SHORT STORY ABOUT THE FOUNDATION OF GRUPO 55 AND HOW THE NAME WAS CHOSEN

The story started in Argentina where, for the last months of 1987 and most of 1988, Larry Silberman, supported by several friends, toured in different provinces with his play " Yo así no juego más".

The tour became international, bringing the play to Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua and Mexico.

Once back to Argentina, he decided with his workmates to make a group "so that everyone could make the most of the doors that were opening in Latin America".

At the time, Larry's main "partners" in the project were Rubén Brenner (singer-songwritter), Verónica Wolman (psychologist and journalist), and Gabriel Garzón (teacher in creativity).

The four of them, representing different sectors of the group, discussed for days about the name they could give to the group, until one said:

-"55, this is what links us together.
- 55? How come?
- We are not 55.
- We weren't born in 55."

The one that came up with the idea said: "Which bus do we all take to come here?"

From there we understood: even though we were all four living in different areas of the city of Buenos Aires, the "colectivo" (name given to buses in Argentina) 55 was passing by each one of our houses and that is the one we were all taking to go to the meeting room.

We started playing with the word "colectivo" (bus) and realized that it implied movement, that it was not always driven by the same person, that the passengers could share one or more trips, that in some spanish countries the word meant "group" and finally that "co-lectivo" was about learning with somebody, in Spanish.

And "cultural" because we neither were a conventional group nor a theatre company, but a group of artists and teachers in different subjects which united us and who supported each other so that each one of us could fulfill his/her own project.

From that moment on, we decided to call ourselves "Grupo 55, cultural collective".

We were almost all part of the intermediate generation: our biggest brothers had been victims of the Dirty War which lead to 30 000 deaths during the last military dictature. Our younger brothers had fought during the war between Argentina and Great Britain in the "islas Malvinas" (Falklands).

And what about us? We were here because we had a lot to say.

Following three large tours in Latin America, Larry decided to settle down in Mexico and in 1990, he founded Grupo 55 Argentine-Mexican, this time more oriented towards theatre, primarily for children and youth.

Jorge Ferro was set designer and Perla Szuchmacher assistant director and choreographer for the first show that Larry produced with Mexican actors ("Todo de a dos", released in 1991 in the UNAM's Theatre Juan Ruíz de Alarcón).

Perla teamed up with the group from then on and Jorge participated on a regular basis from 1997 as a set designer, lighting engineer and teacher. Later on, they both became Larry's managing partners in Grupo 55.

Perla Szuchmacher has been a managing partner from early 1993 until late 2004 and Jorge since 2001, working as co-director.

Nowadays Grupo 55 has two head offices: Jorge Ferro coordinates the one in México DF while the new one is Montreal, Quebec, Canada is directed by Larry Silberman.

Julieta Ortiz, Jorge Zarate, Karina Gidi, Alegría Martínez and Juan Carlos Remolina were some of the actors amongst many other ones who started the Grupo 55's activities.

Gustavo Muñoz, Rodrigo Vázquez, Carmen Mastache, Silverio Palacios, Monserrat Marañon, Salomón Reyes, Lourdes Echevarría, Tizoc Arroyo, Gabriela Perez, Juan Carlos Vives, Haydeé Boetto, Carlos Corona, and 60 other actors and actresses took part in the following plays.

Jorge Picó, Rubén Segal, Miguel Alonso, Alberto Lomnitz, Edyta Rewuska, Gabriel Labastida, Rubens Correa, Monique Cepeda with 25 other Spanish-American teachers participated offering training workshops.