About LA VELOCIDAD DE LA LUZ
It´s a site-specific theatre project created by Marco Canale together with elderly people from different cities around the world. The play traverses different spaces of their city: their homes, where the spectators read their memories, walking though the streets and a sacred place of the city, where they perform a fiction that traverses the past, present and future.
The Speed of Light was created in Buenos Aires (FIBA, 2017), Hannover (Theaterformen Festival, 2019), Tokyo (Tokyo TOKYO Festival, 2021), the Swiss Alps (FAR Festival, 2022), Spain (FIT de Cádiz, 2023) and is currently being created in Santiago de Chile (Centro GAM, 2024).
Synopsis La velocidad de luz – Buenos Aires
The speed of light was born from a creation process of two years in Villa 31, after being thirteen years out of my country. Shared with older women from that marginalized neighborhood of my city and from other neighborhoods, which remain deeply separated. We worked together on their memories, the present moment of their lives and the imagination of the future.
This process it can also be explained as a cross.
A horizontal trip of a city towards its back, those places denied and unknown, such as Villa 31, to which Padre Mugica (who lived there until his assassination by right paramilitary groups) called the “subconscious of the porteños”.
In an scenic journey that departs from Plaza San Martín, in a rich neighborhood of Buenos Aires, towards a chapel of Villa 31, crossing their streets and houses, survival in front of the demolitions, deportations and assassinations of the dictatorship, and the beloved ones that are no longer here.
And an imaginary journey through Latin America to return to the places where they were born before they die.
FICHA ARTÍSTICA
A play by: Marco Canale. Performance and texts: María Rojas Zambrano, Candelaria Ospina Montañez, Romilda Marecos Ruiz, Ramona Escalante, Francisca Vedia Mendoza, Marta Giménez, Flora Solano, Beatriz Spitta, Paula Severi, Ana María Pico, Adelaida Franco y Esther Romano.
Musical direction: Juan Baya Casal.
Andean Musical direction: José Tolaba.
Charanguistas: Clementina Huaranca, Doly Butron, Roberta Reloj y Jacinta Álvarez.
Bombo (Hype): Marta Huarachi
Soloist Charango: Nicolás Faes Micheloud.
Gardening design: Manuela García Faure.
Executive production: Mariano de Mendonça y Malena Sánchez Olmo.
Assistant Director: Valentina Brodsky, Luciana Carrasco, Lucas Martinetti y Gonzalo Facundo López.
Vocal direction: Cecilia Madanes y Tom Harris.
Coreography advisors: Leticia Mazur y Margarita Molfino.
Graphic design: Paula Erre / Trineo Comunicación Visual.
Production: FIBA y Parroquia de Cristo Obrero (Villa 31 – Barrio Padre Carlos Mugica), with the support of Mecenazgo, CCE/BA (Centro Cultural de España en Buenos Aires).
In memoriam: Jorge “Chavo” Villanueva y Ana Vázquez.
Dramaturgy and direction: Marco Canale.