Interviews from Havana – Little Beehives

In today’s program our host Cristina Escobar speaks with Carlos A. Cremata, the Director of the Little Beehives Children’s Theatre Company, known by many as the best children’s theatre company in the world. Here, says Escobar, all the children learn to play musical instruments, speak English, act in bilingual productions and stand up in front of thousands of people. They have performed at the United Nations and other places around the world. Yet Carlos A. Cremata staunchly denies that the company is the best in the world and insists that their aim is not to form artists or foster professionalism. In fact, if the children began to see themselves as better than other children after a moment of fame, “we would be doing irreversible damage to their personality,” says the director. “This is a space where children come to play,” he says. “Our goal is to make human values contagious.” He tells how they built their recording studio from scratch, how poverty breeds creativity, and how he learned to multiply love, not hate, after his father died in a terrorist attack. “We follow the path of the bees,” says Cremata. “We go out every day to suck up nectar and make life sweeter. We can never lose our capacity to fly freely like the bees…who never lose their way back home.”