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CASA Festival's Night of Ideas
By Gwenni Hawkins
CASA festival is an award-winning Latin American Theatre Festival, which has been running since 2007. Despite a proliferation in Latin American cinema, music, visual arts and literature, founder Daniel Goldman felt there was a void in terms of theatrical representation which needed to be filled. Through its output, the festival attempts to facilitate relations between UK-based and Latin American theatre makers, and to represent and engage the Latin American culture in this country.
To launch the 2014 festival, CASA hosted an all-nighter on Saturday the 13th of September, with a range of output from discussions and speakers, through to live music and film screenings. It was held in the Rose Lipman Building in Haggerston, an ideal setting, with various rooms and spaces in the venue used to facilitate the multitude of arts on offer. It was also refreshing to hear from the organisers, of the support Hackney Council had given to the project. Whereas criticism is often levied at Hackney Council for failing to address the legitimate problem of gentrification the area faces, the work CASA does flies in the face of an increasingly alienated multicultural society, instead fostering links within the community through both grassroots and professional theatre.
A particularly prescient and relevant talk on migration, both in general and within the Latin American demographic, was held in the middle of the evening. The talk was chaired by Ben Maloney, and the panel consisted of Andrew Higginbottom, Mabel Encinas, Gladys Medina and Mónica del Pilar Uribe Marin. The misrepresentation of migrants in this country, both in the media and within migrant communities themselves was discussed, and highlighted once again why strong representation and dialogue, such as that facilitated by CASA, is so incredibly vital.
While this evening was a fantastic stand-alone event (fingers crossed CASA do the same next year!), the excitement and standard of the evening set a strong precedent for the festival to come. In short, I would encourage everybody to have a look at the CASA website (http://www.casafestival.org.uk/festival), and book for as many shows as possible. The sheer breadth of work on offer is a testament to the quality of Latin American theatre available in London, and any individual will surely be enriched for plundering it as thoroughly as possible.
@PostScriptJour
