"We Believe in the Art of the Excluded"

Teatro Trono is more than a community theater group. It's a movement. "We want to break the myth that art and beauty are privileges of the rich only," explains Ivan Nogales, the theater's artistic director.

Trono was founded ten years ago in the El Alto area of La Paz. They began their work with street kids in the city's detention centers. Their style is physical, vibrant and funny. It comes from a collective directing process in which all of the youth add their ideas to the final product. Their work focuses on the stories of everyday life in one of the poorest areas of Bolivia. Ivan always reminds the youth in his workshops: "Our everyday stories are as amazing as those of great works of literature!"

With this philosophy, Trono founded a community arts center in El Alto that teaches theater, circus, dance and visual arts to the children of the barrio. They use play as a way to speak on the social questions that surround them - gender equity, globalization, life in poverty, government corruption and, now, water rights.

Like art, "water is not something to gain from. It's a necessity of life," says Nogales. This is the spirit that drives Teatro Trono to question the water policy that surrounds them. As artists confronted by the daily dilemma of water privatization, the group decided to create a mythology of water - a tale in which "water for profit" and "water as spirit of life" come face to face.

- Exerpt from Essay