“By replacing a ‘traditional’ theater setting and performers with an outdoor square and the audience, their lives, and their stories, Bernat has built a beautifully simple structure through which we can explore the ways individuals shape our society’s future,” says Derek Goldman, Co-Director of The Lab. “We are thrilled to host this piece which depicts the potential consequences of even the most innocuous life choices, particularly at a time when Washingtonians and our students are thinking daily about the ways our actions affect what happens next in our world.”
“The show should be completely local in order to reflect the local audience. For that reason, we always connect ahead of time with some inhabitants of the city where we’re performing,” explains Bernat. “For the presentation in Washington, DC, with help from our local partners, we will collaborate to adjust the questions so as to make the show a faithful portrait of the masks that people in this city wear in their daily lives.”
Award-winning artist Roger Bernat (1968, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain) retakes documents, testimonies, and historical stagings to elaborate projects in which the community becomes the protagonist. There are no longer individual actors who embody the characters but it is the audience that, not without irony, represents the collective. His shows include Public Domain (2008), The Rite of Spring (2010), Please Continue (Hamlet) (2011), Pending Vote (2012), Desplazamiento del Palacio de La Moneda (2014), Numax-Fagor-plus (2014), No se registran conversaciones de interés (2016-17) and The Place of the Thing (Documenta 14, 2017). His shows have been performed in more than 30 countries. In 2017 he was awarded the Sebastià Gasch Prize for paratheatrical arts.
The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics (The Lab) harnesses the power of performance to humanize global politics. Housed in Georgetown’s School of Foreign Service, The Lab has emerged as a leader, widely recognized as unique for its pioneering interdisciplinary approaches integrating the performing arts and international relations. The Lab creates and presents innovative high quality work from around the world that is at the intersection of politics and performance. Our signature approach raises voices rarely heard in Washington, DC through compelling, authentic narratives, and engages policymakers, as well as artists, students, and wider audiences in forums that cast critical issues in a new light. globallab.georgetown.edu.
Co-produced by The Lab and Spain Arts & Culture.
