Back in the time that got lost in a hundred years, it rained for forty days in a small town close to the Caribbean Sea . From all the rain the grass and the trees grew so much that the carpets and walls of green leaves, roots and flowers covered all the roads that led to this town. The whole place drowned in an endless jungle and nobody could find his way in or out of the little town. It is precisely in this isolated area where we are setting our play.
In this forgotten place, where people started celebrating the lunar eclipse, the moon was the only one that had managed to make her way down from the sky on her blue bicycle and visit the town.
MAN WITH THE PANAMA HAT from A Very Old Man With Enormous Wings adapted by Nilo Cruz
The setting, characters and events in the play were inspired by several Latin cultures, their religions and festivals. This section focuses on some of those influences.
AFRICA and the CARIBBEAN
YORUBA and SANTERIA
The name “Osain” is used in a song in the play. Osain is an orisha. An orisha is a manifestation of the guardian spirirt in the spiritual system of the Yoruba people of Western Africa. Osain is said to be the owner of all the plants and trees that grow wild in the woods, and lives deep in the woods and shuns the company of others. These beliefs of the Yoruba people stress a balance between the divine and the human and have emigrated over time to Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Mexico and Venezuela. Today, the Yoruba populace of Africa has become predominantly Christian and Islamic. In Colombia, Yoruban beliefs have cross-pollinated with Catholicism, creating a more present and mystical Christianity marked by pageantry and invocation.
Some examples of festival and pageantry…
Christmas lights, Cerro Nutibara, Medellin Flower festival, Medelliin
In Cuba, Brazil, and elsewhere in Latin America, Yoruba’s influence gave rise to …
Thursday, September 2