• Submitted by: admin
• Arts and Culture
• Caribbean
• culture an traditions
• Destinations
• Education
• Havana
• history
• international
• Theater
• 11 / 26 / 2008

---

Representatives from Cuba, Guatemala, Ecuador, Cameroon (as spectators), and other countries are attending this event that will open in earnest tomorrow at the El Sótano Hall and the Guiñol National Theater. This festival will include other presentations at various schools, hospitals, museums and squares, reported the AIN news agency.

The opening ceremony paid tribute to the Havana University Theater for its 67 years of uninterrupted work. This makes that group the most enduring in Cuba—and perhaps in the world. The marking of its almost half-a-century of existence in 1991 was the inspiration for the first festival.

García, who is also a cultural advisor at the Ministry of Higher Education, said that at the university level this movement has caused “massiveness and quality” to prevail, a feature that sets it apart from others in Cuba and abroad.

She added that raising the issue of the ongoing fight against HIV-AIDS through the festival is a response to the call of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) to use art and theatre as powerful weapons of prevention.

On Friday, there will be a workshop about such important contributions as well as a concert to mark December 1 as World AIDS Day. For this concert, Aceituna sin hueso (a Cuban musical group) has invited the Sexto Sentido vocal quartet to perform.

Until then, actors, experts and promoters will be busy displaying their skills and talent, and performing monologs, plays, individual shows and more.

(Juventud Rebelde)