If the Shoe Fits - 

Youth Voice:

My name is Emil and I am an 18 year old tour leader in San José. I was born here in Costa Rica and have always been interested in its history. Luckily for me, this role has allowed me to meet some of the best teachers the educational system of my country offers. I owe most of my knowledge to our school system. English is my second language and I learned it in high school.

A retired teacher on one of my tours asked me to share what I said about the National Theatre in San Jose with this journal.

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Teacher Voice:

I am that “retired teacher” referred to by Emil. I have been asked why I felt inspired by Emil’s discussions with us during the full day he guided us around the key downtown sights in San Jose.  And, more to the point, why did I believe that this history of the National Theatre of San Jose was a way for Emil to disrupt our thinking and to challenge us to look at his city beyond the European architecture and enormous tourist appeal.  

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Youth Voice - Emil writes:

     Throughout the history of Costa Rica there’s always been a huge social disparity that has shifted through the years but remains to this day. Back in the 1800s, our people were at an all time low in respect to poverty in our country. Most would own small pieces of land in which they would plant the vegetables they ate, such as cassava roots, potatoes, onions, and carrots, among others. These lands were named “chacaras” which meant that their primary source of protein would be from legumes or chicken, as they couldn’t get their hands on beef very often. 

     In the early 1820s coffee entered Costa Rica but it was a risk for producers, as a single coffee plant took about three years to start producing coffee beans. 

     The majority of the population was poor and resorted to planting and harvesting the coffee, while the middle class established factories to process the coffee beans that they purchased at a very low price from the farmers. The upper classes were the elites, and oligarchs who loaded toasted coffee beans in ships to export to Europe. Initially they exported to England but demand for coffee quickly spread all over the world. Those same people who traveled by boat to London came back to Costa Rica sporting the styles of clothing of the British and brought with them the architecture of Italy and France. 

     They wanted to show off their wealth so they built a theatre. 

     The National Theater was constructed in the European architectural styles using tax money earned from coffee exports. The government built the theatre in San Jose for the elites, but could not say so because public money was used to fund the project. In reality, the theatre was meant to be available exclusively to the oligarchs.

So, how did they keep out the poor? They created a rule that, in order to enter the theater, you had to be wearing shoes. The majority of the poor could not afford shoes so did not own them or wear them. It was that simple.

As the city became wealthier, the poor people moved out of the city to the countryside. The beautiful National Theater was now truly only for the rich. In the early 1900s Alfredo González Flores was elected president, and he sought to even out the social disparity and the economical gap between the rich and the poor.  This, of course, wasn’t welcomed by the oligarchs so they organized a coup d’état on Alfredo’s government led by General Tinoco of the Costa Rican Army. Tinoco thus established a dictatorship while working as a puppet to do the bidding of the oligarchs. 

The history of the oppression of the lower working class extends all the way to the 1940s, where it finally leveled out after the civil war which brought the Code Of Work, the abolition of the army, the social guaranties, and the vote for women, which is how Costa Rica was pretty much shaped into the democratic republic it is today.

By the 1950s the majority of the population was middle class so they had much better opportunities economically and in society. Finally, more people could afford to pay a visit to the theater to watch a play or an opera concert. The National Theatre and the city of San Jose itself became available to more citizens. But the National Theater is still only for those who can afford it even if this was the case for more people than before. It also provides income as a big tourist attraction.

Teacher Voice

Emil is politically aware and very proud of his country. Before we saw the National Theatre, Emil had already told us that:

• Costa Rica has not had an army since their civil war ended in 1948. Emil told us that the money saved by doing this has been used for the environmental work already done and still in progress.

• Costa Rica was named UN Champion of the Earth in 2019 for its efforts to fight climate change.  The details can be found here:    

Costa Rica named ‘UN Champion of the Earth’ for pioneering role in fighting climate change (unep.org)

After much walking through the heart of the city, we stopped to rest at a cafe to taste Costa Rican coffee and chocolate in traditional ways. Emil pointed out the interesting architecture of the cafe space which was tiered and told us that more avant-garde plays were performed in this cafe space than at the National Theatre. 

There was a rainbow flag at the very top of the tiers. Emil told us that there were still legal restrictions for and social rejection of gay people in Costa Rica but that younger folks were advocating for change. 

This year’s Stratford Festival Season Playbill, (2024)  includes an article by Katie Hewitt  entitled: Learn as You Look in which she references a 2021 study published in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology that found watching live theatre increased feelings of empathy and prompted more charitable donations among audiences.  Reflecting on this research, Hewitt comments: “Reshape enough spectators, it seems, and you get social change” (p. 52).

