Silenzio!

direction Ramona Nagabczyńska de Barbaro

##general.period##:: 01/21 -22 2022
##general.room##:: Montjuïc. Sala Fabià Puigserver

Timetable

18:00

Running time

1 h

Place

Sala Fabià Puigserver

Language

In English subtitled in Catalan

Price

€9 to €29 / Katharsis subscription €39 (3 tickets)

Accessibility

Hearing assistance via mobile phone

Debate

No debate

WARNING
Margarida Xirgu Square is closed to traffic and cannot be parked on it.

Opera is the centre-point for this performance by the Polish-Canadian performer and choreographer Ramona Nagabczyńska de Barbaro. In order to tell us about female voices, she reaches for opera – a performative arts form which has remained almost completely unchanged for centuries.

We tend to associate voices with the symbolic sphere; with meanings assigned to sounds. We forget that it is the manifestation of complex physical attributes. The voices which evade the symbolic order are moved beyond conventions: which does not mean that they do not exist – only that we have lost the ability to hear them. Traditional female song practices have found their dominant equivalent in the virtuoso operatic arias created by male composers. This is where the original voice ecstasy mixes with the refined propaganda of a harmful order.
The ancient Greek practice of aischyrology, based on the use of obscene language, emerged from feminine rituals. No contemporary equivalent of this practice exists – quite the opposite: vulgarisms and references to the abject side of the body are disturbing when they come from the mouths of women.
The political aspect of the human voice is defined not only by the meanings of the words which are uttered, but in equal terms by marking the physical presence of specific bodies.
_Ramona Nagabczyńska de Barbaro

‘Nagabczyńska is an expert in overturning the conventions of the performing arts. Next weekend—21 and 22 January at 6 pm—he will present the show Silenzio! (2021) as part of the Katharsis series at the Teatre Lliure. Silenzio! is a cry that paradoxically silences us, just as the voices of the women onstage also cry out and are silenced at the same time. This show, which combines dance, music and theatre, tries to ascertain what happens when obscenity enters the world of the opera, what happens when women can finally dominate the stage in all senses’. (Berta Coll i Bosch, Núvol)

What defines us? That is the question that is the focus of the 2022 edition of Katharsis, always associated with the origins of this special programme, in which we constantly ask ourselves what theatre is. Asking it ourselves means asking ourselves what we are as human beings and citizens. The boundaries that surround us create forms that define us politically, humanly, socially, culturally or artistically, even though we do not like some definitions, and we look for ways to change them from the fringes. This Katharsis features artists who use history, collective memory and even appearance to cross lines that make us rethink where we come from and where we are going.