Silver Lion 2015
Venice Biennale
Silver Lion 2015
Venice Biennale
On August 3, 2015, Agrupación Señor Serrano’s work was awarded the Silver Lion for innovation in theatre of the Venice Biennale in a ceremony held at the Palazzo Ca’ Giustinian. We are very proud of the prize and we believe that it is not entirely undeserved. However, not everyone thinks the same. It is fair to bring here the voices of dissent:
“The only real disappointment of the festival was Agrupación Señor Serrano to which this year was awarded the Silver Lion for innovation in theatre (we can’t see the possible reason for that): smart asses and malicious they presented a show in which the chase of American Indians, the hunting of Moby Dick and the capture of Bin Laden were put on the same plane. On stage, some platforms, a series of scale models of Bin Laden’s house in Pakistan, plastic action figures and miniature planes: and a camera amplifying all this on a large screen, as we have already seen in many shows. Where was all this going? I don’t know, from an ideological and political point of view, unless they pretended to trivially show the interweaving of fiction and reality. How original!”
Anna Bandettini, La Repubblica (16/08/2015).
Premiered on 12.04.2022 at Teatro de La Abadía, Madrid.
Production currently on tour.
Extinction is a visual staging of the masses of Battle and pro Defunctis by Joan Cererols, a poetic and visual piece on the notes of the masses through a dramaturgy that unfolds with the use of video cameras, performance, scale models, objects, video projections produced in real time and a choir singing live.
A Spanish ship descends the Amazon River for the first time, someone scrolls through the image gallery looking for a photo, the lower gallery of an illegal mine collapses, the King of Spain listens stunned to a mass in his honor, drops of golden dust on suspension, it rains mud, an anatomy teacher searches for the place of the soul, someone finds the nearest restaurant, 56 unread messages, the interior of the jungle burns, a requiem resounds in a New World cathedral, an artificial intelligence speculates on the extinction of humankind, someone looks at the sky, someone watches a series, someone picks up a mineral fragment, someone picks up a chalice, someone picks up a telephone. A large screen dominates the space, several work tables, various film sets, various performers-manipulators, and a vocal and instrumental ensemble intermingle on stage. Static and ecstatic images captured live and transformed in real time, performers entering and exiting different allegorical figures, the search for the soul, the search for coltan, for the fire, for Eldorado, for the blood, for some flat and simple entertainment to inflate us like a popcorn about to explode.
Dramaturgy and direction: Àlex Serrano and Pau Palacios / Musical direction and Ensemble: variable / Performers: Carlota Grau, Marcel Borràs, Àlex Serrano, David Muñiz / Dramaturgy and direction assistant: Carlota Grau / Light design: Cube.bz / Set design and Costumes: Lola Belles / Video programming: David Muñiz / Graphic design: Vicenç Viaplana / Sound atmosphere: Roger Costa Vendrell / Choreographic assistance: Núria Guiu / Production direction: Barbara Bloin / Executive production: Paula S. Viteri / Management: Jordi Tort (FestArtist)
Teatro Real and Teatro de La Abadía
Festival Internacional de Arte Sacro 2022