Candlelight and Blackouts: How a Havana Theatre Group Keeps Working

By Tom Whitfield

Blackouts in Cuba now routinely exceed 24 hours at a time, and the Impulso theatre group in Havana is still performing. The Guardian documented the result on 9 October 2026: theatre by candlelight.

The cause is dated and specific. The United States imposed energy sanctions on Cuba in January. Since then, according to The Guardian, blackouts have become "increasingly common" as the country's ageing electricity grid fails. Outages frequently run past a full day.

The performing arts sit badly with that reality. Stages need light, sound systems need power, and audiences need to get home safely. The Guardian reports that Impulso has had to adapt, because power cuts pose severe challenges for live performance. The company's answer, captured in the photo essay, is to work by candlelight.

What does the blackout change for theatre-makers?

For Impulso, the change is practical, not thematic. When the grid fails mid-rehearsal or mid-run, the options narrow: stop, or light candles and continue. The Guardian's images show the second option in practice. It is worth stating what the source does not say: we do not know how often performances are cancelled outright, how attendance has shifted, or whether the company has lost work to the outages. The pictures show adaptation. They do not show the full cost of it.

What is documented is the timeline and the pressure:

• January: the US imposes energy sanctions on Cuba.
• Since then: blackouts grow "increasingly common", per The Guardian.
• Outages frequently surpass 24 hours.
• The national grid is described as ageing and failing.
• Impulso theatre group adapts by performing under candlelight.

Each of those facts comes from a single source, The Guardian's 9 October 2026 photo essay. No Cuban official figure, no sanction detail, and no statement from Impulso itself appears in the material. That gap matters. A photo essay can show a rehearsal lit by candles; it cannot confirm how representative that scene is of Havana's wider theatre sector.

Still, the images carry weight on their own. A theatre company choosing candlelight over cancellation is a concrete measure of what an energy crisis does to culture — not an abstraction, not a metaphor. The candles solve the immediate problem of darkness. They do not solve amplification, ventilation, refrigeration, or the safety of an audience moving through a blacked-out city after the show.

The US sanctions remain in place, and the grid has not been repaired. Unless either changes, candlelit performance is less a stopgap than a working condition — the new baseline that Impulso and every other performing group in Cuba will plan around.