III Jornadas de Teatro Infancias y Juventudes THT and the II Meeting of the Ibero-American ASSITEJ Network
From 26 – 31 October, more than 40 artists and management professionals from the national and international scene gathered in Tijuana, Baja California, Mexico, to participate in the III Jornadas de Teatro Infancias y Juventudes THT, an artistic and reflection meeting organised by the Mexican company Tijuana Hace Teatro in co-production with the Centro Cultural Tijuana, which brought together around 1000 children, young people and adults in its different activities.
The Centro Cultural Tijuana was the venue for the event and a couple of activities were added at Teatro Las Tablas and the Faculty of Arts of the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California to offer a national and international programme through 5 stagings, 5 workshops, 4 conferences, 3 dialogue tables, 3 editorial presentations, 2 artistic encounters and 1 dramatised reading, whose axes discussed artistic creation, cultural policies, mediation and sustainability in theatre for children and young people.
At the same time, the II Meeting of the Ibero-American Network of Performing Arts for Children and Youth ASSITEJ was held, with members from Argentina, Chile, Spain, Uruguay and Mexico, who had a work agenda where they discussed some challenges of the Ibero-American sector in order to continue strengthening their organisation and the work plan towards the next World Congress of ASSITEJ in Cuba to be held in May 2024. In addition, they exchanged with Mexican artists dialogues from different geographies to discuss the state and the tasks currently faced in the performing arts for children and youth.
In the artistic field, the companies Flores TeatroDanza, Teatro en Resistencia, LUNIA Teatro and Tijuana Hace Teatro (Mexico), as well as Peloponeso Teatro and Mon Teatro (Spain) participated. Other artists and managers also shared workshops and conferences; from Spain were Nieves Rodríguez Rodríguez, Virgínia Seguí and Débora Marquès (Triadart); as well as Maribel Carrasco, Bertha Denton, Nadxeli Yrízar Carrillo, Humberto Pérez Mortera, Itamar Dominguez, Nataly Proo, Denizza Flores and Pablo Edén Tejeda from Mexico.
María Inés Falconi (Argentina), Myriam Caprile (Uruguay), Inés Bascuñán Pérez (Chile), Eulàlia Ribera, Marta Torres and Gonzalo Moreno (Spain) participated as part of the Ibero-American Network; Marissa Garay, Anelvi Rivera and Ramón Verdugo (Mexico), who also took part in various dialogue and dissemination activities, including the work of ASSITEJ International, the Ibero-American Network of Performing Arts for Children and Youth, the Red Miradas Mexico, the National Theatre Coordination; as well as the platforms Next Generation, the Foro Internacional de Investigadores y Críticos de Artes Escénicas para la Infancia y la Juventud (Argentina), Festival Poéticas Jóvenes (Mexico), the Editorial Collection of ASSITEJ Spain, as well as the Mexican publishers Paso de Gato and Editorial de la Casa.
In this way, an Ibero-American meeting space was created between artists, researchers and managers working in the field of Theatre of/for Children and Young People, which made it possible to connect new lines of work and generate new bridges that aim to continue strengthening the territory of Ibero-America.
With this meeting, the company Tijuana Hace Teatro and the Centro Cultural Tijuana are committed to stimulating the exchange of artistic experiences and generating spaces for reflection whose target audience are not only the artists involved, but also other agents that form part of the fabric of theatre, such as managers, teachers, young students and, of course, families who can enjoy the activities.
The IV Jornadas de Teatro Infancias y Juventudes THT is already underway and is expected to take place in August 2024.