THE COMPANY Teatro de los Sentidos
is a stable group of artists-
researchers from various fields of knowledge and nationalities who have been working in close collaboration with the anthropologist and Artistic Director Enrique Vargas for 20 years. Together, they work on the poetics of the senses and research in the relationship between sensorial languages and theatrical creation. The company aims towards a language based on that what is left unsaid. Following the path of ancestral oral traditions, where silence is a necessary condition for an effective communication between the play and the public. Teatro de los Sentidos creates innovative and experiential shows in which the distance between actors and spectators disappears: the public is invited to play an active role, becoming travelers that are guided by the inhabitants of the space across a symbolic and sensorial trip. I want to be one but I am just half. My missing part, makes me walk.
OUR PROJECTS Our performances have their origin, in general, on the fact that the public of cultural shows becomes a passive element too often. Aiming to change this, our main objective is to enhance the creative participation of the spectators, making them travel into themselves in a unique environment that might move their ancestral imaginaries. Our projects always seek to be experienced as intimate encounters. The emotions that the spectators feel during the performance, arouse a first look of curiosity to their environment that will make them become, not only travelers, but also the main characters of their own inner labyrinth, where the memory of the body plays an essential role. The concept and the sensorial score of these shows are specifically tailored to the locations that will host them. Each show is created from a question that triggers a new research by the Company members. Teatro de los Sentidos creates a sensorial world to provide a framework for these questions and to allow the search of the answers.
ENRIQUE VARGAS Colombian dramatist and anthropologist that over the last 30 years has developed a poetical language of enormous influence for the contemporary theatre. In 1946, at the age of six, Enrique Vargas entered the world of theatre by inventing games in the Andean landscape of his Colombian hometown. He used to invite neighbors and friends to play with him, and hide from grownups in the intricate and mazelike coffee plantations, where they created fantastic stories full of surprise and imagery. As an adult, he set his sights in recovering the spirit of those “forbidden” games and into developing a poetic of the senses that would endow them with meaning. This research took him to the National Drama School in Bogota- Escuela Nacional de Arte Dramático de Bogotá- and to Michigan University where he studied theatre anthropology. Afterwards, he spent 20 years researching games, myths and rituals from the Colombian Amazonic region, and teaching Dramatic Art of the Sensory Image at Colombia´s National University- Universidad Nacional de Colombia. In 1993 he continued his research with the creation of theatre works of great international impact, such as “Ariadna’s thread”, “Oracles”, “The Memory of the Wine”, “The Echo of the Shadow”, “Inhabitants Project”, “Short Exercises in Dying Well”, among the others. Now Enrique lives in Barcelona. Other than Artistic Director of Teatro de los Sentidos, he directs the Postgraduate Diploma “Sensorial Language and Poetics of Game”, of the Universitat de Girona (Spain), and gives several workshops at the School of the Senses.
PRIZES AND RECOGNITIONS Best Play 2008. Pitssburgh Press. Pittsburgh, USA (2009) TZ Rosen Public and critics award. Munich. Germany (2008) Honor Award, Festival Internacional de Teatro de Valladolid (2006) for our labour of research and artistic trajectory. MAX Award to new tendencies. Spain (2005) Public and critics award. Munich. Germany (2005) Sebastià
Gasch
Award. Barcelona, Spain,
(2004)
Teatro de los Sentidos has also been awarded with:
First Award XXXIV Salón Nacional de Artistas. Bogotá. Colombia World Theater festival. Santiago de Chile. Chile Best play, chosen by people and critics alike. Tucán de Oro VII Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro de Cádiz. Spain Recognition by the UNESCO, Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro. Bogotá. Colombia
SOME FESTIVALS AND CITIES
where we have performed over the last years Il Funaro. Pisoia (Italy), 2014 World Theatre Festival Shizuoka under Mt.Fuji. Shizuoka (Japan), 2014 Festival IDEM - Casa Encendida. Madrid (Spain), 2013 Festival 10 Sentidos. Valencia (Spain), 2013 Temporada en La Casa del Teatro. Bogota (Colombia), 2013 Goteborg Dans & Teater Festival. Goteborg (Sweden), 2013 Festival Zomer Van Antwerpen. Antwerpen (Belgium), 2013 Festival Notte dei Poeti. Pula (Itàlia), 2012 Il Funaro. Pisoia (Italy), 2012 Perth International Arts Festival. Perth (Australia), 2012 Republique Theatrer. Copenhague (Denmark), 2012 Temporada Polvorí de Montjuïc. Barcelona (Spain), 2011 Le Vie dei Festival. Roma (Italy), 2011. Il Funaro. Pisoia (Italy), 2011 Maison Folie di Wazemmes, Lille (France), 2011 Benevento Città Spettacolo. Benevento (Italy), 2011 Festival Internacional de Teatre de Tarragona. Tarragona (Spain), 2011 Singapore Arts Festival. (Singapur) 2011 Festival Grec. Barcelona (Spain), 2010 Palazzo Riso. Museo d’Arte Contemporanea della Sicilia. Palermo (Italy), 2010 Teatro Jovellanos de Gijón, Recinto Ferial de Asturias Luís Adaro. Gijón (Spain), 2009 Republique Theater (Metropolis Festival). Copenhague (Denmark), 2009 Festival Grec. Barcelona (Spain), 2009 Montjuïc de Nit - El Polvorí. Barcelona (Spain), 2009 Festival de Teatro de El Ejido (Spain). 