Teatro Experimental de Cali (TEC) is a collective of playwrights, actors, dancers, musicians, stage designers and students committed to the exploration and creation of new languages for Latin American theater. Founded in Colombia in 1955 by Enrique Buenaventura and a group of students at the Instituto Departamental de Bellas Artes, TEC has had a long and fruitful trajectory; their artistic and theoretical work has revolutionized the way that theater is conceived and practiced in Latin America. A key contribution to the field is their method of "creación colectiva" (collective creation), in which all the participants of the play -including the audience- become involved with the dramatic text and its staging. In spite of this stress on collective work, TEC had in Enrique Buenaventura its main poet and playwright, who developed most of TEC's texts and directed the majority of their plays. While TEC's works address various historical and social issues, artistic quality is not sacrificed for the sake of political radicalism. TEC has thus created a theater that is politically and culturally engaged, poetic and innovative without losing its popular appeal.

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