Lion d’Argent 2015
Biennale de Venise
Lion d’Argent 2015
Biennale de Venise
Le 3 août 2015, le travail de l’Agrupación Señor Serrano a été couronné du Lion d’Argent pour une approche innovatrice dans le théâtre de la Biennale de Venise, durant une cérémonie tenue au Palazzo Ca’ Giustinian. Nous sommes très fiers de ce prix et nous pensons qu’il n’est pas complètement immérité. Cependant, tout le monde n’est pas du même avis. Nous estimons juste de partager ces voix dissidentes avec vous :
« La seule vraie déception du festival fut la compagnie Agrupación Señor Serrano, qui cette année a reçu le prix du Lion d’Argent pour une approche innovatrice dans le théâtre (nous ne voyons pas en quoi ils le méritent) : ces malicieux je-sais-tout ont présenté un spectacle dans lequel la chasse des Indiens américains, l’attaque sur Moby Dick et la capture de Ben Laden ont eu lieu dans le même avion. Sur scène, des plates-formes, une série de maquettes de la maison de Ben Laden au Pakistan, des figurines en plastique et des avions miniatures : avec une caméra amplifiant tout cela sur un grand écran, comme nous l’avons déjà vu dans de nombreux spectacles. Je n’ai aucune idée de ce qu’ils essayaient d’atteindre, sur un plan idéologique et politique, à moins qu’ils prétendaient montrer de manière vulgaire le résultat de la combinaison de la fiction et de la réalité. Quelle originalité ! »
Anna Bandettini, La Repubblica (le 16 août 2015).
Premiered on 15.03.2019 at Obertura Spring Festival – L’Auditori
Production currently on tour.
A seed. Everything the seed needs to flourish: earth, water, light, music, love, democracy, listening, sex, culture. A flower. Some ideals, a project, a plan. The hope of creating a better community. The implementation of the plan. And its failure. Humanity, its imperfection, its weakness. The impossibility of transcending. The violence, the fire, the ashes. The rage, the despair. And then, the acceptance of failure. The sadness, a melancholic lament. A break. A moment of reflection. And finally, looking at each other, caressing each other, kissing each other. Trusting that everything can re-emerge. A seed.
What does the 9th Symphony mean? It is impossible to know what intentions Beethoven had when he composed it. All we can do is take out conjectures, and to do so we need to keep in mind the context in which the composer lived. In the last years of his life, Beethoven was already deep in deafness and this fact had led him to move away from the world more and more, pushing him towards self-absorption. In addition, Beethoven had been a passionate defender of the enlightened project and the promises of Napoleon. However, the self-coronation as Emperor of the General, his defeat and the subsequent reordering of Europe emerged after the Congress of Vienna had led him to distrust any great political project. And to close the circle, on a more intimate level, his continuous love disappointments had increasingly turned him into an emotionally isolated person. And yet, that apparently sullen man, disillusioned, bad looking, unhealthy and with an attitude that some called misanthropic, at the end of his life returns from his isolation not with a song of hatred, distrust or skepticism, but with the opposite. With his last great work, Beethoven proposes a song of joy, of love, of universalism, of equality and brotherhood.
The reading we propose of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony follows the logic of its four movements. We see in the symphony a journey that begins with a political and vital transformation project full of hope; that becomes disappointment and rage because of the impossibility of carrying the project out; that follows with the acceptance of the failure; and that culminates with a proposal of exit, with a twist to the initial hope, but modified from what the whole process taught us.
Creation: Àlex Serrano, Pau Palacios and Ferran Dordal / Performance: Àlex Serrano, Jordi Soler and Vicenç Viaplana / Light design: Cube.bz / Set design: Lola Belles and Àlex Serrano / Costumes: Lola Belles / Graphic design: Gemma Peña / Video creation: Jordi Soler / Videoprogramming: Vicenç Viaplana / Guest performers: Núria Guiu, Pablo Rosal, Agnès Jabbour, Marc Cartanyà, Arantza López, Malcolm McCarthy, Anna Serrano, Tamara Ndong, Jofre Carabén van der Meer, Babou Cham and Raphaëlle Pérez / Music consultant: Roger Costa Vendrell / Technical direction: David Muñiz / Production manager: Barbara Bloin / Executive production: Paula Sáenz de Viteri
L’Auditori de Barcelona for the Obertura Spring Festival 2019