Díaz, and the excellent Yadira Morán) seeking to exploit a silly fad to make a quick buck.

While this central story was light and produced frequent laughs from the audience, as the play continued we became increasingly aware of an uncomfortable disconnect between the humorous plot and the presence of child laborers onstage and in photographs that were projected toward the back of the stage, behind the actors. These children remained on the margins both physically and plot-wise for the majority of the play, until they began to creep into the center --- an ingenious move made possible by a combination of scenographic maneuvers and directorial choices. The set was structural and sparse, save a few details that pointed up familiar sites and sights in Panama, often accompanied by a leitmotif. One early scene, that of the friends stuck in traffic and swearing profusely, had everyone laughing even as the protagonists waved away the child vendors who swarmed their car.

Even as the two plots converged in the figure of the child prostitute Fernanda (María Alejandra Reyes), the humorous plot's exponents did not give way so easily to panfletismo. At first the three friends dismissed the girl's pleas for asylum, and only later did they appear to listen to her, although this was ambiguous due to the abstract mise-en-scene and blocking, which seemed to portray two contiguous but separate settings. In any case, the three friends inclined their bodies toward Fernanda and a female neighbor who had taken her in. Fernanda divulged her tragic tale of exploitation --- one of the only sentimental parts of the play --- and the neighbor exhorted her to report her pimp's abuses to the police, which she then vowed to do. I felt that the transition from levity to gravitas was a unique moment but could have been more effective with the substitution of a more comprehensible trajectory for the comic plot.

After the encounter between Fernanda and the neighbor, something unexpected happened: the scene changed, and the house lights came up on two narrators wearing elaborate feathered masks. Taking off the masks, the male and female narrators (Daniel Ogando and Anna Bieberach) directed us to three colored sheets of paper that had been inserted into our programs. They then asked us several questions, in response to which we were to raise the sheet of paper whose color corresponded to our opinion. The first question asked us how many in the audience were women, how many men, and how many children. The second question: "have you ever witnessed children working in Panama?" Nearly everyone raised the green paper signifying "yes," while only one person (and tentatively at that) raised a yellow page for "no." Other questions asked us to what causes we attributed child labor --- ignorance, the victims' families, and the like. The responses were interesting, their material effects resonant. After this section, the narrators asked us what we thought should be done to correct the situation, or what steps could be taken --- and, as if to denounce any upwelling of cynicism from the audience, another narrator (Ahychel Elías) emerged to read to us a list of measures that we could take if we saw children working. The ideas offered ranged from informing the police to filing a human rights case with the UN or seeking another form of supranational justice. This informative segment was followed by a group of girls who performed a choreographed dance to a song by Rómulo Castro with words by the poet Constance Tomás, "Hay un Supermercado en el Semáforo." The girls' dance seemed to suggest a hopeful future for Panamanian youth, bringing us through the arc of despair/cynicism to a positive, forward-looking conclusion. But the fact that the dancers were children, and young girls at that, did not entirely dispel our fears for their safety; after all, we had just witnessed a scene featuring a young female prostitute. Moreover, the child actors flanked the dancers, wearing masks, and the play ended with the same sad song by the children (Geli, Eric, and Juan Julio Vargas). Thus, we did not end smiling in amnesia but with a renewed conviction to reflect upon and address the issue as best we could.

Given all of these elements: the heterogeneous makeup of the crowd, the post-handover location (the auditorium of the former Balboa High School, in what once was the US-administered Panama Canal Zone), and the play's innovative components of scenography, choreography, musical selections, text, and acting --- I found Curados de espanto to be an extraordinary event, and I hope that it makes the rounds again in the near future.