Suchitoto + Stratford: Setting the Stage.

• Author: Sullivan, Deana Jordan
• Position: Youth in the Americas - Suchitoto, El Salvador and Stratford, Canada - Essay

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In the town of Suchitoto, an hour and a half north of San Salvador, Es Artes is using theater to revitalize the community. Es Artes, a Canadian and Salvadoran Project, is developing a year-round theater with homegrown talent on stage and behind the scenes with its technical trade school, the escuela taller .

Es Artes was born of a collaboration between the municipality of Suchitoto in El Salvador; CUSO-VSO, a civil society organization based in Ottawa, Canada, that works through volunteers; and the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Stratford, Canada, the largest classical repertory theatre in North America.

Sixty years ago, Stratford, a small rural town southeast of Toronto, suffered economic hardship when the railway industry left town after 80 years of providing jobs and revenue. Seeing the town's survival threatened, journalist Tom Patterson conceived the idea of turning Stratford into a cultural destination by mounting a theater festival devoted to the works of William Shakespeare. It was an unusual idea, but a committee of concerned citizens shared the vision and backed the dream. Two years later, the inaugural performance of the Shakespeare festival was a production of Richard III with Alec Guinness in the lead role. Now. 60 years later, the Stratford Festival has an annual operating budget of just under $60 million and employs over 1,000 people. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival is the largest theater of its kind in North America today, and the town of Stratford continues to thrive because of it. Stratford is sending volunteers to Es Artes through CUSO-VSO to share their skills as designers, sound and light technicians, master builders, costume designers and cutters, directors and actors. Together Es Artes and the Stratford Shakespeare festival are working to create a viable cultural industry--an income generating theater company that will draw more tourists to Suchitoto and help strengthen the economy, much like it does in Stratford.

The similarities between this small town in El Salvador and the small town in southwestern Ontario, Canada are striking. Geographically, both are located just over an hour away from a major city and an international airport. Both are picturesque and have galleries, boutique restaurants, and hotels. Their historical architecture is well preserved. Stratford was once a small town struggling to rebuild itself, but then Stratford's citizens came together and built the city into the...