1000 Ways to Play in Havana, CubaNotes from the Ground Gathered by Sam Tower

It’s often said that Havana, Cuba feels like a step back in time.  But the Havana I experienced lives in the here and now.

From May 24 – June 1, over 450 practitioners, educators, students, researchers, presenters, and arts professionals from across the world gathered in Havana, Cuba for the tri-annual ASSITEJ World Congress, to celebrate and advance arts and culture for young people internationally.

The 21st ASSITEJ World Congress & Performing Arts Festival for Children & Young People opened with a lively parade from the beautiful Plaza Vieja to the historic Anfiteatro De La Habana, where La Colmenita de Cuba offered a performance of an original satirical work titled La Cucarachita. A impressive undertaking, the show featured dozens of children and boasted an astonishing amount of tightly choreographed dance, song, scene work and costume changes. A loyal audience of local families gathered to enjoy the performance alongside the hundreds of ASSITEJ delegates.

ASSITEJ International President Sue Giles shared with the audience that the idea to bring the World Congress to Iberoamerica was hatched in 2019. Here we are, 5 years later, Voices of a New World has come to fruition, and what a massive accomplishment it was. Over 1000 artists from over 70 countries gathered together for 25 performances from 5 continents, 65 workshops and discussions. We joined the children of Havana in venues all over the city to be transported by the magic of theatre. The vibrant and diverse cultures of Iberoamerica took center stage for an international audience, and I felt the magnitude of this convening for the Latin American and Caribbean diasporas. It was a powerful homecoming to witness.

I had the extraordinary privilege to be among these international delegates representing my home city of Philadelphia as an artist-producer with Ninth Planet and Cannonball Festival, and as an advocate for my incredible community of independent artists, educators, and cultural workers who make performances with, and for, young people and families. The Havana that greeted me was full of great abundance – overflowing with affection, music, color, celebration, joy, and generosity. The passion and pride of the Cuban community was in every musical note, every dance step, every uproarious cheer from the crowd, every kiss on the cheek, every hug between friends, and every child’s joy to be part of something so big and beautiful.

This year’s World Congress also saw the largest delegation from the United States, with 44 US delegates in attendance. I felt fortunate to move through the experience in community with colleagues who could help each other prepare, navigate, and problem-solve before arrival and throughout the conference and festival itself. It was never difficult to find a buddy or a new friend to travel with in Havana, and it was a great privilege to get to know so many members of the TYA/USA network in such a creatively stimulating environment.

While our time spent together as a community can be so joyful, I also find that the dissonance of representing the United States abroad can be very disorienting. I found that to be especially true in Cuba, as the island’s people suffer from extreme poverty and lack of resources due to the nation’s worst economic crisis in decades. While the Covid-19 pandemic has poorly affected the tourism industry, the historic and ongoing economic and social struggle of the Cuban people can be credited largely to the impacts of a history of US military occupation, the longest enduring trade embargo in modern history, and its current designation on the US State Sponsor of Terrorism List. The scarcity of resources is keenly felt among citizens, and poverty levels remain extremely high. Electricity is being rationed, resulting in frequent rolling blackouts. Citizens facing food, fuel and medicine shortages took to the streets in protest in March 2024, a rare and meaningful action that signifies the severity of their circumstances. Yet despite these difficult conditions, we were greeted with enormous generosity by ASSITEJ Cuba, the local artist community, and the open-hearted people of Havana, who shared their beautiful culture with abundance. The hospitality and ingenuity of the Cuban people set the tone for the week, and when the power went out unexpectedly during performances at the Bertolt Brecht Cultural Center, festival artists continued their shows by the light of an open stage-door and a constellation of cell phone flashlights

The hustle of the week would eventually bring me to the dark theatre, but it started in a breezy, sun-soaked studio. I began the first day of the conference by offering a hands-on Workshop for Early Years Practitioners in a second floor dance studio in Old Havana with the windows wide open and fans blowing loudly. It was an honor to be invited by Amanda Pintore; fellow artist, researcher and Assistant Professor at Arizona State University, to facilitate this workshop alongside her. It had been 7 years since I attended my first ASSITEJ World Congress in Cape Town, South Africa to study Theatre and Dance for Early Years, and I returned this time to share my own practice of creating performance for babies, children and families in Philadelphia with Ninth Planet. Our workshop offered attendees the chance to share what drives their practice directly with each other. We led artists through a series of activities focused on how they measure attunement in early years performance, interaction and sensory connection between performers and their audiences, and finally, devising techniques and strategies we’ve developed as artists.

