Meet the Kolective

About three months ago all of a sudden I found myelf submerged in a whatsapp group, I was travelling at the time and had little internet, inbetween signals I loosely took note of who was who, some of the names I knew thanks to participating in events and one is a close friend of mine but didn’t give it too much atention. It was only upon retunring to Santiago that I landed just in time for the first meet up, I went along and started to find out what all the fuss was about. These individuals, a mix of actors, dancers, street performers and clowns had decided to join forces in a select group to create a colective with the intention of utilising the diverse talents and strenghts of each in order to create a spectacular varaiety show.

We started almost immediately to train every Tuesday in a circus tent, sharing our talents and ideas and begining the construction of out first variety show ‘Variate Errante’ (errante in spanish is Wandering).

The name Kolectivo-V came about first of V for variate but also playing the with the concept from the film V for Venetta as our show looks to break the popular mould of a variety show that has a presenter and numbers that come in a specific order, we have no presentor and so each one of us becomes responsible for uniting the performances and creating the flow and conection from one act to the next.

Without further ado and with great pleasure I introduce you to the 8 that make ‘Kolectivo-V’.

Perrejil – A clown that makes her public live colourful surprizes thanks to her humour and her origional take on classic magic.

Petequia Rudelaris – An asnsy clown that whips her public up with her as she relives her travels in search of love.

Huinsha a la Txal – A flamenco dancing clown, her show takes us through her frustaistions as she meets with many obstacles during her performance.

Feñita – Navegator of emotions, his physical vocabulary is brought by rebel force. A clown at heart he brings caos to the human sensibility.

Menta – A timid and and insecure clown but always dedicated to the cause. Often acts as the helper of her piers, namely La Hunisha and when no-ones looking dreams of playing tennis.

HerrPes – This slapstic comedian manipulates the stage and her public as she prepares for the performance of a lifetime.

Llampëmn – In the Mapuche language means healing. This powerful Butoh dance is how he heals the death, pain and abuse of power in the military coup here in Chile.

De La Wonk – well thats me isn’t it… surely you’ve got to know me a bit by now?

So far our Variete Errante has gone from sucess to sucess and we become tighter knit as a group. We have performed exclusively in Santiago thus far, the first performance being in the ONG Circus Tent in San Joaqin, the second in Galpon Cabeza Martillo and the third in a beautiful theatre called Cachafaz. Working with the Kolective has been a very interesting process as 8 very large characters with the same comon goal; to create and live an artistic life, try to channel their 8 very different ways of achieving that into one variety show. It is a delicious learning curve, up until now of the gripes I have with them in the week as whatsapp pings its way backand forth and I struggle sometimes for my voice to be heard over some of the stronger ones, we come together to train or even more importantly on the night of a performance and any gripe I had is all forgotten. We create something so beautiful, so magical, I just wish was in the audience to see it.