“Arrivals”, the most recent play staged by El Ciervo Encantado (The Enchanted Deer), is the continuation, according the programme offered for the show, of a “research about Cuban emigration”, which had like its premise “what joins the Cubans in coming back to the country no matter where we live, our professions, age, political thinking, reasons for returning, among others”.

The show starts with a beautiful and progressive scenic composition. Wearing headphones, the actress can be seen, who is, according to the programme, the one executing the “action on stage”. Lights engineering allows to have an almost phantom vision.

The soundtrack is no other than “Va pensiero”, the chorus from the third act of the opera Nabucco, by Verdi, whose topic is the pain of the exile. On a screen we can read the translation of the song, claiming for the beautiful and lost homeland. The rapture of music starts charging the atmosphere in the hall. The light points to the only space on stage we will then have, and that is now full of lots of bags packed with all the sweets you can imagine. In the middle of a hill of bags with products “from abroad”, stands the actress, looking a little bit disoriented.

And there the tragedy starts. So many bags full of things and little things and more little things are unpacked one by one. The only action on stage starts: putting out and in, emptying the bags, packing the suitcases, organizing in a way that everything fits inside, nothing should be left behind, everything needs to arrive. This long action, without interruption or hurries, is accompanied by what is considered, according to the programme, like a “sonorous and textual action”, which is reciting, using different voices, lists of products: trash, everything you bring when you go abroad for a few days.

When a Cuban arrives after being abroad for a while, they show up with everything they can, sometimes things people asked for, sometimes things they need, sometimes products to sell, sometimes, sometimes, but there is always an excuse to pack the suitcases with anything, because everything is needed. Maybe this is one of the consequences of the wretched circumstance of water everywhere. On top of the mechanics of packing the suitcases there is the whip waiting for you in customs, they remove some of your items, they charge you for extra weight even though you are taking a business trip, and nothing stops you from paying for your bags that are really too much. Anyway, the sea again. Too much water in the middle, separating us from such a big world with so many things we need.

On the other hand there is the Cuban that comes back after being super installed for years living abroad. They bring a heavy load, but not exactly trash. They arrive. They try to enter just like if it is nothing to worry about. In the same wallet where they have the Cuban

passport they carry the other one, or they have a visa in the Cuban one of an acquired residency. They are Cuban and something else. That something else took years. And everything that comes with those years is so heavy that customs cannot weigh or take it away. They have arrived and period. What will happen now? Arrival with empty hands and something strange between your chest and back. This kind of arrivals is what I thought the “research” El Ciervo Encantado recently exposed was referring to.

According to the premises of the theater company or the poetics the project itself declares, it is a group “that integrates elements of the performance art and the scenic show and it is based on a serious research about the expressive means of performance and presentation.

Their proposals go formally and conceptually far from the traditional theatrical language, and they operate in a foggy frontier in which they combine the ritual, the body art, the happening, the staging, the installation and artivism”.

The terms performance, perform, scenic show, presentation, happening, installation, artivism, are just like a disturbed “Bolero” by Ravel, a wild variation on the same theme, grosso modo. Criteria of current theater with a range of non-determinist viewpoints in the foundations because of the possible fusion of terms. Fusion that could create a kind of black hole in which once you go beyond the horizon of events, there will not be any possible return, and you fall into a tangle that is difficult to jump over, even for a goat if it gets too distracted.

“Arrivals” defines itself as a “performance on stage”. Performance and stage are elements that linked might allow, if not a conceptual contradiction, which is the least important aspect, at least an expectation that in this case is not satisfied. Nevertheless, “Arrivals” is a scenic show with all the components that characterize a traditional play (position of the audience, use of the stage, use of the technical resources, staging, lights, sound, linguistic text, performance, among others).

Because of the creative caliber of the group and reading in the programme it was a “performance on stage”, I was expecting the opposed surfaces in both concepts to explode while making contact, and there were a disintegration and a provocative enunciation would take place.

However, the traditional scenic space remains inviolable, even caged using the lights, really beautiful, but there is no performance, the interaction with the audience is limited through determining a very passive fourth wall.

A performance mixes and turns into everyday life the routines in an agile and daring, random and hazardous way. The staging of “Arrivals” is a repeated performative action –and if you will excuse the repetition- of the almighty “text” that is heard in off through voices that are a testimony of putting together more and more trash. From that “text” it is very difficult to take signs to confront and create a scenic figuration. The fictionalization of the “text” never happens. They never reach a dynamic visualization. There is no dramaturgical progression in and with the “sonorous and textual action” that is supposed to

be the dramatic or linguistic “text”, according to the programme. The scene is not productive. Being a performative production of the “text” it is easily exhausted in its expository practice. The effects in meaning are irrelevant. A verbal system with no contrast is used all the time, which as a “text” is unable to produce effective actions in generating affections in the audience. There is no conjunction of signs. There are no visual or sonorous contrasts.

“Arrivals”, as a global spectacular text, is tiring despite its intentions to make the drama more agile. It tries to be reactive, renovating the conception of the stage. There is a quest through a dramaturgical instrumentation, which is even meta-theatrical, with the purpose of a different hermeneutics in the scenic creation. But there is no development of the significant systems in a single immutable scenic proposal, repetitive, without any dialectics.

The lights design becomes swamped. The music only sounds, even when the show is opened by Verdi and closed with “Bolero” by Ravel, with their energizing and perfect variations on the same theme that have nothing to do with the scenic language used here.

“Arrivals” does not propose a fiction, it tries really hard to be all real, and the stage demands invention, it must superimpose reality.

El Ciervo Encantado made me dislike “Arrivals”. It has been a long time since last time saw a piece by this singular group that, without hesitation, had been among the most daring in the contemporary Cuban theater. I still remember and celebrate the energy of De dónde son los cantantes; (Where the singers are from), Pájaros de la playa; (Beach Birds), La siempreviva; (The Sempervivum), shows with a passion and renovation that I never got even close to feel in “Arrivals”.

Translation by Alberto Morales