• Thinking East and West in Nuestra AméricaRetracing the Footprints of a Latinx Teatro Brigade in Revolutionary Cuba
• Eric Mayer-García (bio)

The photographs in self-described Chicana cultural worker Ana Olivarez-Levinson’s private collection provide new visual documentation of the transnational exchange that propelled Nuevo Teatro, a theatre movement during the 1970s and 1980s that sought to create a distinct Latin American expression in defiance of Eurocentric cultural hierarchies and the hemispheric domination of the United States.¹ Her photographs (a selection of which appear in the Mayer-García and Olivarez-Levinson photo essay in this volume) document important meetings, workshops, and performances as well as the lives of the artists happening around those events. For instance, several photos in her collection show a cookout in a park when Chicanx collective Teatro de la Esperanza hosted Cuban collective Grupo Teatro Escambray in Santa Barbara in 1982.² Taking a break from the hectic tour schedule gave Chicanx cultural workers and Cuban teatristas (theatre artists) the space to build relationships. Photos show the artists on picnic tables overlooking a bluff. They enjoy a meal together, listen carefully to the conversation, and play music on a guitar. One photo shows an artist stretched out on a reclining folding chair not far from a portable radio sitting on one of the tables. In a large group photo, about twenty cultural workers and teatristas gather around another dozen laying and sitting on blankets in the grass. Some people look up and smile toward the camera (see the Olivarez-Levinson and Mayer-García photo essay).³ Others break from their poses and turn in toward each other, laughing, smiling, and reflecting. The larger circle is made up of smaller orbits of [End Page 140] intimacy, friendship, and familia. The image captures a microcosm of the Nuevo Teatro movement and the transnational bonds upon which it was built.⁴ In this regard, the cookout was just as important to the movement as performances or formal workshops.

The personal collection and the personal touch of moments like the cook-out point up the ways that affect both organizes and preserves knowledge often disregarded in the institutional collection. One important case in point is Olivarez-Levinson’s records of the East and West Coast Teatro Brigade, a three-week visit to Cuba by thirty Latinx theatre artists in August 1981.⁵ The East and West Coast Teatro Brigade is exemplary of the transcontinental interchange happening between Puerto Rican, Chicanx, and other US-based Latinx artists via Latin American theatre.⁶ In this regard, the Teatro Brigade is important because it adds to our understanding of the ongoing emergence of a coordinated, panethnic Latinx theatre in the United States during this period, which, as “East and West Coast” suggests, mobilized a west-east sense of the hemispheric that contrasts with the more ubiquitous orientation of south-north. Because her experience as a participant in this cultural exchange meant so much to Olivarez-Levinson and her development as a cultural worker, she kept detailed records of the event. As a testament to the importance of personal collections made by artists, we might not have records of the Teatro Brigade without Olivarez-Levinson’s careful archiving.⁷

In this essay, I analyze the fragmented archives of two US-based collectives that were active in promoting exchange among Nuevo Teatro artists: Teatro 4 (Teatro Cuatro), which was founded in 1974 to address the social and economic injustice facing Latinxs and African Americans living in the area surrounding Fourth Street between Avenues A and B in the Lower East Side, and Teatro de la Esperanza, which formed at UC Santa Barbara in 1971, made theatre by, about, for, near, and with Chicanx communities throughout California, and eventually relocated to San Francisco in the 1980s.⁸ I concentrate on these groups’ ongoing exchange with Nuevo Teatro artists in revolutionary Cuba during the 1980s. Particularly, I focus on materials in the personal collection of Olivarez-Levinson, a former member of Teatro de la Esperanza who completed her formal theatre training in Cuba as a result of Esperanza’s ties to Grupo Teatro Escambray.⁹ The Cuban Ministry of Culture...

• 在NuestraAmérica中进行东西方思考，追溯革命古巴的Latinx Teatro旅的足迹
• 埃里克·梅耶·加西亚（生物）

自称是奇卡纳文化工作者的安娜·奥利瓦雷斯·莱文森（Ana Olivarez-Levinson）的私人收藏中的照片提供了跨国交流的新视觉文件，这种跨国交流推动了新剧院（Nuevo Teatro）剧院运动在1970年代和1980年代，试图创造一种独特的拉丁美洲表达方式，而无视欧洲中心文化等级制度和美国的半球统治。^1个她的照片（本卷中的一些照片出现在Mayer-García和Olivarez-Levinson的照片中）记录了重要的会议，工作坊和表演，以及艺术家在这些活动中的生活。例如，多张照片她在集合中野炊在公园当Chicanx集体剧院德拉埃斯佩兰萨在1982年举行的古巴集体了Grupo剧院Escambray在圣巴巴拉²从忙碌的旅行日程中休息一下，为Chicanx文化工作者和古巴剧院成员（剧院艺术家）提供了建立关系的空间。照片显示艺术家在野餐桌上俯瞰虚张声势。他们一起享用一顿饭，仔细听对话，并用吉他弹奏音乐。一张照片显示，一位艺术家在一张躺椅上伸了个懒腰，离坐在其中一张桌子上的便携式收音机不远。在大团体合影中，大约二十名文化工作者和茶农聚集在另外十二名躺在草地上的毯子上。有些人抬起头，对着镜头微笑（请参阅Olivarez-Levinson和Mayer-García摄影作品）。³其他人则从他们的姿势中挣脱出来，朝彼此微笑，微笑和反思。较大的圈子由[亲密，友情和家庭成员]的较小轨道组成。该图像捕捉了新剧院运动的缩影和建立它的跨国纽带。⁴在这方面，户外运动对运动的影响与表演或正式研讨会一样重要。

个人收藏和诸如烹饪之类的个人时刻可以指出影响机构收藏中经常忽略的知识的组织和保存方式。这一方面的一个重要案例是东部和西部海岸剧院旅Olivarez-Levinson的记录，在八月三周访古乘三十Latinx戏剧艺术家1981年⁵东和西海岸剧院旅是模范横贯大陆的交汇处发生的通过拉丁美洲剧院在波多黎各人，奇坎克斯和其他美国拉丁艺术家之间进行交流。⁶在这方面，Teatro旅很重要，因为它增加了我们对这段时期美国协调一致的泛滥拉丁剧院的兴起的理解，正如“东西海岸”所建议的那样，该剧院动员了东西方与南北更普遍的方向形成对比的半球感。因为她参加这种文化交流的经历对奥利瓦雷斯-莱文森（Olivarez-Levinson）以及她作为文化工作者的发展意义重大，因此她保留了该活动的详细记录。为了证明艺术家个人收藏的重要性，如果没有Olivarez-Levinson的精心存档，我们可能没有Teatro Brigade的记录。⁷

在本文中，我分析了两个活跃于促进新剧院艺术家之间交流的美国集体的零碎档案：剧院4（Teatro Cuatro），成立于1974年，旨在解决拉丁裔和非裔美国人面临的社会和经济不公正现象居住在下东区A和B大道之间第四街周围的地区，以及1971年在圣塔芭芭拉分校成立的埃斯佩兰萨剧院（Teatro de la Esperanza），在加利福尼亚州的奇坎克斯社区附近，附近，附近和与那里一起演出，最终在1980年代搬到旧金山。⁸我专注于这些团体与1980年代革命性古巴的Nuevo Teatro艺术家的持续交流。特别是，我关注的是奥利瓦雷斯·莱文森（Olivarez-Levinson）的个人收藏，他是埃斯佩兰萨剧院（Teatro de la Esperanza）的前成员，由于埃斯佩兰萨（Esperanza）与Grupo Teatro Escambray的联系，她完成了在古巴的正规戏剧培训。⁹古巴文化部...