¿Qué haré yo con esta espada?

by Angélica Liddell
Direction, Set and Costume Design: Angélica Liddell (Madrid/Tokyo)

Guest performance during FIND 2018

04/07/2018, 19.00–23.45
In Spanish, French and Japanese with German and English surtitles

In the centre of the second part of Angélica Liddell’s »Trilogy of the Infinite« are two acts of archaic violence in modern-day Paris: the 1981 murder by Japanese exchange student Issei Sagawa of his classmate Renée Hartevelt, whose body parts he then proceeded to cook and eat; and the terrorist attacks of 13 November 2015. In a staged act of rebellion against rationalism, Liddell searches in the irrational violence being repressed by this rationalism for the creation of an awareness of individual existence and the buried essence of poetry in cannibalism and terrorism: »The talent of striking out the heart of life at a blow, as the Indian takes off a scalp«, according to an aphorism from Thoreau. »How can real-life violence be transformed into poetic violence to bring us into contact with our true nature – through acts against nature? (Nietzsche) We must return to the origins of tragedy in the way scientists seek the origins of the universe by forcing protons to collide, this beautiful violence of the battle between particles, the origin of matter. If we had to develop a classic narrative, then it would be a story of a woman who has, since birth, wished to kill others and herself and, on the path of fiction, is releasing her murderous tendencies, her authentic longings, until she finally becomes convinced that, by reason of her spiritual relationship with the horrific, the cannibals, she is in the position to produce carnage, real carnage solely with the force and violence of her thoughts and her desires – like an injured mentalist drenched in pig’s blood carrying on her shoulders like a grim fate the bodies from Paris.«

Angélica Liddell (*1966, Figueres) founded the Atra Bilis Teatro in 1993. In 2012 she was awarded the Premio Nacional de Literatura Dramática for »La casa de la fuerza«. In 2013 she received the Silver Lion at the Venice Biennale and was announced Chevalier des Arts et Lettres in 2017.

Direction, Set and Costume Design: Angélica Liddell
Lights: Carlos Marquerie, David Benito
Sound: Sandra Vicente
Production: Iaquinandi S.L.
Co-production: Festival d’Avignon

With: Victoria Aime, Louise Arcangioli, Alain Bressand, Paola Cabello Schoenmakers, Sarah Cabello Schoenmakers, Lola Cordón, Marie Delgado Trujillo, Greta García, Estíbaliz Racionero Balsera, Lucía Yenes, Angélica Liddell, Gumersindo Puche, Taira Irie, Masanori Kikuzawa, Ichiro Sugae, Kazan Tachimoto

Some scenes of this show may offend the sensibilities of younger people. 

Duration: ca. 285 minutes(with two intermissions)

Supported by the City of Madrid and the Japan Foundation/ Tokyo Festival. In collaboration with Teatros del Canal.