Regarding the Caminata Nocturna experience, who should or should not take part in a border crossing simulation? The article profiled various types of participants such as tourists walking in immigrants’ shoes or Mexicans learning about what crossing the border would actually entail. With each audience comes a set of moral and ethical questions. For example, is it disrespectful for American tourists to pretend to be tourists crossing the border, or is it a necessary cultural eye-opener? This was an issue I personally felt some ambiguity over as I debated in my own mind whether this sort of tourism served to clarify and educate or to commercialize and trivialize. I also thought the Mexican market for the simulations added an interesting layer to the discussion of the value of this tourist attraction? Does the experience better serve Mexicans whom it deters from making the difficult, dangerous, and illegal crossing, or is it more valuable as a window into another world for tourists in different situations?
The Caminata Nocturna article made me think more about the boundaries of theatre and what can be called theatre. Though my inclination would be to say that this is not theatre but rather has theatrical and performance components, I would be interested in hearing if anyone would consider this experience to be theatre. The main thing that keeps this from being theatre in my mind is the lack of a traditional audience watching the performance. For example, I wouldn’t consider children playing role-play games with each other to be theatre since although they are performing and playing roles, this experience would lack the sort of (to some extent) detached witnesses that make up an audience. However, perhaps I am defining theatre and the concept of the audience too narrowly. I would be interested in hearing the thoughts of someone who might consider this theatre or who would be willing to play devil’s advocate as, though I do not necessarily consider this to be theatre, it could still be interesting to see what we learn when taking a look at it from that lens.