Tijuana

One afternoon I counted 1253 clothes packed and wrote down the number in a piece of paper to remember always what a man can do for money. To remember what I had to go through for a while and what my colleagues would have to endure for the rest of their lives.

“What does democracy mean to the millions of people that live in Mexico with the minimum wage? What do we expect of democracy today? What do we expect of politics beyond democracy? Economy conditions the way in which we experience politics and the expectations we have.
From there, Tijuana stages the experience of Gabino Rodríguez, turned for six months into Santiago Ramírez, an in- habitant of Tijuana (Baja California), under specific circumstances that led him away from his normal context, to which he remained uncommunicated as he worked for the minimum wage in a facto- ry on the Zona. The play seeks to tell this experience and inquire into the possibilities of representation. To be another, to try and live out the life of somebody else. To pass as someone else. Isn’t that acting?”
Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, 2016
Tijuana is born from the encounter be- tween two texts: Lowest of the Low by Günter Wallraff and the chronicle Seis meses con el salario mínimo by Andrés Solano.
I [Gabino Rodríguez] was interested in the idea of immersion: someone who passes as someone else in order to live something. The similarities shared between this method and acting fascinated me. But I was also interested in the ethical im- plications that embarking on such a process for an artistic purpose entailed. I borrowed the structure of Andrés Solano’s chronicle: a person abandons his accustomed middle–class life to live for six months earning the minimum wage.

Since the very start what attracted me most, aesthetically, was to create a fictional experience told as if it had actually happened, not solely because I thought unconceivable to trick people in real life tell- ing them I was someone who I really wasn’t, but because the idea of a middle–class artist pretending to be a proletarian to understand that world seemed to me immensely problematic, being aware that the only people interested in how it is to live with the minimum wage are the ones who can afford to be interested in it.
I adapted the story to the city of Tijuana and made several trips in which I compiled visual material and audio recordings.
The play was organized in two levels, on one hand the story of the artist’s experience living as a worker and on the other, two interviews with the same artist in which, from the comfort of a hip café in his city, he reflects on “what he did”.
Also capital to the work was the novel Los jueces by Arnoldo Gómez Suárez, where he richly describes a marginal neighborhood in Guatemala. At some point in the novel a lynching occurs, and it seemed to me that ending the “experience” of the artist in said community with such an event would generate considerable tension.
Tijuana has been read by many as a documentary and by others as a fiction. I have tried to not establish a clear posture about it in order to preserve the ethical problems derived from both views. Is it right to pass as a worker before other workers to build a project that will be performed before middle–class people? What is the difference between lying to someone in the theater and doing it in life?
The play was very influenced by the work of Renzo Martens. We used baroque Peruvian songs, a fragment of “El ansioso” by Grupo Marrano and “Viene de mí” by La Yegros.

Un proyecto de A project by Gabino Rodríguez • Basado en textos e ideas de Based on texts and ideas by Andrés Solano, Arnoldo Gálvez Suárez, Martín Caparrós y Günter Wallraff • Dirección adjunta Co–direction: Luisa Pardo • Iluminación Lighting: Sergio López Vigueras • Pintura Escénica Backdrop painting: Pedro Pizarro • Diseño de audio Sound design: Juan Leduc • Video Video: Chantal Peñalosa y Carlos Gamboa • Colaboración artística Artistic collaboration: Francisco Barreiro.
Este proyecto forma parte de “La democracia en México (1965–2015)”. This project is part of “La democracia en México (1965–2015)”.

Tijuana was premiered at Escenas do Cambio in 2016 and has since been performed in over fifteen Mexican cities and several countries at festivals such as Inteatro Festival, Ancona; Filte, Salvador de Bahía; La vie dei festival, Rome; Noorderzon, Groningen; FIND Schaubühne, Berlin; Fusebox, Austin; Teatros del Canal, Madrid; Volumen Escena Editada, Buenos Aires; Festival Sala de Parto, Lima; Theaterfestival, Basel; Festival TransAmériques, Montreal; among many others.