They say that you have to be careful with what you wish for because it can come true … and yes … desire is always dangerous. Because its nature is double-crossing and its appearance vaporizes ideas and makes one feel a bit lost between the mist and pleasure. And so it has been. This DramaFest thing has been like winning the tiger in the raffle, because although it’s true that during these years I’ve been in ecstasy contemplating its beauty, it is also true that time and time again I have ended up scratched and begging for my life.

An infinity of storms ago, (and it is not that I want to get idiotically metaphoric, but that it literally rains with biblical fury during the festival because it is in August), I wanted to create a laboratory dedicated to the study of contemporary theater and its connection with a new generation of viewers. It disturbed me that 70 percent of families in Mexico could be born, grow up and reproduce without ever having the need to go to a theater. The statistics resounded in my chest, it intrigued me why in other countries it was not like that. I felt all alone pursuing inexplicable desires and dedicating all my efforts to something that, in the eyes of my loved ones, seemed an absolute waste of all my abilities (business, intellectual and even musical!). In their defense, I will say that my passion for theater has always seemed more of a disease than a vocation; a feverish spirit of merriment mixed with black nostalgia for lost ideologies … a horror.

I know that this text should be an institutional sum up of the festival’s achievements in terms of promoting national dramaturgy, international collaboration and also as a bond with the states, but the problem is that those terms bore me horribly. Throughout this decade I have had to invoke those words so many times that the yearnings behind them have succumbed to a metamorphosis of exhaustion and dust.

But what does move me a lot is that after thousands words I no longer feel alone. Now I feel in a kind of Magic Mountain of showmanship, sharing this infected need for mirrors with an entire community. A talented and supportive community within which I not only count the artists, who are undoubtedly its soul, but also all those who, up or down the stage, have taken me by the arm and jumped on board with me. All my thanks to those who have held their breath (and budgets) and plunged into the depths with me with style and generosity. Thanks also to my beloved production team and especially to Nicolás Alvarado, my buddy of absurd and self-destructive longings, my dear partner who has spent these ten years by my side looking for spaces for my dramatic writing and helping me to open paths and invent unimaginable possibilities for me. I do not want to sound corny and irrational (I am aware that the only statistics that have increased in these years in the country are those of violence), but being surrounded by this family has helped me to preserve the desire … even under heavy loads Chilangocratic rain clouds.

And that’s why today, soaked and excited, I think it’s a privilege to enjoy this edition of deserts and jungles in which we festively embrace our Australian and Morelos’ guests to give life to this adventure of latitudes, drills, palimpsests and some flashes of light.

AURORA CANO.