Chapter 268: Out of the Wings, Cuban Circus, et Voilà!

"Oh hi, Connie, I last saw you as a minion on stilts..." I was at the Cervantes Institute last week for an evening celebrating Spanish and Latin American theatre in translation organised by Out of the Wings, a collective of academics, researchers and theatre practitioners that brings Spanish and Portuguese language theatre in translation to the English speaking world. The evening was chaired by one of the founders Catherine Boyle, who had been my supervisor doing post grad research years ago, and the reason I was going along. Out of the Wings sprung out of a project with the RSC in 2004 bringing Golden Age Spanish plays to life including Catherine's translation of the romantic farce "House of Desires" by pioneering 17C Mexican nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz. It was a lovely surprise to see Constanza Ruff as one of two actors reading excerpts in translation from  plays from Spain, Argentina, El Salvador and Cuba that evening, as I'd last seen her in summer as part of the Leap Circus kids' cabaret in Woolwich (see Chapter 258). She wears many hats. 

Now I was hearing the actors read from Cuban Abilio Estévez' play "The Great and Wondrous Circus Finally Closes Its Doors" in which a group of circus performers are faced with the fact that their director is finally closing down the show, an allegory for the collapse of contemporary Cuba through a poetic lens. I need to look into this more and read the play at some point, handy that the play's translator lives round the corner from me and has a spare copy. 

It took me back to a national theatre festival I went to in Camaguey in 2004 and the staging of Vade Retro (an exorcism term to expel the devil: "Vade Retro Satana"), written in early 60s by Cuban José Milián. The play was steeped in the tradition of the Theatre of Cruelty, a product of the turbulent years following the Cuban Revolution. The version I saw was directed by Gaspar González, nicknamed El Chino, who also played the Ringmaster. All I remember was a sense of combative energy and wondering what Milián made of it, sitting in the audience too. Gaspar took me under his wing while there, showing me the sights and introducing me to legendary cabaret singer Candita Batista. Oh, I loved her instantly, she was a force of joie de vivre. She had left Cuba amid racial discrimination and gone on to perform internationally, reminiscing about sharing stages with Josephine Baker and earning the name la vedette negra de Cuba, before returning to the island after the Revolution. She serenaded us with songs, the three of us sang together too, and she regaled us with stories, her wall graffitied with messages of love from fans who'd travelled the world over to visit her. There is a legend that if you ever drink from a tinajón, the lopsided earthernware water jugs around, that it seals your fate to return to Camaguey, but the years have past, I have yet to return, and Candita is no longer there. 

After hours in the evening all the actors would decamp and informal cabarets and games would carry on in La Barraca, over maybe a thimble of rum. One of the actors from Vade Retro, a clown on a unicycle, was wearing a necklace of white, black and green jade beads. As I complimented him on it, my stomach dropped with the realisation he would inevitably give it away to me. And so he did. Along with a lottery ticket that won me a turn in the spotlight, to the amusement of all, camping up my turn as a gringa. I rarely wear the necklace now for fear of destringing it, but it still sits on my dressing table in a small glass box in a stand, my circus rosary cum Cuban talisman. 

So it is striking to find these worlds overlapping again. Maybe it's a sign. Maybe the wondrous door is still open. 

VOILA festival 2026

Out of the Wings does fantastic work bringing page to stage and every last Friday of the month holds a round table at Kings' College London. One of the questions from the audience that arose that evening at the Cervantes Institute was whether there are other similar theatre projects in London translating other languages and cultures. I thought of Voilà Festival, that starts today. I came across the festival first thanks to Sharlit Deyzac and Leonor Lemée whose Two Tongued Theatre Boy's Club (See Chapter 160) was on at Jacksons Lane Postcards Festival when I was doing "Shhhh!". Voilà, as the name suggests, was then a French-English bilingual Fringe festival at the Cockpit which widened its frontiers in response to Brexit and now has Arts Council funding so really is a global celebration of theatre. Still produced by the Cockpit theatre, it starts today, running 2 - 26 November at venues all over London with 101 shows and events, performed in 60 different languages by 450 international artists. This includes Autrian-British circus theatre company Brainfools show Balance, an outdoor version of which I caught at Certain Blacks Ensemble Festival this summer (See Chapter 251). Catch it if you can! 

Voilà Festival 2-26 November 2026: www.voilafestival.co.uk

Out of the Wings: www.ootwfestival.com