Carlos CELDRAN, Cuba

Before my awakening in the theater, my masters were already there. They had built their homes and poetics on the vestiges of their own lives. Many of them remain unknown or rarely visit our memories: they worked in secret, in the humble silence of rehearsal rooms and in performance halls filled to capacity with spectators. So that, imperceptibly, at the end of many years of work sprinkled with extraordinary achievements, they would become invisible and disappear. When I understood that my profession, that my personal destiny was to follow in their footsteps, I also understood that I had inherited from them this heartbreaking and unique tradition of living the present without any other hope than reaching the transparency of an unrepeatable moment. The moment when you meet the other in the darkness of the theater, protected only by the truth of a gesture, of a revealing word.

My theatrical homeland is defined by such moments of encounter with the spectators who come to our halls every evening, from the most diverse corners of my city, to accompany us and share with us a few hours, a few minutes. From these unique moments I build my life, when I stop being myself, when I stop suffering for myself and when I am reborn and understand the authentic meaning of the profession of making theater: to live ephemeral moments of pure truth, when you know that everything you say and do under the light of the projectors is true and reflects your deepest and most personal self. My theatrical homeland, mine and that of my actors, is woven from all these moments in which we leave aside the masks, the rhetoric, the fear of being who we are, and join hands in the darkness.

The tradition in theater is a horizontal one. No one can say that in theater there is a center of the world, which would be a city or a privileged edifice. Theater, as it was given to me to perceive it, propagates itself following an invisible geography that mixes the lives of those who make theater with theatrical art, in a unifying gesture. All the masters of theater die with their unrepeatable moments of lucidity and beauty, they all go the same way, without any other transcendence to protect them and make them illustrious. The masters of theater know this, no recognition is more precious than the certainty that lies at the root of our work: to create moments of truth, ambiguity, strength, freedom in the midst of the greatest precariousness. Nothing will survive them beyond the notes about their work and the video or photo recordings that will only give a pale idea of what they did. But what will always be missing from these recordings is the silent response of the audience, who understands in an instant that what is happening can neither be translated nor found outside, that the truth shared here is a life experience, for a few seconds more diaphanous than life itself.

When I understood that the theater is a homeland in itself, an immense territory that encompasses the whole world, a decision was born within me, which was also a liberation: you must not move away, nor move from where you are, you must not run away, nor move. The audience is where you exist. There are the colleagues you need by your side. There, outside your home, is all your daily reality, opaque and impenetrable. And then you work from the apparent immobility in which you find yourself, to construct one of the greatest journeys, to recreate the Odyssey, the legendary journey of the Argonauts: you are an immobile traveler who never stops accelerating the density and rigidity of your real world. Your journey is towards the moment, towards the moment, towards the unrepeatable encounter with those like you. Your journey is towards them, towards their heart, towards their subjectivity. You travel through them, through their emotions, through their memories that you awaken and set in motion. Your journey is vertiginous, no one can measure it or silence it. Just as no one will recognize it at its true value. It is a journey through the imagination of your people, a seed planted in the most distant soil: the civic, ethical and humane conscience of your spectators. That is why I am steadfast, eternally tied to my own home, among those close to me, in apparent stillness, working day and night, because I possess the secret of speed.

Carlos CELDRÁN, Cuba
Theater director, playwright, theater teacher, university professor

Carlos Celdrán is a director, playwright, and university professor with an award-winning and widely acclaimed career. He lives and works in Havana, Cuba, and presents his work worldwide.

Born in 1963 in Havana, Carlos Celdrán first developed his passion for theatre and his skills in the field at the Instituto Superior de Artes de Havana, where he received a degree in Performing Arts. After graduating with high distinction in 1986, he immediately began putting his knowledge into practice, first as resident consultant, then resident stage director at the Teatro Buendía in Havana.

He held this position until 1996, when he decided it was the right time to create his own theater company, Argos Theatre, today known and appreciated throughout the world. The company also operates in Havana, Cuba, and has experienced extraordinary success with interpretations of European classics, contemporary Latin American plays and original productions under the expert leadership of Carlor Celdrán as stage director.

The band's performances Argas Theatre They breathed new life into the canon of modern European theater, staging plays by Brecht, Beckett, Ibsen, and Strindberg, bringing European culture and preferences to Latin American audiences. They also brought Cuban playwrights to the forefront, through productions by local artists such as González Melo, on multiple occasions. It was this fusion of different cultures that helped Argos Theatre to become one of the most important theater companies in Cuba and to be appreciated across borders. Its acting, in search of a common language between the performing arts, is appreciated as an initiative to bring together the cultures of the world.

The culmination of the company's activity is its production. Ten Million ("Ten Millions"), a play written and directed by Carlos Celdrán himself and which has won critical acclaim both in Cuba and internationally. The most recent performance, Mysteries and small pieces ("Mysteries and Little Pieces"), from 2018, also written and directed by Carlos Celdrán, enjoyed an equally good reception.

All these achievements for Cuba and international theater have brought Carlos Celdrán recognition, awards and applause on numerous occasions. He has received the Cuban Theater Critics Award for Best Direction on several occasions: 16 times between 1988 and 2018. Beyond the critical acclaim, he has also won recognition in his own country and abroad, with the National Distinction of Cuban Culture in 2000 and the National Theater Award of Cuba in 2016, among many others.

Throughout his remarkable career, Carlos Celdrán has remained dedicated to his mission of inspiring and helping others, working as a professor in high-ranking institutions in Cuba, South America and Europe. He has constantly strived to improve and deepen his knowledge, obtaining a Master's degree in 2011 from the 'Alicia Alonso' University Institute of Dance of the Rey Juan Carlos University in Madrid.

His pedagogical skills have allowed Carlos Celdránsă to join the faculty of the Superior Institute of Arts of Cuba, where he has been teaching for over 20 years, and to direct the Master in Theatre Directing since 2016, transmitting his knowledge to future generations of Cuban theatre creators. At the same time, he continues to concretize his artistic expression through the plays he writes and stages with Argos Theatre.

Romanian translation of the original Spanish text: Ligia Soare