The performances take place in El Sauzal, Los Realejos, Arona, El Rosario and Vilaflor

 

The theatre festival MEI (Muestra Escénica Iberoamericana) offers this week nine performances in five municipalities. The programme includes 'Moria' and 'Clara y el abismo' (Clara and the abyss), both by Unahoramenos, a company from the Canary Islands. The Chilean company Teatro Niño Proletario, stages 'Nadie lee fuego mientras todo se está quemando (Nobody reads fire while everything is burning), while the last performance is titled 'Carta de una desconocida' (Letter from an Unknown Woman) by the Colombian company Señor M. The MEI festival is an initiative organized by the Tenerife Island Council through the Auditorio de Tenerife, a cultural space linked to the Department of Culture that is managed by the island Minister of Culture, Enrique Arriaga. It finishes on 6 October. Tickets for this third edition are on sale at www.meitenerife.com.

Enrique Arriaga, the Island Council’s first vice-president and island’s Minister of Culture, stressed that "the festival MEI is a clear example of our vocation to bring culture to all the people of Tenerife without them having to travel to Santa Cruz to enjoy top-quality shows". 

This week's programme starts on Tuesday, the 21st of September at 8:30 p.m. at the venue Casa de la Cultura de Los Realejos with 'Carta de una desconocida' (Letter from an Unknown Woman). This adaptation of the novel by Stefan Zweig is programmed during the MEI festival to be staged in El Rosario and Adeje. It is based on an unrequited love story. A man receives a letter from a woman. She tells him how she has loved him since she was a child. She used to watch him through her window and continued to love him throughout her life. It is a story of loneliness, pain, and hope with small happy moments. The play talks about women's privacy, time, hope, and love. It deals with how we construct and idealize ‘the other’ and relationships; it talks about those deep and silent loves that become idyllic and perfect. They live only in the lover's mind.

‘Moria’ is the first proposal offered by the company Unahoramenos during this week. They will perform it first in El Sauzal, with two shows on Wednesday, the 22nd of September. On Sunday, the 26th of September, they perform it in Auditorio Infanta Leonor, in Arona. Both municipalities have programmed the shows at 6:00 p.m. and at 8:00 p.m. 

This immersive theatre proposal tells the story of two refugee women and their families, who have no choice but to flee their respective countries. The dramaturgy is based on real testimonies filmed in the Moria camp under the supervision of Nicolás Castellano, a reporter who has specialized during the last 20 years in forced migration movements and human rights. 

Zohra Amiryar survived four bombings and attacks in Afghanistan, her home country. She lost her brother during one of them. In addition, she saw her four children wounded during the last attack. Thus she decided to make the exodus in search of a refuge for her family. Douaa Alhavatem is a 30-year-old Iraqi woman who had to leave her native Baghdad after her husband's disappearance. She feared that she and her three children might suffer the same fate. In Moria, both women experience a new stage of suffering that they would have never ever imagined when they set foot in Europe, the place where they thought they would finally feel safe.

The other proposal by Unahoramenos will only be staged at the Teatro El Sauzal on Friday, the 24th of September at 8:00 p.m. Friday's performance 'Clara y el abismo' (Clara and the abyss) is an initiative of Laboratorio Galdós Internacional. It is inspired by a text written for the occasion by the Uruguayan Gabriel Calderón. It deals with the last moments of a woman who suffers from cancer and reviews her life. It also talks about her relationship with her loved ones. It is an inspiring reflection on life and its inevitable end. 

Teatro Niño Proletario makes its debut in MEI with 'Nadie lee fuego mientras todo se está quemando' (Nobody reads fire while everything is burning). A mother and her son are homeless and live on the streets of a society they do not wish to belong to. They decide to confront the situation by performing a poetic act as the last gesture to shed light on a country that lives in darkness. This play revisits the 2005 production 'Hambre' (Hunger), the company's first creation. It is also inspired by the novel 'Los vigilantes', by Diamela Eltit, a winner of the Chilean National Prize for Literature in 2018. Likewise, it is inspired by the poetry book 'Bonzo', by Maximiliano Andrade, a young Chilean poet and outstanding illustrator who also illustrated his book.

'Nadie lee fuego mientras todo se está quemando' (Nobody reads fire while everything is burning) makes its European début with the three shows offered during the MEI festival. The first performance takes place on Thursday, the 23rd of September at the 'Centro Cultural 25 de abril', in Vilaflor, to continue with a second performance at Casa de la Juventud in El Chorrillo (El Rosario). The last performance takes place on Saturday, the 25th of September at the Theatre El Sauzal. The three shows start at 8:00 p.m.

The programme of this MEI's edition includes 40 performances of 17 shows from Chile, Uruguay, Colombia, Argentina, Nicaragua, Portugal and the Canary Islands. This third edition is the most ambitious considering the number of performances and distribution throughout 12 municipalities of the island.