TEATRO TRONO IN BOLIVIA
“The future begins today” has been Teatro Trono’s motto since the beginning in 1989. When you’re a young person in Bolivia’s marginalized areas, not many doors are open. But instead of waiting for changes that might come, the young people of Teatro Trono are taking responsibility for the future themselves.
It all began with a group of street children in an orphanage in El Alto and an employee who realized that the children’s passive placement did not improve their opportunities in life – perhaps quite the opposite. The collaborator was sociologist Iván Nogales, and the street children became the start of a cultural project that has changed the lives of hundreds of children and adults in El Alto.
On this page you can see and read about the activities Teatro Trono does in collaboration with Spor Media and about Teatro Trono’s history.
UPDATED:
DENMARK TOUR
In November 2023, Teatro Trono will tour Denmark for the sixth time.
The touring group will have six members. They offer workshops in theater, music and dance and show the performance “Song of the Spirits”.
Spor Media has contact with high schools and colleges that are visited by the group.
See more at www.globalkids.dk
UPDATED:
DENMARK TOUR
In November 2023, Teatro Trono will tour Denmark for the sixth time.
The touring group will have six members. They offer workshops in theater, music and dance and show the performance “Song of the Spirits”.
Spor Media has contact with high schools and colleges that are visited by the group.
See more at www.globalkids.dk
DISCOVER OUR PROJECTS
DISCOVER OUR PROJECTS
Spor Media first invited Teatro Trono on tour in Denmark in 2004. Back then, a group of two coaches and ten children came to do circus and perform for Danish peers. Since then, there have been many more tours with drama and theater as artistic communication of difficult global goals.
The young actors in Teatro Trono are great at mime and generally communicating without the spoken language, and friendships quickly form across cultures and borders.
Watch the video “Breaking down borders” from 2015 on the Global Kids website.
The film has been translated into seven languages and has an accompanying teaching material for high school Spanish.
There are many young actors in Teatro Trono, and some of them occasionally work as cultural guides for Spor Media’s virtual study tours, Global Stay Tours.
The culture guides welcome the Danish students who have Spanish at A-level in high school.
They work together in groups, and the Danish students are shown around the reality of young Bolivians.
Read more about Global Stay Tours and
meet some of the cultural guides on this site.
In Bolivia, violence against women – and family violence in general – is a serious problem, and with international help, the country’s government has supported initiatives to help women affected by violence for a number of years.
But what if you teach new generations that violence is not a solution and that there are structural conditions in society that perpetuate machismo and the perception that women are worth less than men.
With the theater, Teatro Trono achieves new realizations – both for the many young people in
organization and for all those who see their performances.
In the project A life without violence (Una vida sin violencia), Teatro Trono used its creative and interactive methods to first make participants aware of gender violence in their own lives.
Next, the participants created a powerful theatrical performance about violence in the family, and finally they showed the performance in many schools and organized debates with the audience in El Alto.
The project received support from CISU. Watch a video about the project “Una vida sin violencia”
PÆDAGOGIK
Spor Media and Teatro Trono collaborated from 2011 to 2017 on ‘Miradas Juveniles’ (Young Looks) film education for young people.
A group of young people were trained to use the film medium themselves and to teach others. They went to schools in El Alto where film had not previously been used in the classroom, and they were invited into teacher training colleges where students enthusiastically embraced the ‘new media’.
In the final phase of the project, the film educators were tasked with teaching lecturers at teacher training colleges around the country how to use film to benefit future generations of teachers.
The projects were in line with Bolivia’s education reforms that began with the change of government in 2006 when
representatives of Bolivia’s indigenous people came to power.
An educational reform (Law No. 070 of 2010) aimed to revolutionize education by developing pedagogy that respects indigenous cultures and languages, liberating and democratizing communities and citizens.
But radically changing a country’s education system is as difficult as turning a supertanker, and most teachers lack the pedagogical tools to cope with the reform
See the projects:
Miradas Juveniles received support from CISU in Denmark and gave teachers completely new tools for teaching.
Street children’s project turned into a music school for all:
Teatro Trono’s future began in 1989 when sociologist Ivan Nogales supported a handful of street children to find an alternative to their life on the streets. That day, they embarked on the future.
Street children’s project turned into a music school for all:
Teatro Trono’s future began in 1989 when sociologist Ivan Nogales supported a handful of street children to find an alternative to their life on the streets. That day, they embarked on the future.
In the book “El Mañana es Hoy” – The Future Begins Today – Ivan Nogales and some of the former street children describe how the project came about.
The children were assigned to an orphanage, but their situation seemed impossible: no one wants to know about them, they had to beg and steal to survive, and even in the orphanage they didn’t feel safe.
At Christmas, Ivan made a decision that would have major consequences for himself and hundreds of children in El Alto. He invited some of the boys to his mother’s small two-room house: In the future, they would make a living playing theater – and the future begins today.
Early in 1991 – during a meeting at Teatro Trono – the street children talk about creating a new project:
“It’s too hard to get anyone to pay for it!” “And what will it cost?”
“Well, we need a house for eight people where the whole group can stay, and we need something to eat too!”
“We could steal!” says Ch’ila, a small Aymara boy, he is 13 years old and looks 10, “and then we put the money in the bank!”
His eyes shine as his hands describe in detail an unlikely robbery somewhere in La Paz.
A long list of other crazy and creative ideas followed, eventually turning into what would become the Community of Art Producers, made by street kids and young people who had come together in Teatro Trono.
(Excerpt from the book “El Mañana es hoy”)
Also in Latin America, Teatro Trono is known and recognized for its work with grassroots theatre and has been part of the Latin American network “Cultura Viva Comunitaria” since 2013.
The many grassroots organizations from across the continent are working to ensure that popular culture is recognized by receiving a small portion of each country’s budget. Teatro Trono was the driving force behind the network’s first congress, held in El Alto/La Paz.
Since then, there has been a congress every two years.
Before his sudden death in 2019, Ivan Nogales wrote two books on the importance of Teatro Trono’s theater pedagogy. With expressive body language, the young actors create images on stage and are able to convey messages without the use of spoken language.
They master pantomime as well as more ‘classical’ techniques, using circus, grotesque clown expressions, music (mainly drums), masks and traditional Bolivian culture (e.g. costumes from Bolivia’s famous carnival) in their performances.
Although Ivan Nogales died far too early, he managed to leave more traces than most, and he taught those around him that the only limit is your imagination.
In 2018, Teatro Trono was recognized as a national theatre training program, and the adult actors of Teatro Trono now have a state-recognized diploma for their skills.
