An Embrace to the Ninth

International Festival of Hispanic Theater

I learned years ago that life wasn’t anything like what is commonly described as “real life”. I learned years ago that in order to live deeply, one must invent one’s own life; that anything else is only waiting for the end; a smattering of shadows and anxieties with slight signs of light.

At that time I discovered theater, poetry, dance, music, visual arts, literature … I discovered who, amid the void, daily painted Hope and transformed space and time with luminosity, and from then I knew that crossing this valley of tears would be bearable.

One morning I decided with whom I wished to live. I sought God with such intensity that the acquaintance was easy. The creators in the world He lived in, those works in His image and likeness, the artists, the everyday magicians, the dreamers, the many times incomprehensible folk whose values differ greatly from established parameters in the ‘normal’ world, surprised me; and suddenly I understood everything.An artist is a type of angel whose work allows us a glimpse of promised paradise. For this reason, today I thank Teatro de la Luna, that fixed bridge between the best of two worlds, for the honor of presiding over its 2006 meeting of the International Festival of Hispanic Theater.

As a Dominican, a resident of an island that is forever circled by sea and bathed in the tropics, I assume this role in the name of all my country’s artists, and from them I bring a firm, intense embrace from the proud Caribbean, where each morning life’s passion overflows with the wish to stretch new lines to our rothers throughout the world.

I congratulate the organizers of this prestigious Hispanic theater festival, and all the theatrical troupes who will adorn Teatro de la Luna’s stage during their performances.

To all creators of utopias and fantasies from here and there, an even larger embrace. Life, as that man of theater assured us centuries ago, is, above all else, dream, nothing but dream.

Freddy Ginebra Director of Casa de Teatro - Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic