It is difficult to talk about Cuban "identity" without making an issue of, qualifying or detailing it. Yet Cuba is an island lashed by currents from every direction, a melting pot of cultures which seem to define its own character. Theatre is a case in point. Cuban theatre is an art which is more less confined to the interior of its borders. But after the revolution, it has begun to be reborn. Cuban theatre has gone hand in hand with the story of the Cuban revolution in the middle of a century of great wars and the national liberation movement. The dawn of the 60s thus seems to be the peak of dramatic Cuban literature and, because of this, Cuban theatre, in the way that it is performed, encounters a specificity both on as well as off the island.". Cuban playwrights represent in their work the Cuban theme in and outside the island, intimately linked to the revolutionary political circumstances and to their consequences on Cuban families and individuals. All of this makes up what it is to be "Cuban", so many examples which demonstrate the difficulty of talking about Cuban theatre. There is not only one way to 'do' Cuban, since every author, every story is different and requires different ways to perceive "la cubania", whether it is in a comic, tragic, realist, "absurdist" or political way, the specificity of the island is always there.
The « cubanía théâtrale » : the specificity of cuban theatre since 1959 to today