One of the many challenges that the members of this Andalusian company will have faced is how to address the reality of women who are or have been in a situation of homelessness without them being infantilized, as victims, etc… That is what they put the focus on their surviving statusregardless of whether they are still dealing with the ravages of having gone through or going through said experience.
Although it is true that few people manage to stay on their feet after having experienced what is exposed in this piece of documentary theaterin no case should we go from dehumanization, the exclusion of individuals belonging to this group…, to reactions typical of people who have had the “resilience to be able to act in the TNT Theater within the edition of the ethical cycle of this year”. That is: if we allow ourselves to be carried away too much by the emotionality contained in the testimonies of the interpreters and other people who have been involved during the development of this production, we will be diluting the fact that these experiences come to light due to a structural problem, rather than because “there have been people who have had bad luck, or have been wrong and their punishment has been more cruel than they deserved.”
Even with everything, all these testimonies have to be revalued epistemologically, as long as, here it is not only about give voice and face to so many people to whom their Human Rights have not been applied and those contemplated, especially, in article 47 of the Spanish Constitution of 1978 (which reads: “All Spaniards have the right to enjoy dignified and adequate housing. The public powers will promote the necessary conditions and establish the pertinent rules to make this right effective, regulating the use of land in accordance with the general interest to prevent speculation. The community will participate in the capital gains generated by the urban action of public entities”). But also, they are a powerful vehicle for making visible a reality that is still present, although many policies of the Public Institutions of Spain strive to ensure them, so that the image of this Mediterranean country is not affected with regard to the promotion of the “Marca España” abroad; to the millions of tourists who visit it; approaches that allege “safety reasons on public roads” in order to “protect” the rest of the citizens of a group in which cases of violent people are exceptional; and other things like that.
Reports such as the one commissioned during the Mayor of Manuela Carmena of the city of Madrid (2015-2019)or one that was made in 2018 by the entity Home Yes/Rais, reveal to us that many of the stereotypes to which homeless people are assigned in Spain, do not allow us to understand that if someone becomes addicted to drugs it is after becoming homeless, not the other way around; that one of the profiles that has increased the most in recent years is that of women who have suffered sexist violence and faced with the situation of being left with insufficient resources to meet the basic needs of their children, these are taken from them by the social services; that more than half of the homeless people in the city of Madrid have higher education; etc.…
Therefore, I extract from Alleys Without Stars that we, its viewers, should focus on delving into the social, demographic, health, legislative implications, etc… Because it is not going to be that after having witnessed this wonderful work of womanizing, one leaves the theater “upset”, but its effects go down the toilet the next time we have gone to the bathroom (so to speak). Otherwise, we will be perpetuating the devices that prevent this social emergency from being among the priorities of public policies, much less, of the media agenda reflected in all the media.
With the above, I do not want to say that I have all the solutions to similar problems (far from it), but I would like to point out that what you have been doing Carmen Tamayo and her team with homeless women for more than ten years in Seville, it would not be so applauded and so necessary. Is it possible that it is more comfortable to say how good the Mujereando project is, than to assume part of our responsibilities as citizens who live within the framework of some laws and recognition of existing rights? Anyway, Alleys Without Stars It is a piece that has been so well directed by Carmen Tamayo together with her assistant director, Almudena Blanco, that the latent truth in the performers appropriated the stage. To the point that it is irrelevant that they have more or less experience in the art of interpretation, because what they brought into their hands was worth by itself for the public to humanize them and consider them as just another citizen, not as “part of the urban furniture”.
In this line, The scenery, lighting and other elements that were used throughout this piece were used so intelligently that the words of the interpreters transcended their meaning, making them universal from the particular! This is one of the values of the social theater! Anyway, Alleys Without Stars It is a job that would not have been possible without the backing of a human team and professionals who have understood that although the media and political repercussions of this work will be almost imperceptible in all the areas in which we operate in our everyday life, the fact is that it has been shown that with perseverance, creativity and a vocation for public service, this situation can be transformed from formulas that involve activism on all fronts (including, of course, the performing arts), let alone , that art can help us rediscover ourselves individually and collectively.