Emotional learning through theatre really began for me with the many alternative theatre plays I saw as a university student and as a young teacher. There were exciting new Canadian plays in the 70s and 80s and the emerging theatre was very political. 

I remember attending Les Miserables in 1989 when it first opened at the Royal Alex.We were three married couples with young children and we splurged on an expensive dinner and these very expensive theatre tickets.  I vividly remember feeling uncomfortable walking past the unhoused and impoverished people on the street to enter this grand theatre to watch a play about the struggle against poverty. The heroic battle was very emotional. My discomfort was even stronger as we exited the theatre. 

I rarely attended the larger theatres and more expensive productions. I had always looked to the political plays to evoke social change. I am now also thinking more deeply about the various audiences in our mainstage and alternative theatres and wondering how we ensure that all of our theatres are accessible for less wealthy patrons and also attractive to diverse audiences. Where and how a play is advertised and whether or not there is finanicial accessibility are as important as the play itself in terms of reaching a wide variety of audience members.  It took me many years to realize I needed to be in the audience of many different theatres to see a variety of plays... to be humbled about how narrow-minded I was about the “worthiness” of our grand theatres. I had prided myself on attending alternate theatres, the more alternative the better.

Throughout my day with Emil, I could not stop thinking about how the elites ensured that the poor would not enter their precious new National Theatre because they could not afford shoes. I also pictured contemporary young actors and musicians  performing in that tiered coffee shop space and leaving behind their protest flag high above so that the tourists and citizens drinking coffee or chocolate might, perhaps, maybe, look up and think about 2SLGBTQIA+ rights. 

Seeds of disruption are powerful and important. But not all disruption is big and angry and divisive. Successful disruptions can also be found in the ways thoughtful people gently nudge us to think outside our  personal boxes.  Dare I say our preferred theatres? Those seeds are planted when we begin to disrupt our own thinking and practices.

 Thank you, Emil, for ensuring that we did not rush by the National Theatre snapping quick photos, that we identified the architecture as European and British, and that we understood its colonial heritage, integral to San Jose’s history, but not to what the country values most in 2024. Most importantly, you focused us on the audiences who could not afford shoes back then as well on those who could. 

Thank you, Emile for taking time in your very busy life to make a contribution to our journal. I think often of the original wealthy audiences in the  National Theatre of Costa Rica and their devious way of denying entry to the poor. I reflect about the ways the poor are marginalized here in Canada. 

Suggestions For Teachers:

• It may be useful to see how dance and drama in Costa Rica have evolved. CostaRica.com has a useful short overview of theatre trends.

https://www.costarica.com/culture/theater-in-costa-rica

• Take your students to see plays as often as possible. 

 Discussion and Critical Thinking  Prompts:

1.  How do you define “Canadian” theatre.  Will you include popular touring plays from the USA and England?  Does your  definition include Indigenous playwrights? regional playwrights? plays in languages other than English and French?

2. Make a list of every theatre in your city. List well known theatres from other provinces in Canada.

3. What is the relationship between theatre as entertainment and theatre as art? Where does theatre as a business fit into this discussion? 

4. How can theatre challenge us to reflect on our thinking, our behaviour, the society in which we live etc.?

5. In what ways does your accessibility to live theatre depend on which province you live in and/or where in the province you live? What other factors influence accessibility? 

6. Share how the rich in Costa Rica prevented the poor from attending their grand new theatre without seeming to do so.  Are there similar strategies used here in our city in 2024?

 Inquiry Prompts: 

Design an inquiry project for students to: 

1.   investigate the evolution of a local theatre or theatre company

or 

2.  investigate a theatre or dance form or tradition with which you have a cultural connection. 

References

Hewitt, K.(2024)  Learn as You Look. 2024 Digital Visitor Guide, Stratford Festival. https://www.google.com/search?q=stratford+visitors+guide+web+2024&oq=stratford+visitors+guide+web+2024&gs_lcrp=EgZjaHJvbWUyBggAEEUYOTIHCAEQIRigATIHCAIQIRigAdIBCTQ4MDc0ajBqN6gCALACAA&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

  2024_Visitor-Guide_ web

Rathje, S., Hackel, L., & Zaki, J. (2021). Attending live theatre improves empathy, changes attitudes, and leads to pro-social behavior. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 95, Article 104138