Drama Cubano

On the other side of town, in the warehouse venue of Teatro La Ma Teodora's La Magagna, Cuban actress Grettel Trujillo performed El Enano en la Botella, a Spanish-language monologue written by Cuban writer Abilio Estevez and inspired by a close friend who left Cuba in the early Nineties. This richly crafted text is an allegory about a dwarf trapped in a bottle. It is easy to see the bottle as Communist Cuba, although that is just the most obvious of many possible interpretations.

Ingeniously this script embraces the didactic and thereby transcends it. El Enano (the dwarf) periodically scrawls on a chalkboard at center stage. He writes: "The distance between desperation and hope equals the distance between the thing and the archetype" and "The difference between life and death in a bottle is less than the possible difference between desperation and hope." These lofty ideas coupled with Trujillo's highly physical performance and Raul Martin's astute direction made for an intense theatrical experience. Trujillo's range of physical and vocal control is impressive -- a highly trained actress, she gives the existential questions of the play substance with her projection and physicality. Again, La Ma Teodora has produced a work that is as metaphysical as it is metaphorical. La Magagna's run of El Enano has ended, but there's a possibility the show will reopen in Little Havana's Tower Theatre.

At the Miami Light Project, the curtain lowers. At La Magagna, the lights dim. One realizes that not only are different generations of Cuban exiles speaking in different languages and idioms but also that a plethora of voices is being heard from both sides of the Florida Straits -- all here in Miami. If Cuban Americans are exiles of Cuba, artistically and emotionally, Cubans on the island are exiles of Miami. These works celebrate the range of theatrical possibilities that any issue carries. It is also a reminder that in any part of the world, freedom of expression is only as vital as the people who take advantage of it.