I spent much of the week focused on conversations about performance for early years, beginning with Thinking About Artistic Creation For Early Years led by Adrián Hernández and José Agüero, directors and performers from Teatro al Vacío (México / Argentina), hosted by Small Size Network. As they talked about their artistic approach, they emphasized that while theatre could be seen as all art forms combined into one, they see theatre as starting from a personal relationship. Things happen when we meet together that couldn’t happen otherwise – to be in space together is to build connection. They used the Spanish word convivir to describe this experience. Translated in English, convivir means to “live together,” or to be alive together as Adrian and Jose define it. This desire for connection shows up in their playful works of physical theatre for the very young. They described their performances as experimenting with liminality, or existing in a space of ambiguity or abstraction. When creating together, they look for ways to break out of their comfort zones, push their expectations, and move the limits of what’s possible. For children in their early years, expectations are fluid and limitations of thought don’t exist in the same way that they exist for us as older people, so the liminal space that is created between the performance and the audience can be incredibly playful and abstracted.

Adrian and Jose focus their work on the experience of children 0-3 years old, and they consider their work to be a political action to make visible those who are not always visible. When so much energy and emphasis is placed on the older children in a group or a family, to focus on the baby’s experience is a radical and critical endeavor. The conversation in the room shifts to focus on the many ways that intergenerational audiences experience performance, and the politics of inclusion within early years performance. Delegates from Latin America offer the perspective that babies and very young children are often included in cultural experiences along with their whole family, and that often multiple generations of the family will gather for an artistic experience. This was evident at the opening performance of La Cucarachita, where hundreds of families gathered to dance, sing, and parade down the narrow streets of Old Havana to the historic amphitheater. But more rarely are babies and young children focused on as the primary audience of a cultural event. To design an experience that centers the unique emotional and physical access needs of the baby and the very young child is to value their citizenship in our culture, and to create an artistic experience that their whole family can participate in is to be inclusive of their community. Adrian and Jose urged us to believe in the young child’s ability to take it all in. Just like audiences of an older age, babies and young children want to understand. They want to know you, and they want to be part of the world. Convivir!

I was lucky to also catch a workshop called BODIES AT PLAY with two artists from San Luis Potosi, Mexico, Mayela Guadarrama Briones and Jacobo Núñez Prieto, representing their independent company, ¡Caracoles! Danza Teatro. Beginning with the simple question of “what is play?”, Mayela and Jacobo offered an in-depth discussion about their work in rural central Mexico, where they offer ongoing play workshops for early childhood (0-6 years old). Using the Reggio Emilia Approach, they create spaces for children and caregivers to follow their interests together through imaginative and collaborative play. In their hometown, there is not a lot of pre-existing context for what they are offering families. They’ve worked hard to convey that their play workshops are not daycare for children, but rather an activity that caregivers do with their children.

Mayela and Jacobo discussed the challenges they face in Mexico, where mothers must be especially cautious when traveling with their children. They are always balancing the child’s right to access and the child’s right to safety when offering their workshops in public spaces. They take precautions and set up boundaries with cones and chairs, and they hang up signs that say CHILDREN AT PLAY.  However, “Being obsessed with safety can be restrictive”, they shared. With self-guided play, too many limits can hinder opportunities for learning. On the other hand, game play is fun because it has rules and challenges. This dichotomy is familiar to educators and artists, who are always seeking to find a balance between restriction and freedom, safety and risk.

Mayela and Jacobo offered the Reggio Emilia concept of The Hundred Languages of Children as a guiding principle, which is a metaphor for the extraordinary potential of children to create, manifest, and build meaning. We must create hundreds, even thousands of ways to do the same thing. If our educational spaces reinforce the idea that there is only one “right” way to approach a task, we run the risk of cutting off creativity, and in doing so, stifling the children’s opportunities for learning. Mayela and Jacobo led us through a few games they use in their play workshops, including a game where two partners balance a stick with the tension between their two fingers. These simple but universal approaches remind us that play is always possible, and that joy is always waiting. When faced with hostile, threatening learning environments, children’s brains and bodies are not free to experience joy. When we are not free to play, we cannot imagine expansively or grow together. “To learn, you must be able to have fun,” they offered. “Anything that lets you play can be a toy. You don’t need much.” Mayela and Jacobo remind us that no one has to “study play” to be able to do it. It is an inherent ability of people to play. “The gift of childhood is that play is always available and simple. No one has to learn it – it’s our right.” No matter who we are or what we have, play is always possible. When we look at our limitations, we may also see opportunities. What we have is what we will use. 

This is also the ethos of Memory Wax’s PLAYGROUND, which was presented simultaneously to the ASSITEJ World Congress as part of Tránsitos Habana – Scandinavian Cultural Days. This is a biennial program where artists from Scandinavia and Cuba present their work through performances, workshops, showcases, exhibitions and lectures. The goal is to focus and develop continuous cultural exchanges between Cuban and Scandinavian artists in the area of visual arts, film, performing arts and music, reaching both children and adults across Havana.

PLAYGROUND is a simple but sophisticated dance using everyday objects that could be found anywhere. “The poetry and the mystery that lives in everyday life, in spaces, in people and objects with which we interact everyday. PLAYGROUND invites you to see reality from different perspectives.”  This work was choreographed by Miguel Azcue of Memory Wax (Sweden) with an ensemble of young Cuban performers from Retazos Theater Dance Company (Cuba), and has been in development since 2020 when they began their process on Zoom with household objects. What began as playful experimentation, has become a deeply moving visual journey of relationship, culture, and resourcefulness. Each object they introduce is used in a simple way, and then takes on an unexpected relationship with the body, and slowly (or swiftly) accumulates a new meaning for the performers evolving into a wordless but evocative physical score. The ensemble has become extremely adept at fully embodying the meaning of each moment, and then just as quickly as it came over them, they are able to let it go, shifting together into an entirely new relationship.

