Zilveren Leeuw 2015
Biënnale van Venetië
Zilveren Leeuw 2015
Biënnale van Venetië
Op 3 augustus 2015 werd Agrupación Señor Serrano op de Biënnale van Venetië tijdens een ceremonie in het Palazzo Ca’ Giustinian bekroond met de Zilveren Leeuw voor innovatie in het theater. We zijn heel trots op deze prijs en eerlijk gezegd vinden we dit niet geheel onverdiend. Helaas denkt niet iedereen er zo over. We willen u een aantal afwijkende meningen zeker niet onthouden: “De enige echte teleurstelling van het festival was Agrupación Señor Serrano dat dit jaar de Zilveren Leeuw voor innovatie in het theater won (we snappen eerlijk gezegd niet goed waarom): betweterig en kwaadaardig brengen ze een show waarin de verhalen van de achtervolging van de indianen in Amerika, de jacht op Moby Dick en de gevangenneming van Bin Laden met elkaar worden verweven. Op het podium: een aantal platformen, schaalmodellen van het huis van Bin Laden in Pakistan, plastic actiefiguren, miniatuurvliegtuigen en een camera die alles uitvergroot op een reuzenscherm, zoals we al zo vaak hebben gezien. Waar eindigt dit? Vanuit een ideologische en politiek oogpunt weet ik het niet, tenzij ze deden alsof ze op een triviale manier de verstrengeling van fictie en realiteit toonden. Hoe origineel!” Anna Bandettini, La Repubblica (16/08/2015).
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