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A Guatinaui Odyssey

Kiewan Foxe
University of Toronto
FAS Caribbean Studies

With performance often being used as a means of 
entertainment for many, audiences can sometimes 
be at fault for allowing their gullibility to fiction 
and historical inaccuracies led to dangerously 
self-constructed beliefs. Time and time again 
with regard to the colonial history of Indigeneity 
in the “New World,” we face the risk of falling 
victim to historical deceit. Coco Fusco and 
Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s performance, The 
Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey, is a 
masterfully produced stage play that reveals 
flaws in past and present historical beliefs that 
were strengthened by almost laughable false 
colonial narratives. Highlighting the ignorance to 
Indigeneity in Western mind, the two performers 
lead the viewer to question their relationship with 
the history of oppressed societies or “the Other.” 
This analysis seeks to consider the significance of 
The Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey in 
the context of the fragility and danger of colonial 
credence that leaves “the Other” as a victim of 
falsehoods.

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Indigenous 
narratives, colonial perfor-

mance, historical falsehoods, 
“the Other”

B I O

Kiewan Foxe is currently a fourth-year student at the University of Toronto with a focus 
on Caribbean Studies and drama. Finding the overlapping of the colonial history of the 
Caribbean and performance to be a fascinating subject, led to Kiewan becoming interest-
ed in the world of Caribbean academia

© 2021 Kiewan Foxe
Caribbean Studies Students’ Union, Canada - https://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/cquilt/

                       This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- ShareAlike 4.0 International License. 
                       To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

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    Coco Fusco, “The Other History of Intercultural Performance,” TDR: Drama Review 38, no. 1 (Spring 1994): 147, 
https://doi.org/10.2307/1146361
     Fusco, “Intercultural Performance,” 152.
     Melanie Newton, “‘The Race Leapt at Sauteurs’: Genocide, Narrative, and Indigenous Exile from the Caribbean 
Archipelago,” Caribbean Quarterly 60, no. 2 (February 2014): 7, https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2014.11671886.
     Newton, “Genocide, Narrative,” 7.
     Fusco, 162
 

       

 

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Introduction
Dating back to the discovery of the “New 
World” in the fifteenth century, it may be 
argued that terms such as ‘savage’, 
‘uncivilized’, and ‘primitive’ were used in 
such an abundance due to no other justifi-
cation than deliberate subjugation. In Coco 
Fusco and Guillermo Gómez-Peña’s 
performance, The Couple in the Cage: A 
Guatinaui Odyssey, the two Latin Ameri-
can performers cleverly highlight colonial 
ignorance, prejudiced views and lies by 
forcing their audiences to question the 
validity of their Western history and 
knowledge of “the Other.” This process 
seeks to contradict “contemporary tourist 
industries and cultural ministries of 
several countries around the world [that] 
still perpetuate the illusion of authenticity 
to cater to the Western fascination with 
otherness”.  The significance of this 
remark is that the irony laden performance 
of The Couple in the Cage places its 
audience in a critical position which seeks 
to make them feel self-conscious about 
their Western views that forced the 
“Other” into “an aesthetic value”.  The 
authenticity, or in this case unauthenticity, 
that Fusco and Gómez-Peña capture in 
their performance puts forth the idea that 
Western ideologies and colonial history 
abuses the ideal image of the Indigenous 
populations by highlighting the colonial 
practice of injecting fiction into history to 
fortify the fictional “aesthetic value” of 
Indigeneity in the “New World.”

When watching the performance of The 

Couple in the Cage: A Guatinaui Odyssey, 
one cannot help but consider that the 
performance is an accurate portrayal of the 
Indigenous falsities that Christopher 
Columbus would have spread upon 
returning to Europe. This is especially true 
considering the supporting narratives of 
scholars. For example, in considering 
Indigenous narratives in the Caribbean, 
historian Melanie Newton speaks to 
similar false assumptions in the Atlantic 
that originated in the fifteenth century.  It 
is during this time when Columbus began 
the transmission of false accounts of 
Indigenous populations, such as their 
barbaric and violent nature, because he 
despised the colour of their skin.  Howev-
er, it is essential to note that it was also 
during this time that Columbus’s son, 
Hernando Colón, wrote a logbook that 
captured his father’s travels. The signifi-
cance of his logbook is that it contradicted 
the supposed truths that his father played a 
significant role in influencing.  The 
narratives of both Columbus and his son 
were needed to establish the substance of 
real presence in The Couple in the Cage: A 
Guatinaui Odyssey. Fusco’s mention of 
one criticism of the performance not being 
authentic because her and Gómez-Peña’s 
skin were not being dark enough to look 
like “real primitives”  coincides with 
history opting to believe Columbus’s 
account of Indigeneity over his son’s more 
accurate narrative. The persistence of 
these beliefs may be seen as an example of 
the ways which Western colonial views 
have been corrupted by the fetishization of 

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21

Fusco, Coco., Guillermo Gómez-Peña, and Paula. Heredia. Couple in the Cage: a 
        Guatinaui Odyssey. Toronto, Ont: V Tape, 1993.
Fusco, Coco. “The Other History of Intercultural Performance.” TDR: Drama Review 
        38, no. 1 (1994): 143–67. https://doi.org/10.2307/1146361.
Taylor, Diana. “A Savage Performance: Guillermo Gómez-Peña and Coco Fusco’s 
        ‘Couple in  the Cage.’” TDR: Drama Review42, no. 2 (1998): 160–75. 
         https://doi.org/10.1162/dram.1998.42.2.160.
Newton, Melanie J. “‘The Race Leapt at Sauteurs’: Genocide, Narrative, and Indigenous 
Exile from the Caribbean Archipelago.” Caribbean Quarterly 60, no. 2 (2014): 5–28. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/00086495.2014.11671886. 

Works Cited

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