Laida Azkona Goñi / Txalo Toloza-Fernández
Pacífico Extranos mares arden | Tierras del Sud | Teatro Amazonas
Extraños mares arden © Alessia Bombaci ©
Teatro Amazonas © Jeisson Castillo ©
Tierras del Sud © Alessia Bombaci ©
Extraños mares arden
Direction and video scenario by Txalo Toloza-Fernández
Choreography, Laida Azkona Goñi
With Laida Azkona Goñi, and Txalo Toloza-Fernández
Music and sound design, Juan Cristóbal Saavedra
Stage and video design, MiPrimerDrop
Lighting, Ana Rovira
Research coordinator, Leonardo Gamboa Caneo
Stage and audiovisual production, Elclimamola
Collaborators, Sònia Gómez, Marta Galán, Iñaki Álvarez, and Gabino Rodríguez
Produced by Antic Teatre (Barcelona) ; Belar Gorria
Coproduced by Festival TNT – Terrassa ; Festival BAD (Bilbao) ; FUNDECAP (Antofagasta)
Tierras del Sud
Direction and dramaturgy by Txalo Toloza-Fernández
Choreography, Laida Azkona Goñi
With Laida Azkona Goñi, and Txalo Toloza-Fernández
With the voices of Sergio Alessandria, Agustina Basso, Conrado Parodi, Gerardo Ghioldi, Daniel Osovnikar, Sebastián Seifert, Rosalía Zanón and Marcela Imazio
Assistant director, Raquel Cors
Music and sound design, Juan Cristóbal Saavedra
Lighting, Ana Rovira
Video, MiPrimerDrop
Stage design, Juliana Acevedo, MiPrimerDrop
Construction, Lola Belles, Mariona Signes, and RotorFab-Espai Erre
Costumes, Sara Espinosa
Research coordinator, Leonardo Gamboa Caneo
Musical selection, Marcelo Pellejero
Photography, Alessia Bombaci
Collaborators, Sònia Gómez, Maite Garvayo, Ángela Fernández, Fernando Sánchez, Orlando, and Jaime Carriqueo
Produced by Antic Teatre (Barcelona) ; Festival TNT – Terrassa
Coproduced by Teatro Gayarre (Pamplona) ; El Graner – Mercat de les Flors (Barcelona) ; AZALA Espazioa (Lasierra) ; La Caldera (Barcelona) ; Patagonian University Institute of Arts (General Roca) ; L’Estruch (Sabade II) ; and Biblioteca Popular Osvaldo Bayer (Villa La Angostura)
Teatro Amazonas
Concept and direction by Laida Azkona Goñi, and Txalo Toloza-Fernández
With Laida Azkona Goñi, and Txalo Toloza-Fernández
Music and sound design, Rodrigo Rammsy
Lighting, Ana Rovira
Video, MiPrimerDrop
Stage design, Xesca Salvà, MiPrimerDrop
Costumes, Sara Espinosa
Documentary research, Leonardo Gamboa
Stage and audiovisual production, Elclimamola
Portuguese translation, Livia Diniz
Tukano translation, Joao Paulo Lima Barreto
Reporter, Pedro Granero
Illustration, Jeisson Castillo
With support from Helena Febrés and Conrado Parodi
Produced by Azkona & Toloza
Coproduced by Grec Festival de Barcelona ; Théâtre Garonne – scène européenne (Toulouse) ; Marche Teatro (Ancone) ; INTEATRO Festival (Ancone) ; Antic Teatre (Barcelona) ; Théâtre de la Ville-Paris ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
In association with Théâtre de la Ville-Paris ; and Festival d’Automne à Paris
The duo formed by performers Azkona and Toloza brings us its Pacífico trilogy, initiated in 2014. The piece consists of three shows, recounting three stories of capitalism, neo-colonialism, and its consequences, in Chile, Argentina and Brazil. Drawing upon a blend of narrative, choreography, music and the visual arts, the duo turn documentary theatre into art of an eminently political nature.
In their Pacífico trilogy, presented for the first time in its entirety, the Spanish-Chilean duo of performers Azkona and Toloza brings us the fruit of a longstanding enquiry-based process exploring relations between capitalism, neo-colonialism and the cultural industry. Each show is devised as a segment within this documentary enquiry, leading them across Chile, Argentina and Brazil successively.
Extraños mares arden (2014) interweaves the history of the Guggenheim family with that of the Atacama desert, and shows the historical links between the mining industry and contemporary art. Following the thread of the story, and via a series of actions carried out by the performers, the stage is transformed before our eyes, from contemporary art gallery to desert-like landscape. In Tierras del Sud (2018), a mountainous landscape progressively takes shape onstage. The show follows in the footsteps of the Benetton brothers, up to the encounter with the lands owned by the Mapuche, in Patagonia, and puts into words the expropriation of the indigenous populations. Narrative, dance, music and images are used to recount the violence with which the Argentine state has treated its autochthonous peoples and their lands. The last segment, Teatro Amazonas, created in 2020, looks into two of Brazil’s major architectural sites, the opera and the Manaus stadium. It focusses on the story of the various transformations of the Brazilian Amazon, caught between industrial boom, colonial culture and indigenous culture.
Underpinned by an enquiry-based approach, at the crossroads between history and ethnography, and via an interdisciplinary artistic practice, the shows in the trilogy explore the possibilities of documentary theatre. In doing so, they invent an original form of political art, which unravels, before the audience’s eyes, the complex history of Latin America.