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For centuries, authors have created portraits of women and narratives of the female experience of which we are the direct heirs. Our goal in this performance is to revisit these images and stories, to explore the moments of crisis found within, and to retell their histories so that we might imagine a different future.
Focusing explicitly on instances of violence and trauma, this performance celebrates the relevance of the classics by underlining the enduring and persistent challenges to the female experience. Incorporating fragments of texts from canonical Spanish Golden Age authors such as Miguel de Cervantes, Lope de Vega, and Calderón de la Barca, this new writing project delves into the intimate world of its protagonists and creates a poetic space in which the realities of the female universe emerge. The texts from which we draw all share common themes of power, identity, freedom, violence, and trauma, and will be translated and presented in a bilingual form (Spanish and English).
Rather than sensationalising or dismissing these women's experiences, we unearth the oft-neglected and hidden moments of violence and abuse endured by these women in order to establish a new narrative. This narrative acknowledges these atrocities and, instead of perpetuating a discourse of disempowerment, aims to recover women’s experience and render their true agency visible. This new and original play thus offers a new mode of performance that deliberately challenges our understanding of violence and trauma, its enduring nature, and its ties from the past to present
To do so, this performance features two actresses, from two different worlds – the past and the present – who are united on the stage. One actress dons period costume in a classical set, the other occupies an empty space wearing simple, modern clothing as she narrates the reality of our classic heroine. As the play progresses, the spaces and roles that these women occupy become entangled, united even, as the actresses come together to generate a new timeless space.
Like the texts that inspired it, symbolism is woven into both the script and the production. The scenography is poetic yet sombre, and the borders between the two worlds are initially marked by a large and heavy awning that crosses and penetrates both spaces. So too will lighting, sound, and music be used in this performance to recreate the two worlds and to differentiate between them. At times, this distinction is clear, whilst at others it becomes blurred and untraceable, or dissonant and disquieting as the two temporal planes and two women unite.
As the echoes of the past haunt the present, we invite the audience to consider what has really changed? How has violence and trauma shaped the individual and collective female experience? How can we face and understand that reality? And, most importantly, how can we begin to change the narrative, to generate change without losing sight of the real women and real experiences at the heart of these stories?
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