Running for democracy

Teatre

informació obra


Sinopsi:

3 autors i 4 autores participen en la creació d’una obra col·lectiva sobre la democràcia. El resultat, l’obra Running for Democracy, es representarà als diferents teatres que formen part del projecte Between Lands. Una experiència que estimula la reflexió, estableix vincles entre països i defensa la cultura com a barem de la democràcia en l’Europa actual.

Between Lands és un projecte a nivell internacional liderat pel TNC que reuneix teatres de Catalunya, l’Estat espanyol, França, Bèlgica, Portugal, Itàlia i Grècia per compartir històries i reflexionar sobre la democràcia en la nostra societat. Aquest projecte facilitarà l’escriptura d’una obra col·lectiva de la mà de 3 autors i 4 autores que es representarà en els teatres que formen part del projecte. L’obra resultant és Running for Democracy.

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El teatre és el cor de la democràcia. Són un i van junts des de la creació i la invenció del teatre. A Between Lands recreem Europa a través de l’escriptura, de trobar-nos i d'explicar-nos històries. Un mapa mental d’un continent possible, d’un futur possible. Crear una biblioteca de textos, portar-los a escena, pensar i repensar la democràcia, conèixer gent i parlar d’aquestes qüestions. És tot alhora. És per això que estimo aquest projecte. Michael De Cock

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Crítica: Running for democracy

20/09/2021

Majority and morality rule

per Alx Phillips

The TNC launched its new season in dramatic weather on Saturday which seemed generated for the occasion. The theatre’s pledge to open ‘a gateway to the world’ – written in bold deep-blue letters across the entrance – gave way into something more ambitious and self-aware: that vast spacey lobby that you feel you could float off in, infiltrated by new soothing announcements delivered with the airy detachment of a superior kind of AI. 

Command here, was key: for the next five years, the TNC comes under the artistic direction of Carme Portaceli, the first woman to hold the post. Among her previous productions include confident contemporary versions of classics by women, including Virginia Woolf (Mrs Dalloway), Charlotte Brontë (Jane Eyre), Mary Shelley (Frankenstein), as well as Welsh playwright Abi Morgan's Splendour, a play about denial during the escalation of a civil war. 

Running for Democracy, like the quirky Eurohouse by French / Greek-British duo Bert and Nasi, and physical theatre piece Europa Bull (back again later in the season), is a demanding piece that throws the uncomfortable issue of the EU against the wall. Part of a wider ongoing project called Between Lands, the meaning and method of ‘democracy’ is discussed through six pieces by playwrights of different countries. For the TNC performance, most of the texts were translated into Catalan, with Pier Lorenzo Pisano’s Italian piece projected in a torrent of English onto the stage’s back wall.

Actors read from scripts like representatives elected to win over an audience. The themes are topical, the performances good, but the show over-informative and in a hurry, settling on an audience for two hours in a single night where it delivers its discussion points, before scooting off to another European city. Directors shuffle too: Flemish director Michael De Cock took on the TNC’s performance. Portaceli heads to Reims.

As De Cock explains, the wider project is bigger than its individual parts: the aim, to try to hold the fragile construction of Europe together, not by force but through a reassertion of morality in critical times, of democracy as Europe’s and the world’s best hope for common ground.