Rosa Luisa Márquez is a graphic and theatre artist. She is a Professor of Theatre at the University of Puerto Rico and a theatre director. Since 1984, she has collaborated with Antonio Martorell in several yearly events which are brief, site specific, and address artistic, political as well as community issues with the help of artists and amateurs. Their goal: to transform spaces, to transform life experiences, to create tiny “improbable societies” through the arts. They have developed hundreds of dramatized lectures, performances, installations, theatre plays and art exhibits in their native Puerto Rico as well as in Perú, Brazil, México, Spain and the United States.

LS: How does the Culture of War or domination of the “Empire” inform your work?

RLM: We in Puerto Rico have lived under the domination of the Empire since 1898- that’s the U.S. Empire- before from 1493, the domination of the Spanish Empire. So we have always lived in a culture of domination of the Empire. Our art is inscribed within this context so basically that is the global- I mean macro- but at the same time we have specifics- as an artist I began during the time of the war in Vietnam, when Puerto Ricans were forced to join the army as U.S. citizens. What we did was try to literally take over open spaces that would remind people about what was happening and stress our point of view.
I remember, when, I started working with Antonio Martorell in ’84 we wanted to talk about the impending invasion of Nicaragua by the U.S. and we decided to work with subverting the language of pickets and protests, which was very institutional as a protest performance. We wanted to not talk only to the converted but to talk to everybody on the streets. We took into account his experience as a graphic artist and our experience with the work of Bread and Puppet and sort of linked them together and created a piece that had 140 performers and a big parade, using as a text the song La Plena Verdad that speaks about the end of the world. We decided that the way in which the visuals were very big and the music was very contagious, we could have people watch the event though they were not in accord with us- even if they were not thinking the way we were thinking. We thought that art could be a way of making people stop and join and think a little about the situation.
At that point we decided that our art was going to be more pleasant than aggressive. It was going to, besides being beautiful, artistic, whatever, it was going to be protective of the actor and protective of the audience (sometimes the audience becomes an actor). That would give us a sense of the empire of peace over the empire of aggression, which acts as a space of comfort, in the good sense, not as a space of frivolous comfort but committed comfort. You can feel protected to say whatever you want to say and find ways in which to reach people who are not usually willing to listen so those are the strategies- we are still doing that today.
I just did a production of Romeos and Juliets in March and April with 40 students from the University of Puerto Rico based on the culture of war because I was sure that the war was coming. We started the project in August 2002, I knew that this was coming, so I wanted to deal with Shakespeare and bring it closer to us. It was 2 conflicting worlds, family worlds, which have echoes in Puerto Rico in gang warfare but also which have echoes in the world, this thing of Christians and non-Christians.
So the culture of war is very present in what we think about. In this piece we’ve done here at the Hemispheric Institute when we entered the space we saw two worlds because there were two spaces, divided in the middle. That provoked reflection on heaven and earth, peace and war, death and life.

LS: In the face of media regulation/censorship and propaganda, how do you consider visual art/performance as a medium for expression, change, activism?

RLM: I think we have to find ways in which we can get away with what we can do, and be aware of what the regulations are and what the censorships are so we can play around with those impediments. In this production of Romeos and Juliets, the University of Puerto Rico promised us the use of an empty theater which has 2001 seats that are not there. So it’s a huge empty space. And we were told yes we could do it and very close to show date they said that the firemen didn’t give the permit, that the insurance didn’t give the permit. So sometimes there is some sort of censorship based on institutional, educational channels. I remember the Living Theater was once, many times, prohibited from doing productions in some theaters and the excuse was the fire department. So you end up with the same prohibition. It could be political, it could be mechanical but in the end you cannot do your play. So we try to find our spaces and remind people we were not allowed to use them. We think we live in a very open society and we have to remind ourselves that we are being conditioned to think that way. So art can make you stop and rethink, and in a sense take up the issues of Bertold Brecht when he told us a commonplace thing can be a surprising thing if you shift the point of view.

LS: What tools (of performance, of resistance, of assimilation, etc.) do you feel are the most useful in fighting or responding to the Empire and/or the culture of War?

RLM: I think I couldn’t say what tools are the best. I could say that I work with the tools that I have. I try to sense in whoever is working with us the tools they have to bring in. The voices have to be many, they have to be diverse. And we just offer one of those options and every time we are open to more. So I think I like theater because it’s artesenal, I don’t know if you can translate that, it is very, it is very crafty. I can control theater, I cannot control media. Media is very much based on money and who owns the means. Whereas I think I’d rather be changed and change whatever I have very close to me. I don’t think I have the power to change something that is beyond my means. So I bet on this- and I call it theater. Still I have a problem with this new term “performance” because I think theater comprises performance. I think it can be a term that can be as open as you can feel, so for me it still works as a term, because I think everything is theatrical, so everything is “performatic,” okay, they are the same (laughs). But I think its seeing what skills you have and training in the skills you don’t have and seeing how you much you can say however you can say it, and for me in a non-aggressive manner. I think aggression caters to the culture of the empire, and maybe it does function for some people but for me it shuts me out when I see a lot of aggression. I see aggression so much on that street that I don’t want to see it in performance- but that’s my limitation.