Teatro L nea De Sombra presents DURANGO 66 as Part Of Pacific Standard Time Festival

REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for contemporary arts, presents the Mexico City-based performance company Teatro Línea de Sombra's Durango 66, as part of Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA. Performances are Tuesday January 16 to Thursday January 18, 2018 at 8:30 p.m. at an outdoor location near REDCAT. (The Box Office/Will Call is located at REDCAT, 631 West 2nd Street, LA. CA. 90012)

A cavernous underground urban space will be transformed for this industrial-strength installation/performance using construction vehicles, tons of soil, and giant projections. Mexican performance collective Teatro Línea de Sombra's Durango 66 (or Duran66o) draws connections between the student protest movement in Mexico in the 1960s and the recent massacres in Mexico attributed to crime syndicates and government collusion, including the mass murders discovered in Durango in 2011 and other recent atrocities. The piece resumes the action taken by a group of students in Durango almost fifty years ago, seeking to reflect on how the social risks involved in privatization and corporate overexploitation of natural resources were not perceptible at the time.

In 1966, the city of Durango and its inhabitants were covered in red: students took the Cerro de Mercado in protest for the extraction of iron made by the Fundidora de Monterrey. This performance and installation narrates the protest actions carried out by students, and uses as an axis the capture of Cerro de Mercado, which occurred on June 2, 1966, which culminated on August 4 with the disappearance of the public powers of the state of Durango. "We took this event as a starting point to reflect on the social movements that have taken place in our country up to the present and, through the course of this historical case, raise certain questions about what we are experiencing," said Alicia Laguna, who is a co-director Teatro Línea de Sombra with Jorge Vargas. "This is an installation for the public to go through; It is not a normal show, there is no beginning or end. It is a space to walk freely, leave it or stay.

More about the Durango Uprising and why Durango 66 uses a ton of red-tinted soil:

On Thursday, June 2, 1966 at noon, some 1,500 students "took by assault" Cerro de Mercado, which was an iron mine. That was the first day of the "Pro-Industrialization Movement of Durango." It is known that the same day the students blocked railroad cars to prevent the ore from being moved to the city of Monterrey and, in addition, they took a truckload of mineral earth that they scattered through all the streets of the city. The population still remembers that the young people repeated the same action for sixty-six days and say that the streets of Durango were dyed red due to the iron oxide contained in that land. During this student movement, fifty-seven public meetings were held in the Plaza de Armas, attended by more than ten thousand people. The students mobilized the inhabitants of that northern city without knowing that they contributed to the strengthening of obscure economic and political interests.

The Compañía Línea de Sombra went to Durango in the winter of 2014, to investigate the traces of that history and those of its protagonists precisely when the country was convulsed politically by the disappearance of forty-three students of the Normal School of Ayotzinapa, who also "took by assault" five buses to travel from the City of Iguala to Mexico City, and attend the mourning rally to commemorate October 2. These connections were determined in the investigation that the company carried out in Durango. For this reason, in the scenic piece Durango 66, at the same time that the history of an old student movement is described, some aspects of the crisis of the current Mexican political system are updated. The work is offered as an urban facility for spectators to freely trace their own route. During the tour, the audience can learn different episodes of that movement and reason about the power that bodies reveal in social manifestations. They present a cluster of packaging boxes, some images, objects and stories, files and documents that come out, to reason about some questions about power, about politics, about abuse and resistance. But also, about the echoes of those voices that have made protest and uprising collective actions that seek other life logics and other ways of organizing citizens' desires.

Is there a national destination? Are we doomed to failure? Can we see something at the bottom of things?

Performed in Spanish and English, with English surtitles.

January 16-18, 8:30 pm. LOCATION: Lower Grand (REDCAT) Within walking distance from REDCAT). 631 W. 2nd St, Los Angeles, 90012. Tickets and info: https://www.redcat.org/festival/lineadesombra

Presentado como parte del Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA

Un espacio urbano subterráneo será transformado por medio de este performance en una instalación industrial utilizando grúas, toneladas de tierra y proyecciones gigantes. Durango 66 (o Duran66o) del colectivo de performance mexicano Teatro Línea de Sombra traza conexiones entre el movimiento estudiantil de protesta en México en la década de 1960 y las recientes masacres en el país, cometidas por el crimen organizado en connivencia con el gobierno, incluyendo el descubrimiento de fosas comunes en Durango en 2011 y otras atrocidades. La pieza resume la acción tomada por un grupo de estudiantes en Durango hace casi cincuenta años e intenta pensar cómo los riesgos sociales involucrados en la privatización y la sobreexplotación corporativa de los recursos naturales no fueron percibidos en aquél entonces.

Presentación en español con supertítulos en inglés.

16-18 de enero, 8:30 pm

LUGAR: Lower Grand (REDCAT)
631 W. 2nd St, Los Angeles, 90012

Presented as part of the Pacific Standard Time Festival: Live Art LA/LA, organized by REDCAT and supported by a major grant from the Getty Foundation. Pacific Standard Time is an initiative of the Getty. The presenting sponsor is Bank of America.

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