The Colombian company Teatro Libre, one of the most prominent in Colombia, begins its celebrations this month for its 50 years of artistic career.
During these five decades, the Free Theater has staged more than 100 playsboth by international and Colombian authors, and has participated in important national and international festivals.
For this reason, during this month, the celebrations will begin on the Teatro Mayor Julio Mario Santo Domingo stages, both its main stage and the Teatro Estudio, with two plays adapted by Diego Barragán, ‘Hamlet’, by William Shakespeare, and ‘Colombian Psycho’ , novel by Santiago Gamboa.
This group arises in 1973, inspired by those groups that sought to articulate entertainment and fun with the enrichment of the inner life of people, and who knew how to elevate the mere job of illustrating a literary work to staging as a category of art. Thus, the Free Theater Group aims to develop a theater of ideas that challenges the convictions of the viewer.
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This is how the 50 years of the Free Theater will be celebrated
On Friday the 4th and Saturday the 5th of August, at 8:00 pm, the Teatro Mayor stage will host the story of ‘Hamlet’, one of William Shakespeare’s most complex tragedies.
In this version, which counts directed by Ricardo Camacho and the adaptation by Diego Barragán, the Teatro Libre proposes to focus the attention of the production on Hamlet itself, in order to eliminate the parallel stories of the work to give it dynamism and keep the viewer’s attention on the central conflict.
From the art part, it is intended to recreate a space that does not belong to a specific era, but rather reflects the intricate and dark universe that surrounds Hamlet in his desire for revenge through staging, music and costumes.
In this way, the Teatro Libre brings this work by Shakespeare back to life, in which the English playwright expresses thoughts about the universe and the essence of the human being through a character who, as the work progresses, becomes he becomes a harbinger of death and drags everyone around him into the abyss.
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For this reason, in this version, the Free Theater also seeks to unravel the human conflict that hides to promote a dialogue with the current publicthat speaks the reality in which it lives as a society and country.
With the aim of making a theatrical thriller that takes place in present-day Bogotá, from La Calera to La Picota, from north to south, Diego Barragán portrays in his theatrical version of the novel ‘Colombia Psycho’ by Colombian Santiago Gamboa a story full of characters typical of the Bogota streets, who will end up entangled in different crimes that are part of their day to day.
These will inhabit the stage of the Teatro Estudio Julio Mario Santo Domingo on Friday the 11th and Saturday the 12th of August.
The story is based on an unexpected finding of human bones, found in the mountains of La Calera in eastern Bogotá.
Prosecutor Edilson Jutsiñamuy will have the mission of finding its owner at the hands of agent Laiseca and the rest of his team. Julieta Lezama, his journalist friend, will join the investigation, to unravel a bunch of heinous crimes that follow one another like a relay race.
Gamboa’s novel is a pretext for a theatrical exploration that, from different perspectives and thanks to the resources provided by the scene, allows the actors to tell their own, close and profound story.
