Street Theater in Mexico City's Rough Tepito Area Olga R. Rodriguez - Associated Press
go to original April 17, 2014

In this April 11, 2014 photo, people walk past graffiti reading in Spanish "We grow like steak," part of a theater project in the Tepito neighborhood of Mexico City. Neighborhood resident Lourdes Ruiz is one of four residents performing scenes about life in the neighborhood alongside four professional actors. "We grow like steak," says Ruiz in the play, explaining that with each strike of the mallet, a person expands. (AP/Rebecca Blackwell)

MEXICO CITY — Few outsiders dare venture after dark into Tepito, a neighborhood known as Mexico City’s main clearinghouse for contraband ranging from guns and drugs to counterfeit sneakers.

But a theater project led by one of Mexico’s best-known actors has been taking middle-class audiences into the lives of Tepito residents in recent weeks in an attempt to show the human side of the gritty area blighted by poverty and crime.

Traveling by foot and motorcycle, the participants move after dark along trash-strewn streets, then crowd into the cramped apartments of residents, who interact with professional actors as they perform fictionalized renditions of tales about their lives.

The small company led by movie star Daniel Gimenez Cacho has offered the experience known as “Safari in Tepito” since mid-March. The performances end this month.

Many attending the four-hour production say it helped them better understand an area they would not have visited otherwise.

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