FIA International arts festival in San Jose. Film, music, dance, clowns (ALWAYS clowns), painting, sculpture... - (20) more edit 2006-03-09 - rec# 67

Costa Rica has some of the greatest clowns I've seen. I mention this because there are so many out right now. Beginning last Friday and running until next Sunday is an international festival of art for children in San Jose. Festival Internacional de las Artes is being held for, I believe, the sixth time in a row in San Jose. It brings atrists from around Latin America to perform for the people. Everything is free or at some very small cost (like $2). The only exceptions I've seen are a couple of big name performers and tickets are going for something like $70, but we'll not count them. There is a very large park to the east of town. It originaly was the San Jose airport. Known as a location that JFK was almost killed at when his plane crashed. When it got too run down to be used as an airport the government converted it as an art park for children. They also converted the old prison into an art gallery for children. I guess that when you do away with your military and focus on the needs of your people you can do those sorts of things. Anywho this park is the focus of the festival. Think of the Juan de Fuca festival, there are seven locations around San Jose that events are being held (like in the JFA), the main location is something like 50 times as large as all the space JFA uses and the festival runs for 10 days. I spent all day in the park. As this is a festival of artists from around Latin America you can easily understand why there is such a strong presence by France. Well, perhaps you can, I can't. But yesterday there was a performance by a troupe from France on the lake in the park (yes, ON the lake). I went to the park to see if/what was going on during the day. The only scheduled activity I knew of was this performance beginning at 6:30pm. Thought I'd snoop around a bit to explore then go back to town to eat and whatever and then return for the performance. Well, I spent the entire day at the park. There were puppet shows for the kids (as these were for kids around the age of 6 I could almost follow everything said). Rides for kids (rides OSHA would NEVER approve of and I would expect to see at Burning Man), clowns, food, music, art, playgrounds for the kids; old people, young people, people who weren't so sure (me), snakes, parrots, masks, jugglers, mimes. I wondered from place to place just enjoying. I kept thinking that this was just like Burning Man, only had been going on for two months now.... For a couple of dolars you could get a pinapple hollowed out and filled with juice, or fruit, or ice cream. I got a wonderful thing for supper, must ask my teacher what it was. Two corn tortillas surounding some type of meet and refried beans. Salad on top with some sort of hot sauce as a topping. GREAT! Anyway it was time to go to the lake and watch the show. I had already walked around the lake once and watched the performers practice. They had some sort of vehicle that they rode. All black so it could not be seen in the evening, two motors in front so it could be steared, must have had some sort of rudder and one float in the rear. Because of this one single float the performer could sink dow into the water by standing at the aft of the platform and rise out by moving forward. The platform was something like 2 x 4 feet. I took some pictures to better show what they were using. But now it's night time. Pictures were difficult, but I tried and got a few worth showing. The performance began by these devices coming out from various places around the lake. The only thing visiable was fire. They converged at the performance area. As the fires burned out you could see that there were some figgures on the devices (only now it looked that they were just afloat in the water). They were all gray. Gray clothes, gray faces...all gray. They started to explore the water. For about the first 15 minutes this play became more and morer furious and animated. They began washing their clothes in the water. They clothes seemed to shed their grayness and become very colorful (in point of fact the performers turned them inside out). They shed a hood they were wearing and in time were performers dressed very much like what you would expect from Circ de Sole (sp?). They began this performance that can only be described as French theater of the absurd. Performers came out and started to mop the lake. Others had brooms and were cleaning the lake. One man came by with a baby carrage yelling in several languages that "This is a baby! It's NOT you. You are NOT this baby. This is a BABY!" over and over. One man had a lawn mower and was mowing the lake, another on a bicycle. There was a large tree in the center of the lake (a stage prop) and in time a performer on a large bed began rowing out the the tree. Once there she climed arouond in the tree during the entire performance. There was a large banqute table that came out much to the delight of the performers. They all loudly commented about how lovely it was, but nobody sat or ate from the table. There was one performer who had a door on his platform. He had a boquet of flowers and kept coming through the door yelling "I LOVE YOU! Where are you?" A woman standing under a street lamp would shout back "I love YOU! Where are YOU?" Neither would look in the direction of the other, and whenever the man retired behind the door he would sink into the water. Shortly to return through the open door and again ask for love. In time the woman began to plant flowers in the lake. She had a box of flowers (with weights and floats) that she kept throwing in the lake as the performance progressed. As the performance was winding to an end the woman in the tree got back into the bed and started to row back, however this time there was a line of sheets tied together connecting the bed to the tree. So after she had gone about 30 meters she was prevented from continuing. However she continued to row until the show was over. She then got under the sheets and turned off her light. It was an unbelievable show! I kept wondering how the Ticos felt about this. The two women sitting on my left walked out and the two women on my right spent the entire time talking on their cell phones. I get a strong sence that the idea of sitting down and focusing on a performance for the sake of the performance is not an idea Latin. It's much more about participating. Singing along, dancing to the music, chatting with friends. Many must have really been wondering what the hell was going on on THEIR lake. There are performances, lectures, dance, concerts, art shows all around town for the rest of the week. Oh, and I should point out the fireworks. Big stuff going off all the time. I read a (perhaps "cute") line the other day. Something about Costa Rica being a place to be a "human being, not a human doing." Brings a new meaning to "Pura Vida". Pura Vida...