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The theater expands its limits

2020-10-26T16:35:52.515Z


The pandemic encourages an explosion of new formats that are developed beyond conventional scenarios. Babelia exclusively offers fragments of various works and the preview of an audiovisual piece scheduled at the Festival Temporada Alta de Girona


In full confinement due to the pandemic, Laia Torrents and Roger Aixut had an illumination while shopping at the supermarket: "If all the theaters are closed and this is the only socialization space we have left, let's bring the theater here."

Founders of CaboSanRoque, a company born in Barcelona in 2001 that defines their work as "expanded dramaturgy, that is, that develops beyond conventional languages ​​and scenarios", Torrents and Aixut resisted paralysis and did not stop spinning in the lead looking for a place to meet the public.

Most of the artists found it on the Internet through

streaming

or the videoconference, but they noticed the supermarket.

“Suddenly, we realized that the masks had made us all suspects and that this was an interesting starting point for a

thriller.

So we devised a suspense fiction in which the protagonist is the viewer himself, who receives instructions through an audio guide while shopping ”, summarizes Torrents.

Audioguide for supermarkets in times of pandemic

is one of the works that make up the program of Temporada Alta, one of the most internationally relevant Spanish performing arts festivals, which is held until December 8 in Girona.

The novelty this year is that there are a good number of shows that can be seen from home through its website, others that take place in unusual settings such as CaboSanRoque and some that mix face-to-face and virtual parts.

It is a direct consequence of the pandemic, which has not only promoted the creation of works to be enjoyed remotely in the event of a new theaters closure, but has also encouraged many artists to rethink the context in which they traditionally relate to the public, which is giving rise to an explosion of unconventional formats: open-air plots, interactive installations, radio theater and even live interventions on social networks and virtual platforms.

Exclusive fragment for 'Babelia' from the work 'La pandemia en germinal.

A global elegy for quarantine ', sound fiction by Marcelo Expósito to listen to in a dark theater, with the participation of figures such as Yanis Varoufakis or Manuel Borja-Villel.

Programmed at the FIT of Cádiz.

COURTESY OF MARCELO EXPÓSITO AND FIT DE CÁDIZ

It is not that before the coronavirus there were no creators who explored these formats, but since they are more experimental projects they did not usually reach the majority public.

The pandemic has made them more visible and numerous.

Not only Temporada Alta has reserved an entire section for them, but also the other two major international events of these months in Spain: the Autumn Festival of the Community of Madrid (from November 12 to 29) and the FIT of Cádiz (dedicated to the Ibero-American scene, which opened yesterday and will last until November 8).

They have also splashed the FIOT de Carballo, the main autumn festival in Galicia, with such poetic proposals as

A lúa, spray valve,

a sound fiction that can be heard while taking a tour of the large murals that have made that Coruña town famous.

Special attention is also paid to these new formats by institutions such as the Teatro de La Abadía in Madrid, a pioneer in programming works by videoconference, or the Lliure in Barcelona, ​​which maintains an

online

room

for radio pieces and show broadcasts.

Outside of Spain, leading companies such as the British Forced Entertainment join the trend, which has recorded all Shakespeare titles using only a table and household utensils (jars, pots, toothbrushes), which has resulted in a collection of hilarious videos, available on the Temporada Alta website.

During confinement, the Uruguayan playwright Gabriel Calderón created this untitled audiovisual piece that is a reflection on theater in a time when theater cannot be done.

Programmed by the Festival Temporada Alta de Girona.

With actress Dahiana Méndez and Gabriel Calderón himself on screen.

Preview for 'Babelia' readers.

The health crisis is also noticeable in the themes.

Among the FIT proposals we find titles such as

La pandemia en germinal.

A global elegy from the quarantine,

a sound piece by the Spanish Marcelo Exposito created to be heard in a dark theater.

And others that were conceived before but that seem to speak of the present, such as

El paseo by Robert Walser,

an itinerant work by Catalan Marc Caellas that invites us to regain the pleasure of walking through the streets after confinement.

Are we witnessing a revolution in the performing arts or is it a temporary phenomenon?

“It is difficult to make predictions.

We have made a very varied selection because we do not yet know what can work or last.

We are testing, giving the opportunity to the artists to continue investigating ”, responds Salvador Sunyer, director of Temporada Alta.

In this selection there are works such as

La first almost blind date,

by Francesc Cuéllar, which proposes a blind date by videoconference;

Poet on duty,

adaptation of a poetry project by telephone from the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris;

Sucia,

by Bárbara Mestanza, which combines a face-to-face monologue about sexual abuse with another that is broadcast on a real porn website, or the

Prometheus

series for children

,

by the Señor Serrano Group, which recreates Greek myths with Lego dolls.

Fragment of 'Los Satellites', a radio play by Ricard Gázquez.

