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 "Paway" was commissioned by the Seattle Children´s International Festival, 2002. After Seattle, it toured several cities in South America during September 2002. It is being remounted for Northwest performance opportunities during 2005.

"Paway" is a multimedia performance combining dance: modern, popular and aerial, with small and larger-than-life puppetry.  Set in an imaginary Spanish-speaking South American town and drawing inspiration from magical realism and the beauty of the Andean villages, this performance provides an often humorous, but sometimes serious outlook on the mixed up events and characters who inhabit the town.

Anything can happen in Paway and many things DO happen:  walking trees fall in love with each other; a drunk man sits in a cantina with a vertical floor where the tables and chairs have to be nailed to the wall; Che Guevara´s ghost comes back to life; young maidens sleepwalk in window frames while dreaming; and a long-necked gentleman argues with a market woman over the price of radishes while the local shaman scares the Uma Devil and his bull away from the market.

Choreography: Carla Barragan & Nelson Diaz
Visual design: Nathan Kumar Scott
Set: Antonio Alvarez Moran
Cast (5-9): several outstanding Ecuadorian, Peruvian and American dancers and puppeteers.  Cast size varies according to each production.

In this project Scott and Barragan explored the world of magical realist performance art in a context and form accessible to children. Descuageringado is a Latin American town viewed from the perspective of two young artists that have experienced the culture thoroughly; one of them, Barragan, was born and raised in Ecuador. They present a new and unique outlook of Latin America to world audiences, who for the most part have been exposed very little to cultures of Latin America other than Mexico.  Scott brings his expertise in dance-theatre direction, giant puppet and mask design and performance, and his years of experience as a stilt performer, complementing Barragan's extensive movement vocabulary as a renowned dancer and choreographer, and former national gymnastics champion of Ecuador. Nelson Diaz adds his Indian dance choreographies. For this particular project Barragan blends Andean and salsa dance with the athleticism of contemporary dance and experiments lifting the dance off the stage floor and taking it to other surfaces of the stage. Music is by Diego Luzuriaga and other popular themes.

Paway recieved support from The Fund for US arstist at International Festivals and exhibits , a public-private entity of the National Endowment for the Arts, the U.S. Department of State, the Pew Charitable trusts, and the Rockerfeller Foundation, administered byArts International

Guest artist

Nathan Kumar Scott is a Seattle-based theatre director, designer, performer, and playwright.  Nathan began his career in puppetry while in India studying traditional performing arts on a Thomas J. Watson  Fellowship. He is the founder and co-director of Cry of the Rooster Theatre, an innovative puppetry and performing arts theatre.  Nathan has directed performances in Seattle for Cry of the Rooster Theatre as well as the Fremont outdoor Solstice Pageant; in Texas for Texas Woman's University; and internationally in Mexico, India, Hong Kong, and Taiwan, where he was invited as a guest director, and has been an artist-in-residence at the Seattle Asian Art Museum, the Cleveland Art Museum, and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.  He has designed puppets, masks, costumes, and sets for puppetry, theatre, and dance productions in Washington, Ohio, and Texas; and internationally in Mexico, India, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.  In 1999 Nathan was awarded an Artist Trust grant to go to Trinidad to work with world renown Carnival designers. Nathan holds a BA in Symbol Systems and Culture Change from Oberlin College, an MA in South Asian Folk Performing Arts from the University of Washington, and was the recipient of a J. William Fullbright Fellowship for his research on puppetry and folk theatre in India.