By Teresa Eyring
Executive Director of Theatre Communications Group (tcg)
From the February 2010 issue of American Theatre magazine
As the last decade was winding down, my travels ramped up and took me to a couple of artistically inspiring and gutsy locales. The first was a town of 2.1 million, the capital of a socialist Caribbean nation with crumbling, majestic mansions, food rations, late-night hangouts by the seawall, private homes with nightly room rentals, hundreds of theatres—and winter temperatures in the eighties. The second was a midwestern hamlet with a population of around 700, rocky bluffs, stately bed-and-breakfasts, a winding river, miles of bike trails, a top-notch theatre—and occasional below-zero temperatures.
Commonweal Theatre Company's Man of LaMancha
My destinations, you may have discerned by now, were Havana, Cuba, and Lanesboro, Minnesota. When I embarked on these two journeys, I wasn’t specifically searching for common threads. But in traveling from one place to the next, important similarities of artistic passion and purpose emerged. In conversations with Lanesboro leaders Hal Cropp and Eric Bunge at Commonweal Theatre Company, I heard echoes of conversations I had weeks earlier with members of the Havana arts community, including Flora Lauten, founder and longtime artistic director of Teatro Buendía; Raúl Martin of Teatro de la Luna; the documentary filmmaker Estela Bravo; and Helmo Hernandez, president of the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba. The upshot: While both these communities have important natural resources and social attributes, the artistry of each place—and how that artistry connects with people—is what expresses the true soul and character of both locales. Artistry and its dynamic connection to community is what helps distinguish Havana and Lanesboro from any other places in the world.
