Actor Gabino Rodríguez, on his trip to the Mexican island of Tiburon.
This journey begins in the Mexican city of Tijuana.
Theatrical creator Gabino Rodríguez moved there in 2015 to become Santiago Ramírez for six months, a minimum wage worker in a factory in the area, totally isolated from his usual environment.
From that experience, the Tijuana show was born, the first of a monumental project entitled Democracy in Mexico (1965-2015), made up of 32 works, one for each State of the country, undertaken by the company Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol to explore how people live and what real effects democracy has in everyday life.
Tijuana
was highly applauded in Mexico and internationally screened Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol for its unique way of approaching documentary theater, with a very personal combination of scenic languages, mixing monologues, projections, lectures, readings and manipulation of objects.
The series continued with three other scenic pieces, Veracruz, Santiago Amoukalli and the Tula installation, as well as a book and a video.
All of them have been seen in Spain in past years and the seventh installment, Tiburon, is already ready, whose absolute premiere will host the Madrid Autumn Festival next week, as the show scheduled in Mexico last month had to be canceled due to restrictions due to the pandemic.
It will be performed on November 25 and 26 at the Conde Duque center and two days later at La Planeta in Girona, programmed by the Temporada Alta festival.
The function of the 25th will also be broadcast live by streaming through the Conde Duque website and on the digital platform of the Autumn Festival.
Tiburon is the largest island in Mexico and belongs to the State of Sonora.
There the missionary José María de Barahona landed in the 16th century, from Seville, and lived with the indigenous people for ten years.
In 2019 he traveled to the island Gabino Rodríguez, this time to try to become Barahona: not metaphorically, but as if Barahona had reincarnated in it, interacting with the current inhabitants as he had done.
“In this way, as I imagine what happened to the missionary, I had to confront my vision of life with theirs, who live quite isolated, outside the centers of political power.
For them, democracy is very different, ”Rodríguez explains by phone from Mexico.
But the work has many other layers.
"It also allows us to imagine an alternative history, in which colonization would have developed in a different way," adds Rodríguez.
And it is also an exploration of identity.
The actor not only tries to become the missionary throughout the performance, but that is mixed with the real personal transformation that he experienced during his stay on the island and that led him to change his name and appearance through a Surgery operation.
“I arrived calling myself Gabino and I left as Lorenzo.
I felt the need to become another person and I also wanted to explain that process, which is very similar to the one that those who decide to change their sexual identity go through ”, he summarizes.
Today Gabino calls himself Lorenzo.
Reality and fiction are thus mixed in a radical way.