Corporación Humor y Vida [‘humor and life’] is composed of women artists from Ecuador and Colombia. They work on the contested borderlands between their two countries, an area frequently used for illegal crossings, also by guerrilla fighters. Humor y Vida will first conduct a workshop in which they interactively share their community work and arts education activities in the borderlands between Colombia and Ecuador.
In the second part of their intervention at ICAF, Humor y Vida will perform Nacer/Birth. Because of the colonial past and prejudices about indigenous culture, many in these two countries regard homebirth as primitive. As a result, Ecuador has the highest number of caesarian deliveries in the Americas, which have become lucrative activities for hospitals. The script of this performance is based on personal testimonies and is presented with the use of puppetry, video and dance. Humor is used as a way to address the painful and long battle between ideologies and between westernised and indigenous populations. In Nacer, childbirth (home delivery) is humanized thanks to the ancestral knowledge of midwives of the Imbabura region (province of Ecuador).
This project is a co-production between Humor y Vida and the Dutch organization Theater Embassy. Apart from ICAF, Nacer wil also be performed at Plein Theater in Amsterdam, whom we gratefully acknowledge as our co-producer for this event.