Production of the Teatre Lliure.

COURTESY OF RICARD GÁZQUEZ / TEATRE LLIURE

In general, creators who were already experimenting with unconventional languages ​​are the ones who are now launching the most to test new formats.

Names that stood out in the avant-garde stage, such as the CaboSanRoque company itself, whose previous show,

Dimonis

(programmed this year by the Madrid Autumn Festival), seemed premonitory: an installation in which the public was finding, among other things, with a hologram of the bailaora Rocío Molina performing a choreography or the Niño de Elche fragmented on screens.

Or like the Argentine Lola Arias, a reference of the international documentary theater for her work on the Falklands war with royal veterans from both sides, who will premiere next Thursday at the FIT her work

Ways of walking with a book in hand,

also traveling .

“The key is that the viewer is the protagonist.

It is not that he is asked to do strange things, simply that he experiences in first person what we want to tell him, ”says Arias.

Trailer of 'Prometheus', a videoconference theater series for children by the Agrupación Señor Serrano, which recreates Greek myths with Lego figures.

That is the basis of the so-called “immersive theater”, a genre that has been on the rise in recent years and now more because it tends to take place outdoors or within facilities where the audience can be separated.

World reference in this field is the German company Rimini Protokoll, which will also present a work at the FIT,

Granma.

Metales de Cuba,

which has a more conventional format but feeds on the interdisciplinary research that this group has been doing since its foundation 20 years ago, with outstanding titles such as

Situation Rooms,

in which viewers adopt different roles (arms dealer, murderer , field doctor) in a kind of video game about war.

“The objective is to break the hierarchical relationship between the artist and the audience established by the architecture of the theater building itself, with the stage always on top and the audience watching from below without moving.

Immersive theater wants to eliminate that distance.

Don't tell what happens to Hamlet, but rather let the viewer be Hamlet ”, explains one of its founders, Stefan Kaegi.

The group is preparing a project that will premiere in the summer at the Barcelona Center for Contemporary Culture,

Urban Nature,

an installation similar to

Situation Rooms

on modern cities.

Fragment of the sound fiction work 'A lúa, spray valve' chosen for Babelia by its creators, Quico Cadaval (director) and Rosalía Fernández Rial (playwright).

The video, made by the Carballo International Autumn Theater Festival with the author's own translation into Spanish, includes images of the murals that the piece evokes.

A Spanish company that has been exploring immersive theater for some time is Grumelot, which will present a play called

The Wonderful Lamp

at the Madrid Autumn Festival

.

It is a six-hour traveling piece that recreates passages from the essay of the same title by Valle-Inclán, which can also be followed by

streaming

and which is enhanced with a mobile application that functions as an additional narrative plane.

A hybrid of languages ​​and broadcast channels that seems to be another sign of post-covid dramaturgy.

“We were already betting before to get out of the theaters, but the digital part would not have occurred to us if there hadn't been a lockdown.

Like so many other artists, during that time we turned to new technologies and that has ended up reverting to our work ”, explains Carlota Gaviño, author of

The Wonderful Lamp

together with Íñigo Rodríguez-Claro.

A label begins to circulate to name these new hybrids: transmedia dramaturgy.

This is the name of the section that the Madrid Autumn Festival has invented for them, which includes three works that will be broadcast through different channels: social networks, videoconferencing, web pages, radio, digital platforms.

But, at the same time, a question is being considered: can we call all this theater?

“The essential fact of the theater is the rite.

It is not necessary to be together physically, but to share an experience or an emotion with other people and let that transform us ", sums up Belén Santa-Olalla, author of one of those three

transmedia

pieces

from the Madrid festival,

Post_Panoptikon,

who reflects on the "digital surveillance society" based on the description of the philosopher Byung-Chul Han.

Trailer of 'Post_Panoptikon', a transmedia theater experience that will take place over nine days on social networks and different digital platforms, programmed by the Autumn Festival of the Community of Madrid.

It will begin on November 12 and interested spectators can register for free on the festival website.

The playwright Alberto Conejero, director of the Autumn Festival, believes that this type of work will revert to the theater of the future because "they dynamite the inertia of the spectator and this may end up establishing new poetics that are now being experimented on".

But, on the other hand, he clarifies, there is a movement in the opposite direction: “The deprivation of theater that the pandemic has imposed on us has reinforced the desire to be together again in a stalls.

So one thing will not take away the other ”.

Isla Aguilar and Miguel Oyarzun, directors of the FIT, agree: “It is not about subtracting, but about adding layers.

And this is one more layer.

This is how theater has always evolved ”.

Researcher José Antonio Sánchez, curator of the Expanded Theater chair at the Reina Sofía Museum, warns: "If experimentation with new technologies or formats is consistent with the expressive needs of the artist, it will make sense and will last."

Source: elparis

All life articles on 2020-10-26

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