El Ciervo Encantado, a Havana-based theatrical group, returns to New York City for a reprise of Departures, which premiered last year at The Greene Space. Written by Nelda Castillo, the group’s founder and director, Departures grapples with the phenomenon of Cuban emigration from 1959 through the present, and seeks communion with its audiences through personal history. Cuban migration has fragmented families, couples, friendships and communities, becoming a unifying element, a part of Cuban identity.
The performance features actress Mariela Brito as Cuba’s everywoman, telling her own story and those of the many who have departed. Surrounded by photographs of both illustrious and unknown Cubans who left to escape hunger, censorship, persecution and terror, she leads us through the national memory that is never discussed, but that is, among Cubans, an almost physical presence.
Since the suspension of almost all visa processing in Havana over a year ago, it has been all but impossible for Cuban performers to appear in the United States, making this a rare opportunity for New York audiences to engage with artists from the Island. The performance will be presented in Spanish with simultaneous English translation through earphones, followed by a Q&A with the artists.
Pictured above: Actress Mariela Brito in ‘Departures’ (Courtesy of Teatro El Ciervo Encantato)
LA NACIONAL
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The work of director and teacher Nelda Castillo represents one of the most solid and coherent poetics in the contemporary Cuban scene. Her research, conducted through the dynamics of group theater, has enabled her to explore the deep links between memory and national being amid the rigors of contemporary Cuba. Texts that have been set aside or forbidden or that are simply not well-known have allowed her to present onstage a dialogue with the country’s cultural and civil history. Her shows, performances, and interventions are the result of a peculiar strategy of language, entailing a convergence of a distinctive ethical posture 
on theater and on the participation of the artist in society and a stark analysis of the island’s transformation and present, all undertaken through a rigorous examination of contemporary scenic languages and particularly the work of the actor. An actress by training, Nelda Castillo was a founder of the Buendía Theater, a collective created in the classrooms of the Instituto Superior de Arte during the second half of the 1980s by the actress and director Flora Lauten (Cárdenas, 1953). In this group, Nelda Castillo worked as an actress and also directed her first shows, including Las ruinas circulares (1992), a peculiar scenic reading of Don Quixote, inspired by texts by Miguel de Unamuno, José Martí, and Jorge Luis Borges. In 1996 Ms. Castillo founded El Ciervo Encantado, the now internationally recognized Cuba theater company. Its performances and public interventions explore the margins of Cuban national and cultural identity by engaging with current emergencies, seeking to unveil invisibilized aspects of the memory of being Cuban. The company explores the dark areas of the Cuban soul in works that use the visual and sound universe as well as literary, historical, plastic, musical and dance sources in pursuit of a novel artistic language.
This event is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
And is presented with the promotional collaboration of
