Nicaraguan Exports His Own Revolutionary Theater

Nicaraguan playwright Alan Bolt was surprised when Harold Pinter unexpectedly arrived at his farm one day. The farm is the home of a radical agricultural and theatrical cooperative run by Bolt in the mountains near Matagalpa, and it’s a magical place, according to visitors. Many of them include movie stars and artists, and they make the two-hour drive from Managua almost as if they are on a political pilgrimage.

“So there was Harold Pinter trudging up the road,” said Bolt, “I’d never met the man and he came up to me and said ‘I have come to your farm because I want to work with you.’ ”

The two playwrights sat down and talked for a few hours, and finally Bolt, whose brand of social activism and street theater are especially popular in Europe, realized they could not write plays together.

“I’m sorry, Harold,” Bolt told his visitor, “Our sensibilities are too different. I can’t work with you because you love words and I love images.”

Bolt’s integrity and ideals are legion in Central America, where his theatrical use of Latino myth, music, dance and imagery in the cause of revolutionary change has triggered threats on his life by both the Sandinistas and the Contras.

Bolt, 39, is former chairman of the National Theatre Department of the Ministry of Culture under the Sandinistas. One of the foremost playwrights and directors in Central America, Bolt’s newest work, “Salsa Opera,” premiered at the Padua Hills Playwrights Festival at Cal State Northridge last Saturday, where the show will run weekends through Aug. 12.

The production deals with the dreams and illusions of two naive Central Americans whose border crossing hurls them into the brutal realities of immigrant life in Los Angeles.

“It’s the Promised Land as toxic waste dump,” said director-choreographer Miguel Delgado, a Teatro Campesino veteran who choreographed “Zoot Suit” and “La Bamba.”

Delgado’s teamwork with Bolt marks a rare collaboration between high-profile Chicano and Central American artists.

The soft-spoken playwright/farmer/environmentalist, who just returned to Nicaragua after spending a month here preparing his show, said the Central American assimilation problem on L.A.’s streets is stark: “Anglo hostility is bad enough, but on Olvera Street and in MacArthur Park,” he said, “I found Chicanos saying they don’t want Central Americans coming here either.

“I met these immigrants. They talk about killings and people dying on the journey here. Now they are here and nobody wants them. That’s what ‘Salsa Opera’ is about.”

Bolt, whose company in Nicaragua performs outdoors on streets, squares and in market places, is surprisingly opposed to agitprop theater.

He calls his new work “an exploration--with masks, gods, demons, and fallen angels. It doesn’t make a statement. It’s better to work with the subconscious part of an audience, not their intelligence. Nobody wants to feel like he’s in school.

“We don’t need theater to change the minds of the people. We need a different way to approach social change. For me, theater works better without words. In Nicaragua, we use dance as a systematic way of training actors. For a lot of people with strong emotions, words are not enough.”

“Salsa Opera,” is sung entirely in Spanish but Bolt thinks anyone can connect with it primal themes.

Bolt, whose name belies a deep Nicaraguan identity (his grandfather was English), had to miss the premiere because “of problems in Nicaragua.” Foremost among them is concern for his French-born wife, Valerie, and their two children, ages 7 and 5, who live on his farm.

“I think I’m ready for a sabbatical,” said the playwright.

Bolt has been on the outs with both the right and the left in Nicaragua for years. A revolutionary in the early Sandinista underground, Bolt was banished from the Sandinista party and his influential Ministry of Culture post twice in the early ‘80s after ideological arguments over the revolutionary process.

Bolt’s theatrical satires of the Sandinista government got him branded as a counterrevolutionary who was being funded by the CIA. He also infuriated the FSLN by teaching the actors in his Matagalpa theater group, known as Nixtayolero (for Indian Star of the Morning), to continually question authority.

Whether his theater company can continue to perform freely under new president Violeta Barrios de Chamarro is unknown. Reportedly under pressure to disband his farm/theater cooperative and leave the country, he did say one option might be to take up residence “for a year or two” in his wife’s native France.

His unflappable demeanor glosses over two threats on his life by the Contras. Even the Sandinistas for a time wanted his skin until they welcomed him back into the fold last year.

“I have a theater (the Nixtayolero) to analyze why violence is a daily presence in our lives so we can recognize ourselves and change. Often in Latin America, even the Left goes back to the Right-wing patterns of behavior because we have internalized the wrong values about human beings.”