Her home is an oasis. In their bosom, they, both, build a family garden or organize a plastic arts workshop. The wife makes wonders in ceramics; he reviews the stories that he will later convert into videos; one of the sons studies for the entrance exams to Higher Education, another tries out a musical instrument and Daniel de Jesús, his 4-year-old toddler, paints and performs in some family works.

Las Tunas, Cuba.- The house of Luis Andrés Till and Damayanti Mena, back in the Petrocasas neighborhood, does not stop in times of pandemic if it is about improvement. Making these difficult moments an opportunity for improvement is the objective of our artists.

26Digital approaches some examples that, from the home scene, corroborate the worth of the creators from Las Tunas.

“With or without COVID-19, the theater is us; the building or the place only enriches the act. The actors work with the feelings and interiors of the human being that gives us a different view of reality, which we also take to our works. Although it is a painful period, because behind each number there is a marked family, we try to see it as a fruitful truce to gather ideas and improve spiritually and intellectually,” said Till.

So far, he has shared stories on Facebook from his unpublished book Caguayos Somos y en la Cerca Andamos (We are lizards and walk in the fence), and others by Virgilio Piñera, as he prepares to take on the interpretation of various texts by Onelio Jorge Cardoso. In addition, he works via WhatsApp in a site called Tales to Live, created by the National Chair of Popular Storytelling, to which the oral narrator Tania Rondón also joins.

“At home, we all collaborate in artistic matters. One of my daughters is an art instructor, a profession she shares with her husband. They, and my youngest daughter, help me put together a work of my authorship called My Town Shrunk (it owes its name to a book written by Alcides López), which recreates stories from the town where I live: Calixto, in the municipality of Majibacoa,” narrates Tania.

Thus, between stories made visible in the Chair ..., her home turned into a theater and the documentation of an artistic project based on the experience with her relatives, the creator in Las Tunas of the Count On Me Biennial of Orality makes her isolation a productive stage.

"We have to learn to laugh with tears and also to cry with laughter," says actress Elizabeth Borrero in one of her home videos. It is the piece Laughing crying, by the Mexican poet Juan de Dios Peza. Interpretation moves, makes you think about the current circumstances and the complexity of the human being. Despite the fact that she has shared several works during the quarantine through Facebook and YouTube, and doing so with the charisma and professionalism that characterizes her, she does not believe that she has done anything out of this world.

"I do it simply to give love, because artists have always been the doctors of the soul and these days people need, in addition to prevention advice, multiply their desire to share and live," she alleges.

Texts by the Mexican Indians, Luis Carbonell, Mario Benedetti, a version of Picolino, the dwarf horse and others of her authorship are part of the repertoire glimpsed in cyberspace by this actress from Total Teatro.

For her part, Ana Rosa Díaz Naranjo (Albita), from the Los Zahoríes puppet theater, shares on Facebook audiovisual capsules with Fito, one of her puppets. On this she comments: "This is my grain of sand in the current context, a way for people to remember happy moments and feel good."

Albita has also uploaded small videos of book presentations, photos of performances, poems by her and other initiatives to the delight of the public.

Meanwhile, Ernesto Parra, leader of Teatro Tuyo, continues his popular dynamic Clowns at Home and has even joined a team from the TunasVisión local TV channel in the body of Papote (his distinguished character) to convey to the audience the need to save electricity.

Like them, other cultists of the performing arts effort these days, sheltered under the blanket of home, to give us their talent and a light of hope in the midst of the enemy called COVID-19.