Las Tunas actress Leonor Pérez Hinojosa participated, until September 20, in the Puro Cuento International Festival, in Costa Rica, representing Cuba and Los Zahoríes, the theater company to which she belongs.
Las Tunas, Cuba.- It is a festival of stories, legends, and traditions, in which she featured two shows: Vuela pena, for the adult public, and Cuenta clown, for children, with puppets, games, and songs, maintaining her work aesthetic as in the Island.
"I had the pleasure of presenting the show in a place called Heredia, with the Cuban flag as part of the scenery. It was very well received, I really liked it because the stories that I brought here are real, they are about the mistreatment of the elderly, about gender diversity, stories that speak of betrayal, love… It is a way that they remain in the memory of those who listen to them, who can contribute and help in something,” she told 26 through social media, in the middle of the transfer from site to site allowing her to share with many committed creators.
"That is my goal, a show in which I combine each story with songs by Carlos Varela, which support the messages I want to convey in the stories. It is made with my own adaptations, but also from writers such as Lucy Maestre and Saimy K. Torres. Torres. They gave me three of them and told me to make them mine; so that I tried to defend them as best I could.”
Multiple spaces surprised Leonor with the opportunity to reinvent herself, who has grown a lot from the girl who accompanied her mother, Verónica Hinojosa, in functions to warm her stall in the theater while feeding on a thousand stories and ways of telling them.
"I had performances in restaurants, theaters, and cinemas; I also had the opportunity to be the presenter of a very important show, in which one of the Cuban narrators participated, and books by Hernán Casciari, an Argentine writer with a long and magnificent career, were presented and sold. And I was there. I saw another way of telling, of doing, another aesthetic.”
She says that the public is wonderful, very grateful that they bring something of our traditions: "Listening to the Cuban accent for them is something very beautiful, our words, and our coarse remarks.”
"I had the opportunity to work in a school for migrant children, it is very nice because there are many cultures in a single center, and they accept you and make you part of the family. I was with my puppets, my songs, and my games; and at the end of the performance, several children came and hugged me, kissed me, and even made me cry.
"And it's beautiful, being able to go out and meet other audiences, it's like a thermometer to know if you're doing it right and take experiences from all the participants who are here at this festival, because as long as they can make you grow, help you improve your line of work, you are welcome."
Fears of the first time also assail other latitudes, there the artist recognizes that he must always be prepared, ready to transform into another being, connect with the one he observes and manage to transmit those sensations that he went looking for.
"One of the challenges was telling horror stories, mystical stories; I had a presentation in a restaurant that has a whole stage and people usually get there.
"It is very gratifying to see how Costa Ricans pay to go see the shows; a whole promotion is made, a wonderful advertising campaign, and they pay and look for the artists. In fact, in that restaurant, the price was a kilogram of recyclable material, and the objective of the event is to not throw anything away."
"For me, it was a challenge because I had never told mystical stories, i.e., I had them as part of my repertoire, but I am not used to doing it because it is not something common in Cuba. But I did it; sometimes, what we least like to do is what we try to give our best, and I liked it a lot. I already know that I must be prepared."
The Puro Cuento Festival has been held in Costa Rica since 2002 and has visited the seven main cities of the country over the years. In this edition, the central theme was caring for the environment, with activities such as the planting and maintenance of a thousand trees in the Cartago area.
