IdeaMe is an online platform, which helps creators, be they inventors, artists, or designers, among others, to finance their projects through crowd funding. Each week, the Indy features and promotes one project every week, with the aim of helping the creators finance and achieve their dreams. This week: Teatro Ciego.

Teatro Ciego is located in Abasto (Photo courtesty of Teatro Ciego)

Theatre is, without a doubt, a visual experience. While sound is not absent, the emphasis is laid on what you see. The audience looking in one direction, collectively watching on stage action. They watch actors’ movements and facial expressions, while cleverly placed lighting visually heightens tension, drama and emotion.

As such, ‘blind theatre’, in which the entire concept of visuality is removed from your theatre experience and replaced by absolute darkness, may seem like a bizarre idea.

Yet, El Teatro Ciego has been plunging theatre audiences into disconcerting darkness for the last ten years. With a wealth of experience, the group has established themselves as the only blind theatre group in the world, offering a highly unique and alternative theatrical experience.

This week’s IdeaMe project sees one of Buenos Aires’ most innovative theatre groups hoping to raise funds to put on their next play. This time round, the actors are presenting their own interpretation of the contemporary Argentine comic, Inodoro Pereyra, in total darkness.

Written by writer and cartoonist Roberto Fontanorrosa in 1976, the work follows the life of Inodoro Pereyra, a solitary gaucho. The character parodies traditional gaucho figures of Argentine literature, not least Argentina’s most famous gaucho, Martin Fierro. The use of incessantly repeated phrases and Pereyra’s bizarre characteristics allows the author to poke fun at accepted and tired notions of gaucho tradition.

In preparation, the group are studying the entire work, comprising of more than 20 chapters. Through a selection of the best and most important parts of the comic, the group are creating their own play, offering a unique interpretation of a popular story, well-known to many Argentines.

The idea for blind theatre originally arose in 1991, and El Teatro Ciego was born after founder Ricardo Sued became inspired by the Tibetan notion of “Zen”, seeking to create a unique theatrical experience, in which theatre-goers were rendered blind.

By placing audience members in the dark, El Teatro Ciego forces audience members to ‘see’ by using other senses.

Comparable to how the blind or partially sighted find alternative ways to visualise the world around them, members are encouraged to focus on hearing and feeling, as well as trusting and working with others in the audience in order to understand and ‘watch’ the plays being presented.

The theatre group then not only upturns theatrical norms, but also radically changes the notion of visuality: the emphasis is not laid on seeing things exactly how they are, but instead on visualising plays in an imaginative and personal way. As the group so aptly puts it: “The darkness excites the senses and works to destroy the preconceived notions of how we see things and replace it with them with how we imagine them.”

While the group is quick to note that “this is not a theatre of blind actors nor is it for the blind,” El Teatro Ciego also allows blind and partially sighted actors, as well as those with disabilities, to work in an environment that would usually present obstacles to them. One actress in the group, Julia Francisquez, says “theatre in the dark gave me the chance to work and prove what I’m capable of.”

The experience of theatre in the dark also aims at social inclusion, and to give members an understanding of what it is like to be blind, allowing them to discover how it is possible to see even when the physical ability to do so has been lost, partially or altogether.

While El Teatro Ciego remains the only blind theatre worldwide, the group needs help with funding, in order to uphold the highly innovative and unique theatrical experience offered equally to audience members as well as blind and partially sighted actors.

“We want to generate a deep impact with this show, we want to share it with a wider audience,” says Martin Bondone, director of the group. “We know that theatre in the dark is good for people, and it has a positive effect on the people that experience it.”

IdeaMe is an online platform, which helps creators, be they inventors, artists, or designers, among others, to finance their projects through crowd funding. In a new series, the Indy will be featuring and promoting one project every week, with the aim of helping the creators finance and achieve their dreams.

Previous editions of Wicked

This week we have a look at Wicked Mag, an established magazine publication that is an “innovative and multicultural perspective” on Buenos Aires, supporting local artists and pushing boundaries.

With our instant media age it is becoming more obscure to hold something in your hand, revisit it a thousand times, step back and look at a page of art, a photograph, even a format of an article, in a way that is absent from staring a glossy internet page. This is a philosophy that magazine publications, especially small ones, like Wicked Mag stand by and need support for.

They say: “Our pages reflect new trends and anti-trends in the city. In other words, shows those who are new and interesting regarding music, film, visual art, literature, theatre, events, nightlife, fashion, and design.” They aim to be “primarily directed at people at people with interest in new branches of art, innovation and creativity.”

Incorporating interviews, features, artwork, and an annual calendar of what is going on in the city, Wicked Mag intends to be cutting-edge culturally. They consider themselves unique, as “not only are the words that fill the pages fresh and innovative, the format and distribution models break new ground among Argentine magazines.” Articles are in both English and Spanish, opening up the readership to include expats and tourists, giving them a key to a scene that might not be accessible when only skimming the surface of a city.

The magazine is to be published annually, in two volumes and if the project goes ahead be ready to see it in the flesh mid-April. The format is an A4-sized magazine which is FSC certified. Produced using eco-friendly paper and inks, they aim for a circulation of 5,000 copies.

With publishing there are hurdles which crowd-sourcing projects like Idea.me can help jump. It truly renders a publication unique and organic when those with the ideas can put exactly what they want on the page. Paradoxically, this dying art, which is being transformed by the accessibility of the internet, can be produced through a new and innovative approach to publishing via the exact same source. Through Idea.me you can contribute to this exciting new direction of publishing and be part of the movement.

As this venture is crowd-sourced, Wicked mag emphasises the independence that this brings – it is truly created in an un-restricted environment showcasing art which might not get published elsewhere and allows them “to use new journalistic concepts”. Yet, with the benefit of independence comes the burden of independent funding. Magazine lovers should jump at being part of a publication, even if it’s just behind the scenes, think of yourself as an anti-Murdoch, if needs be.

They stress: “Consumerism is not the goal. We have no political sign and believe in the values ​​of the people. We don’t point to the mainstream, but point to alternative individual culture that is born of every person, emphasising on extraordinary cases.”

Through Idea.me, those who are interested can donate any chosen sum, with which there come ‘rewards’ for generosity. According to the amount you donate, you will receive a copy of the magazine and extras.