For the Work You Keep Putting Off
A note from the team at Casa Hechale
Centro Cultural Casa Hechale,Mexico City, 2026
There’s a sentence I hope someone will be able to say after spending time with us: “I’m glad I finally gave myself permission to come.”
I think about what it takes to make that decision. Paying for time away. Rearranging work. Explaining why you need two weeks for a project that may not yet have a clear shape. Even if nobody asks you to justify it, you might still find yourself doing the calculations: could I just do this at home?
Maybe you could. But perhaps you’ve been meaning to for a while.
There’s the document you open late at night, when you’ve already used up most of your attention. The scene you keep making notes about but haven’t had room to rehearse. The idea you still care about, though you’re getting tired of hearing yourself say you’ll come back to it.
That’s something I think about as part of the team at Casa Hechale. How much work stays unfinished because the conditions for doing it never quite come together.
Our hope is to bring some of those conditions within reach, in one house.
There was no grand moment when it suddenly became Casa Hechale. It happened slowly, room by room.
Casa Hechale is a cultural centre for theatre, film and performance in Santa María la Ribera, Mexico City. It’s a house dating from 1916, with iron railings, tall windows and a life that began long before ours. I like imagining the ordinary working days we can help make possible inside it: waking up near your work, having somewhere to rehearse, returning to a draft while yesterday’s questions are still fresh.
Santa María la Ribera, Mexico City
Santa María la Ribera, Mexico City
There’s a practical relief in that. You can spend less of the day arranging how to work.
And when you need another perspective, there are people to speak to.
Our two- and four-week residencies bring together accommodation, scheduled working and rehearsal space, and individual meetings with the artistic team and advisers. Before you come, we talk through your project and what support may be useful. Space use and activities are arranged around your needs and the centre’s programme.
I know that can sound quite straightforward on a page. But consider what it might mean for the piece you’re working on.
If you’re a playwright, you may have reached a point where you can no longer hear the dialogue clearly because you know every line. You might want to discuss the draft, work towards a reading, or simply spend several mornings with the part you’ve been avoiding.
If you’re making a solo performance, perhaps you need to get it on its feet. There are decisions you can only make once you’re standing in a room, saying the words, discovering where your body wants to move.
If you’re a director, choreographer or designer, you might have a question about space, movement or an image that you need to test. If you work with film or sound, you may be exploring how that work meets an audience in a live setting.
Those are conversations we want to have. If something needs other people, equipment or a particular room, tell us early so we can discuss what is possible.
15:37pm at Casa Hechale
What draws us to the idea of a cultural centre is that your own project can sit within a wider artistic life. There are rehearsal and reading spaces, the black box, the gallery, and Salon CHÁ, conceived as a place for reading and conversation. Each has its own possibilities and arrangements. Together, they give the house room for different ways of working.
You might want quiet for most of your stay, then a thoughtful conversation when you’re ready. You might be looking forward to meeting people whose practice is far from your own. Neither requires you to be sociable every evening. I hope you’ll feel able to join in and equally able to say, “I need to work tonight.”
You’ll also be in Mexico City. Some days you’ll want to stay close to the house. Other days you’ll go out and come back with your attention somewhere unexpected. Leave a little room for that. A residency is still part of your life; you’ll need meals, walks, sleep, and afternoons when you stop trying to solve the same problem.
Maybe the Point i’snt to come here with a finished idea.
Maybe it is to finally give an unfinished one the coditions it has been waiting for.