“There are a thousand ways to do the same thing,” offered Miguel to a group of students who have come to Retazos for a workshop with the company. I watched the ensemble playing the same game we played with ¡Caracoles! Danza Teatro, except this time, the sticks came in the form of two dozen bamboo poles that are held up by brave student volunteers against one dancing body, forming otherworldly shapes with the tension, mystifying their onlooking classmates.

Another highlight of my experience in Havana was the opportunity to attend a showing of the Boy & the Ball by Stephen Noonan in partnership with The Paperboats from Australia in a local preschool alongside a classroom full of young learners. This delightful work of physical theatre lit up the room with only a collection of cardboard tubes and tennis balls, delicately positioning 3-4 year old children as experts in collecting and sharing the bright bouncing orbs. Stephen performed in very close proximity to his very young audiences, surprising them with magical entrances and exits, and responding to their rhythms and curiosities from start to finish. The piece transforms a familiar classroom into a cardboard playground, and the game is only won by sharing what you find with a friend.

Games have restrictions and limitations which are meant to be challenged. The theme of the “ball” came up again in Bounced by Magnet Theatre from South Africa, where four young friends push the limits of their friendships – playing tricks on one another and breaking the rules of every new game as fast as they can invent them. The space Magnet Theatre creates on stage feels limitless when the friends play together, but small and dark when someone gets excluded. The agony of loneliness is explored in full color, an inevitable experience of being human. I am reminded of the sentiment ¡Caracoles! Danza Teatro shared with us; “The gift of childhood is that play is always available.”  The game of Bounced is that joy is always waiting just around the corner, if we can embrace it together.

Our differences are what make life joyful. We saw this idea play out through intricate choreography and the goofy antics of the ensemble in Schön Anders / Beautifully Different by Ceren Oran & Moving Borders onstage at the striking Teatro Nacional de Cuba. This piece reveals the connection between our behavior and the habits we form as a group. Sunglasses become a comical running theme, and idiosyncratic movement sequences shine as a sort of personal language. As the dynamics of this group begin to shift, their influence over one another is made visible, and they balance, tilt, shake, jump and roll together. The work offers a whimsical and poignant take on the feeling of belonging.

Delegates were privileged to be invited to see performances of Ttok, Ttok, Ttok by Play BST from Korea, which were specially performed during the conference in Cuba to give professionals an insight into the production. This gorgeous work offers a “sensory-friendly performance specifically designed for children with developmental disabilities while also providing a safe, comfortable, and enjoyable experience for non-disabled families and guardians as well.” Upon entering, we were given a name tag with our name written in Korean, allowing the performers to refer to us individually. We cozied up close to one other on patches of soft rugs, and we were welcomed into a playful world activated by sparkles, dancing, and of course, bouncing balls of all shapes and sizes. As I was immersed in this delicately crafted work along with my fellow delegates, I felt at ease and in awe, as the four performers gave us gift after gift of live music, beautiful objects, sensory experiences, and poetic invitations to make sounds.

There were dozens of other performances on offer, and we filled our days seeing as many as possible. Although I could not see nearly everything, I was able to attend Famiglie from La Baracca in Italy, El Puente De Piedras Y La Piel De Imágenes by Tijuana Hace Teatro from Mexico, Bedtime! by Drak Theatre & The International Institute Of Figurative Theatre, To Hell With Paradise by The Batida Theatre Company, and a performance of Mirabella from Cuban company El Mirón Cubano in the charming blackbox, Argos Teatro.

Every day, there was a full program of workshops to choose from with topics ranging from scholarly research, to programming dance for young audiences, to radical approaches to accessibility, to day-long intensives on writing musical theatre. Delegates also met at the Biblioteca Nacional to participate in the International Theatre for Young Audiences Research Network (ITYARN) conference focused on Legacy and Innovation in TYA.

The 21st ASSITEJ World Congress & Performing Arts Festival for Children & Young People was one for the books. The music was loud. The sun was hot. The breeze was strong. Colors were bright. Dance was everywhere. We spent our afternoons seeing jubilant and stirring performances, baking in the heat between shows, or enjoying the back of a cab ride on our way to the next theater. We spent our evenings walking along the Malecon sea wall, where people gathered all night to socialize, rest, play, and romance. Creativity is everywhere in Havana, Cuba.

In the theatre, what we have is what we will use. Reinvention is always possible. Material conditions may fluctuate, but our ability to play is inherent. Across cultures, there are a thousand ways to say the same thing, to play the same game, to make the same meaning. Play connects us to the here and now. Although we are across the ocean, across countries, or across cities from one another, it continues to be our life’s work as artists to liberate ourselves through play.