My Great Work is what I would do if I had an unlimited budget, the largest theatre in the world, 300 actors on stage, a military orchestra, a rock band, animals, cars and a helicopter. David Espinosa
“It tries nothing less than to figure out how much to improve the moral and physical condition of the human species, while opposing a dam to wars, revolutions and riots. It is the holiest enterprise you can be able to imagine, for its benefits to be achieved, not a single town, state or nation but to all humanity, without the cost a drop of blood, not a tear “ (Manuel Sagrario de Veloy, 1841)
My Great Work is an utopia. The reality in which we have always moved as artists is characterized by precariousness and lack of means, and there has always been precisely the focus of our work: devise mechanisms to solve the lack of resources, make a virtue of necessity, emphasizing gaps to enhance interest and failure as creation engine. So now that we are in a difficult socio-economic situation, in which very few can afford this luxury, it seems the right time to tackle our first big project, an ambitious project.
In “My Great Work” we plan to build a large-scale show, sparing no expense, developing all the ideas that appear however that could be expensive, material and unlimited artistic team. But, obviously, with a slight nuance: a scale. That is, thinking big and doing small, using this approach and techniques of an architect. Continuing our questioning of the limits of theatre and deepening the interest of previous projects on the idea of representation, in this work we try to create a situation in which to question the meaning of major projects such artistic creations that handle high budgets and whose real cultural value is rarely demonstrable, colossal works very gimmicky and disingenuous, loaded with ornaments but their substance. While trying to carry out what we would do if we were really able to work under these conditions, which for us was a great format profitable.
We found attractive to use the models because they are viewing a previous idea to construction, are in that space between thought and reality, are something of a “object of physical thought” or “physical object of thought.” They suggested that procedural rather than states, and its purpose is in the act of construction, that once finished, the object becomes a useless, ephemeral, we believe emphasizes that quality of scenic, and the paradoxes it holds in relation to the political, economic and cultural.
Finally we were inspired by the context of sale of an architectural and scenic location on which the proposed joint where clients and architects gather around a table to discuss the evolution of the product. The actor sitting at a table which acts at stage space, the show develops manipulating human figures of model train and other objects, which is seen by a small group of spectators (20 to 25, depending on the size of the room ) sitting around the table.
The key, once this decision is made, has been how to move to these figures, how to relate to space and time, with the intention of highlighting the scenic character of the project. On the one hand on a physical level, and on the other to a dramaturgical level, generating several layers of meaning to play with figurative features of the figures themselves without creating a narrative logic, and decontextualizing real objects like a scenography.
Created and directed by: David Espinosa
Performance: David Espinosa / Cia. Hekinah Degul
Collaboration: Africa Navarro
Sound and music: Santos Martinez / David Espinosa
Stage design: David Espinosa / Air Models and Architecture Projects.
Production: El Local E.C. / C.A.E.T., in collaboration with the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya
Distribution: M.O.M.-El Vivero?(Project grant from the Artists in Residence Program of Bilbaoeszena)
