The expand theater: a place to resignify the cultural practices in the Montes de María,

Colombia.

This talk was born in my final research for the BA in Training in Scenic Arts at the
Universidad Pedagógica Nacional in Bogotá. It addresses the questions and reflections
that I have reached from the performative and educational work developed with the rural
women of the subregion of Montes de María, specifically of the village "Villa Colombia"
(town of Ovejas,department of Sucre, Colombia).

The Colombian rural context has been characterized by the great effects it suffered from
the dynamics of war. The subregion of the Montes de María has been one of the areas
most affected by the armed conflict. However, various communities have built resistance
exercises and pedagogical processes based on cultural and artistic practices. That have
allowed them to reconfiguring their subjectivity and collectivity based on questions about
the feminine, the body and the corporeality.

The methodology developed with the women of this community begins from an expanded
idea of theater and education, in which the limiting scenarios between life and art / life
and education are possibilities of creation; this means to locate the reflection of the
experiences of everyday life as a starting place in an expanded theater laboratory.

Consequently, the findings in that laboratory are related with a reconfiguration of the
feminine and its corporeality in rural spaces, from expanded theater exercises that have
allowed questioning the status quo of women within a patriarchal structure and, thereby,
generating new dynamics within communities and territories.

Key Words: Expanded theatre, creativity lab, subjectivities, women's corporalities.

Andrea Mora Manrique biopic

Colombian professional in Performing Arts from the Universidad Pedagógica Nacional;

junior researcher and teacher the last 6 years in the field of artistic education with
different populations: early childhood children, children and adolescents in vulnerability
conditions and women and girls victims of the armed conflict.

I have written the article "Scenic practices and alternative pedagogical scenarios: a look at
the possibility of thinking of the female body-subject through memory in the mountains of
Maria" in the magazine “Pensamiento palabra y obra” from the Faculty of Fine Arts of the
National Pedagogical University.

I have carried out research assistance projects, such as Montes de Nosotros - A cultural
magazine for the Montes de María with Zürcher Hochschule der Künste - University of Fine
Arts in Zurich- Switzerland. In cooperation with the Ministry of Culture.
I have done the memoirs of the diploma "Territory and Theatricalities" with the Network
of Living Arts, Antonio Nariño University, the Varasanta Theater and the Ministry of
Culture. Also I have attended different diplomas and seminars on research about arts.

Currently I work as an educator in the Mobile Strategy for the prevention and eradication
of Expanded Child Labor in the District Secretary of Social Integration, an institution that is
part of the Mayor's Office of Bogotá.