In partnership with the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, BoCA is proposing the cycle “Words and Gestures: towards a performative collection at the Museo del Prado”. With an interdisciplinary approach that includes the visual arts (works from the museum’s collection), theater (original texts by Iberian playwrights) and dance (some of the performers), the cycle offers a tour of four new creations in their world premiere.
“Words and Gestures” is a cycle that invites four theater artists - Tiago Rodrigues (PT) with Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz (PT), Patrícia Portela (PT), Angélica Liddell (ES) and Rodrigo García (AR/ES) - to write and direct creations inspired by works from the Prado Museum’s collection: “Perro semihundido” by Francisco de Goya, “”El 2 de mayo de 1808 en Madrid o La lucha con los mamelucos” and “El 3 de mayo en Madrid o Los Fusilamientos” by Francisco de Goya, the eight Muses of Villa Adriana and “Marte” by Diego Velázquez, respectively.
Presented in four different rooms, each performance, lasting approximately 30 minutes, is a collective journey that the public is invited to take, in a closed-door, night-time Prado Museum.
“El Otro Goya” text by Tiago Rodrigues and directed by Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz
How can we look at the paintings in the Prado Museum if we do so in the company of a dog? With “El Otro Goya”, Tiago Rodrigues proposes a fresh look at Goya’s paintings based on a unique experience: visiting the Prado Museum accompanied by a guide dog. A museum guide dog. This performance, staged by Sofia Dias and Vítor Roriz, combines art, accessibility and imagination, challenging the usual ways of contemplating the work of the Spanish painter. Between animal presence and human perception, the visit is transformed into a shared narrative, where every detail of the painting is reopened to new readings. What new reasons will we discover to love art?
Concept and text: Tiago Rodrigues
Staging and performance: Sofia Dias & Vítor Roriz
Acknowledgements: Maria Ibarretxe, Estúdios Victor Cordón, Cátia Mateus
“Hoy, 3 de Mayo” by Patrícia Portela
Based on fragments from her own book, “Hoje, 3 de Maio” is a performance by Patrícia Portela that transforms “this square” into a territory of questioning and confrontation. Between the executioner, the victim, the witness or those who expose themselves openly, each gesture invites the audience to situate themselves in a space of choices and responsibilities. Based on the painting “El 3 de mayo en Madrid o Los Fusilamientos” by Goya, Patrícia stages a symbolic arena where the limits of courage, passivity and collective commitment are tested. Portela’s words take on body, voice and breath, questioning our position in the face of violence, memory and the possibility of resistance. Who are we, after all, when history is being written before our eyes?
Concept, text and staging: Patrícia Portela
Performers: Noemi Fernandez and Crista Alfaiate
“The 20 Days of the Muse of Sodom” by Angélica Liddell
Angélica Liddell summons the spirit of Sade as the “tenth Muse”, protector of absolute artistic freedom. In this performance, the Spanish writer and director transforms perversion into aesthetic language and fierce satire against the hypocrisy of power, confronting puritanism, censorship and cultural repression. Between myth and wound, desire and violence, the scene becomes a territory of shock, where pleasure asserts itself as a gesture of insubmission. “Las 20 Jornadas de la Musa de Sodoma” challenges conventions and measures, with radical beauty, the maturity of a society in the face of art, desire and its own obscurity.
Concept, text and staging: Angélica Liddell
Performers: Yuri Ananiev
Assistance: Gumersindo Puche and Jaime del Fresno
“Mars” by Rodrigo García
Rodrigo García writes a short comedy based on a work by Velázquez, chosen unwillingly to expose the absurdity of glorifying war. At a time when military spending is growing and becoming almost consensual, “Mars” ironizes the conviction that killing is inevitable, necessary and even praiseworthy. The sadly famous “5%” in military investment could be used to improve life, but it is given to the god of war. Between black humor and fierce criticism, the scene reveals the violence hidden in normality and questions the collective passivity in the face of military logic.
Concept, text and direction: Rodrigo García
Cast: Ariadna Díaz Amores, Guillermo Jiménez Sánchez, Daniel Mantilla Ramírez, Ainhoa Merino Riaño, Nerea Pascual Hernández
Assistance and video: Arturo Iturbe
Acknowledgments: Primera Toma