Ep. 27: MERENDIANDO with Carmen Aguirre
April 22, 2020
This week Monica and Camila speak with Vancouver based theatre artist and proud leftist, Carmen Aguirre!
Carmen Aguirre is a Chilean-Canadian author, actor, and playwright. She’s a Core Artist at Vancouver’s Electric Company Theatre, and co-founder of The Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition or CALTAC. She has written and co-written over twenty-five plays, and is the author of 2 best selling memoirs.
For our merienda this week, Monica enjoyed those little Peruvian chocolates again and Camila ate a Colombian manjar de leche con bocadilla de guayaba! So tasty. Here’s a recipe on how to make your own Colombian arequipe/ manjar de leche/ dulce de leche at home!
Show notes:
- Electric Company Theatre, based in Vancouver
- An article from Jacobin on, in Carmen’s words, “ultra right wing dictatorships” in Latin America – ‘Latin America’s Right-Wing Turn’
- B by Guillermo Calderon
- Rumble Theatre, basd in Vancouver
- Carmen’s first memoir, Something Fierce: Memoirs of a Revolutionary Daughter
- Canada Reads, an annual “battle of the books” competition organized and broadcast by Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC
- Blue Box, Carmen’s one woman show. Here’s a trailer!
- George Stroumboulopoulos, Canadian media personality and former host of CBC’s The Hour. Here’s his interview with Carmen.
- BBC Radio, who also interviewed Carmen
- Wet’suwet’en resistance movement against the Coastal Gaslink pipeline
- The Cuban Revolution in the 60s – an article.
- The Venezuelan Revolution at the turn of the century – an article titled ‘Chávez’s revolutionaries caught between legacy and change in Venezuela’ from PRI
- Venezuela’s Communas, or the Law of Community Councils
- Recent Chilean uprising and protests
- Recent Argentinian elections
- Recent Bolivian political crisis
- Neoliberalism
- “Canada gives $2000 a month” aka the CERB program
- Plays Carmen has written
- Eduardo Galeano, Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist considered
- James Faygan Tait, Canadian theatre artist
- Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands by Jorge Amado
- Conyuntura 2020, an international Latinx theatre gathering
- the Canadian Latinx Theatre Artist Coalition or CALTAC
- Beatriz Pizano, Lina de Guevara , Evelina Fernandez, Nancy Garcia Loza and Barbara Santos attended the Coyuntura, among others
- Monica Sanchez, theatre artist working at the University of Colorado
- The L Word, a queer television show
- A Chilean once, or tea time
- Carmen’s book recommendations: The Many-Headed Hydra: Sailors, Slaves, Commoners, and the Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh and Home Rule: National Sovereignty and the Separation of Natives and Migrants by Nandita Rani Sharma
All Merendiando episodes are in Spanglish. New episodes of Radio Aluna Theatre are released every Wednesday. Subscribe to this show wherever you get your podcasts.
Radio Aluna Teatro is produced by Aluna Theatre with support from the Metcalf Foundation, The Laidlaw Foundation, The Canada Council for the Arts, and The Ontario Arts Council.
Aluna Theatre is Beatriz Pizano & Trevor Schwellnus, with Sue Balint & Gia Nahmens; Radio Aluna Theatre is produced by Camila Diaz-Varela and Monica Garrido.
For more about Aluna Theatre, visit us at alunatheatre.ca, follow @alunatheatre on twitter or instagram, or ‘like’ us on facebook.
Follow and subscribe to this podcast on iTunes, Google Play, and wherever else you get your podcasts.