INTERVIEW: Go deeper into Andean Indigenous culture with ‘Llontop’
Photo: Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco participates in performances of Llontop by offering musical renditions of her poetry. Photo courtesy of Anonymous Ensemble / Provided by Lucrecia Briceño with permission.
As part of the annual Under the Radar festival, Anonymous Ensemble is currently presenting Llontop, a unique theatrical experience that includes food, poetry, music and conversation. Performances at Pregones / Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in New York City continue through Sunday, Jan. 18.
Anonymous Ensemble has been going strong for 25 years and features the artistic talents of Lucrecia Briceño, Eamonn Farrell, Jessica Weinstein and Liz Davito, according to the company’s official website. Llontop, directed by Ash K. Tata, is a celebration of Andean culture, with a specific focus on the poetry of Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco.
“We keep saying that the show is divided into three very particular parts,” Briceño said in a recent interview. “When you arrive to the theater, the first thing you are going to find is we serve a buffet of Peruvian food, little nibbles of different dishes with Peruvian ingredients. Peruvian cuisine is well known by the complexity of flavors, but in this case, we are focusing a little bit on ingredients from the Andes, not just regular Peruvian food, but a little bit with an Indigenous flavor.”
After this opening gesture, audience members head into the theater and participate in an exhibition. Using one’s smartphone, visitors connect to different media experiences, roaming around on their own time and of their own accord.
“We have dozens of interviews that we created through our research that will sort of create a link of a point-of-view history about Indigenous language, Quechua, and Indigenous culture in Peru, and a little bit of history, a little bit of families’ point of views,” Briceño said. “And then afterward, we invite everybody back to the proper audience seating. We have Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco; she is a Peruvian poet that has been living in the States for a few years now, to sort of go through poems that are being sung.”
Briceño added: “It’s a lot of the spirit of the Indigenous world in her words, and while she is singing, we have three musicians supporting her through her work. And we have a performer creating in a very small way … these images that through video are being projected to the sides of the theater.”
Those projected images reinforce a lot of what is being sung of Alvarez-Ccoscco’s work. After the poetry session and music, the audience is invited to an open conversation to talk about what they have experienced at Llontop.
“A lot of times we have Indigenous communities coming and joining us,” Briceño said. “We sort of partake in Quechua or in Spanish or English or a mix of everything. The room takes over a little bit of what people are curious about, what they want to talk about. A lot of times we feel that people hear their language, and they feel validated. And they feel that there’s somebody who is listening on the other side and creating artistic choices and artistic voices for the communities.”
Particularly special is that Llontop is livestreamed as well, sometimes to individuals in Peru who have a deep connection to the issues being discussed and the art on display.
“It’s all linked through the idea of Quechua as a unifying culture and language to these images of poems and food that sort of define a people,” Briceño said.
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Llontop, by the Anonymous Ensemble and directed by Ash K. Tata, will run at Pregones / Puerto Rican Traveling Theater in New York City continue through Sunday, Jan. 18. Click here for more information and tickets.
