The Conde de Torrefiel, a Catalan collective formed in 2010 by Pablo Gisbert and Tanya Beylar, brings their award-winning production ‘La Plaza’ to the 51st Theatre Biennale, challenging audiences to confront the reality that surrounds them beyond the theater, where life unfolds.
As one might guess from the title, every happens – or doesn’t – in a Plaza: the stage evokes the memory of a grey, nameless, evanescent agora, a non-place that may (not) be anywhere in the world. The show begins as the finale of a 365-day performance, while on the background, an offscreen voice details how the show takes place simultaneously in 365 cities for a full year. We will witness the last few moments of this collective performance that investigates the meaning of culture and life. The curtains open on a Plaza populated by veiled women, pram-pushing mothers, armed soldiers, couples, tourists – all faces are eerily anonymous, and move about in a time and space whose limits are blurred into a liquid reality. Their lives are invisible due to their own voluntary omissions.
Public space becomes the paradigm of a globalized, conflict-ridden world where violence may set off at any moment.
El Conde de Torrefiel is a Catalan stage art collective established in 2010 by Pablo Gisbert and Tanya Beylar. The duo works on the renovation of stage art using choreography, plastic art, and drama.
La Plaza is narrated in second person to erase the self and activate the perception of a forcibly alienat- ed, alienating, immobile world.
