PWB at El Berrinche Ambiental – By Rob Thorburn

It seems to me that one of the main aims of any charity should be to make itself obsolete. By that I mean that if the ‘thing’ that the charity provides is in some way already covered at the point of contact, then in theory the charity no longer needs to go there and work. Right? Well, maybe.

One of the most fascinating things about this Performers Without Borders project in Nicaragua is our contact with La Escuela de Comedia y el Mimo in Granada. The school runs social circus, theatre, clowning and mime work in the local communities, and each year hosts a festival called ‘El Berrinche Ambiental’, which is dedicated to all of these subjects as well as having a large environmental twist.

So if there is a local organisation already doing what PWB does, why are we coming here?

First of all, it’s not as simple as it might sound. The school was set up around 10 years ago by Diego Gené – a clown from Venezuela – and was initially a social theatre project working with gang members from local barrios. The project grew, and a few years later they were able to buy some land and build an amazing place called La Casa de las Botellas – literally a house made of plastic bottles; as well as a theatre space and training room. Each day they feed and assist around 60 children with schoolwork, as well as housing several of the project members and providing a venue for the festival.

Although the core members are incredibly talented, they are still very young and relatively inexperienced in the world of theatre and circus. Rafa Largaespada, one of the original students, is now the Director of La Escuela at only 25, and most of the group are in their teens or early 20s. They have incredible energy, huge grins, great skills, and a real drive to make La Escuela into a self-sustaining project that can do outreach and performance work further afield. In the past year they have taken over a city-centre café with a performance space and want to buy it outright, build a hostel and thus ensure a steady income to support the school.

So… PWB have come to visit with a few goals for our two trips to Granada – one just past and a second at the end of our tour. We want to support the festival and help it raise money to further their project. We want to help develop the skills of the Escuela core team in performance, teaching, safety and administration so that they can improve what they have to offer and become the organisation they want to be. We want to work with their kids directly and share our skills with our dubious Spanish.  We also want to experience and assist in the creation of a festival that brings people together from all over Latin America, creating contacts for future PWB teams and individuals across an incredibly vibrant continent.

The festival itself was an amazing and slightly nerve-wracking experience for a team fresh out of boot-camp. Amazing as we were meeting artists from many different countries, getting to watch great shows, teaching local and street children circus, learning huge amounts about the culture and way of life here… and nerve-wracking mainly for 2 reasons –  firstly we were all pretty unsure of our language skills, and secondly we were treated as famous international circus guests with a fantastic professional show! Little did they know that we had met as a group for the first time only 8 days previously. Fortunately the Spanish held up well and improved quickly with constant conversation, but the pre-show nerves only increased as we watched a number of brilliant groups present their creations, including my highlights Circo Fantazztico from Costa Rica and the Venezuelan National Circus Company. When our turn finally came around, we had to deal with our incredibly British punctuality clashing with ‘Nica-time’ – a great lesson in patience as our bus didn’t pick us up until 5 minutes before we were due to go on! Sure enough everything was fine – we turned up, hung around a little, finally went on nearly 90 minutes late, and had a great show. As it was the first run it was a little ropey in places, but we enjoyed ourselves, as did the crowd and festival-goers. We followed it up with two shorter cabaret style shows, both of which went down very well indeed, with Jake and Moira starring on slackrope and accordion and generally being the life and soul of the festival.

Each day we spent a few hours in the morning working with kids from the local area who came to the Casa de las Botellas to learn circus. The aim of this was to involve them in a huge performance of all the festival and community on the Saturday. In the end only a few of the kids were able to take part, but those that did had a great time on stage, and the community show was very well received. We struggled a little with the timetabling, again being so used to strict schedules meant we were uncertain what to do when the rest of the world seemed to ignore the plan! But somehow each day seemed to get to the end without major disasters and we slowly loosened up… and as we’re finding everywhere we have been so far, the kids learned very quickly – we can’t wait to get back in April for some more focused time with them.

So was it worth PWB coming to El Berrinche Ambiental? Yes, of course! We learned loads, taught loads, helped raise money for them, made great friends and contacts amongst the arts and social circus scenes, met up with many voluntary workers and organisations, shared our skills in person and on stage, made heaps of people smile, and had a great time. It was great to work with the team from La Escuela de Comedia y Mimo, and we hope it is the start of a long and fruitful partnership between them and PWB.

If you would like to know more about La Escuela or to support them, please visit their website:  http://www.escueladecomedia.org/ or for a lovely blog on their background have a read of this:  http://www.travelrinserepeat.com/the-circus-kids-of-granada/

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