2009 Centre d’Arts Escèniques de Terrassa. Terrassa (Spain), 2009 Pittsburgh International Festival of Firsts. Pittsburgh (USA), 2009 Tollwood Festival. Munich (Germany), 2008 Napoli Teatro Festival. Napoli (Italy), 2008 Norwich Festival. (UK), 2008 Ayuntamiento de Pozuelo de Alarcón. (Spain) 2008 Teatro Español. Naves del Matadero. Madrid (Spain), 2007 Forum de las Culturas. Monterrey (Mexico), 2007 Aarhus Festival. Aarhus (Denmark), 2007 Festival de Norwich. (UK), 2007
PROJECTS 2014 Presentation of Short Exercises in Dying Well in Barcelona (Spain) and international tour with the show: Shizouka (Japan) and Pistoia (Italy) Several workshops in Barcelona, Belgium, Japan and Italy Creation of our new production (Heart of Darkness). Premiere in september—october at Republique (Copenhague, Denmark)
PRESS REVIEWS “... The show is fascinating because it achieves its intention of shaking the traditional concept of theatre as representation, allowing everybody to live a unique experience…”. Oracles / Il Manifesto. Italy
“As a critic, I only want to say one thing about The Memory of Wine. Go see it! Please! Enter! Any other description would be unfair” The Memory of Wine. TZ (20/06/2005) Munich, Germany
“... Ariadna’s Thread” leaves all senses delirious. A barrage of sensations, a landslide of emotions, a singular experience no one should miss...” Ariadna’s Thread. Le Figaro, France
“The Echo of the Shadow” is one of the most poetic, wonderful and unique theatrical experiences I have ever seen.” The Echo of the Shadow. Lars Wresdstrom, Borsen, Copenhagen, Denmark (August, 2005)
“Climax, silence, kindness, imagination, and above all, memory…Since The Cellar of the Senses’ birth something akin to a show but, like always, a unique experience. (…) the spectator lives it just like it is, just like memories are.”. The Cellar of the Senses. La Vanguardia. November 2006
“I simply felt, now that I'm calibrating these lines, that what Enrique Vargas does is not theatre, nor visual arts, nor music, nor performance. What drives Enrique and his army of accomplices is building, day after day, the path for the good living because it is very likely that the path to dying well is just around the corner” Short Exercices in Dying Well / Sandro Romero, El Tiempo, Bogota, Colombia. July 2010.
“…I felt as though I was experiencing and discovering an intimate miracle. It was like standing at the beginning of a road long ago forgotten towards our own self...”
“Unique, emotional, and almost magic, the show which Republique opens its doors with. After the performance... touched and extremely, human beings smiling, get out to the real city, Copenhagen. But the city won’t ever be what it was before entering the sensorial and magical universe of Vargas.” Inhabitants Project/ www.KultuNaut.dk. August 2009
“... Oracles is an experience unthought-of of, original and attractive, deep and disturbing…And what paths and roads are opened by this labyrinth! It is not true when we hear theatre is dying. It is creativity that is languishing and rotting away. What is agonizing is a culture that has lost all contact with humanity...” Oracles / El Mundo. Spain
“... I have never experienced anything like this within the artistic sphere. A play that does not depend on the immediate visual information associated to art nor rely on the tedious rite of the applause associated to theatre... What can cause a sensory maladjustment? On one hand, the capacity to recuperate the sense of smell, that fallen angel of the senses, and to propitiate the tactile memory....” Ariadna’s Thread / El Espectador. Colombia
“There is always a secret. There is always a story. And the spectator / visitor becomes part of it during their stay in this timeless, relaxing, unreal surrounding.” The Memory of Wine. Santiago Fondevila, La Vanguardia (13/07/2004) Barcelona, Spain
“With the sweet sound of feminine voices, of flowing water and a sweet melody, one feels a sort of osmosis with life. It's a feeling of plenitude, of a serenity of unknown origin but which endures long after leaving the venue” Marie Tranchant. Nord Éclair (France) 19/04/11
"… frankly, it is an excellent and seductive show, if you like that moment every day, when you are lying in bed half awake half dreaming, this show is for you." Inhabitants. Lars Wredstrom. Borsen. August 2009
Oracles. Repúblika, Slovenia.
“Upon leaving…I turn around to see if my shadow is still following me.” The Echo of the Shadow. Eduard Molner, La Vanguardia (July, 2006) Barcelona, Spain.
“Whoever dares to undertake this trip into the unknown will be generously rewarded: Entering another world, which takes the traveller to the very arcane principlef of human life.” The Memory of Wine. Suddeutsche Zeitung (20/06/2005) Munich, Germany
PRODUCTIONS The Memory of Wine An intimate voyage, both individual and collective along the route of the grape. Wine, air and freedom; fermentation, transgression and the blurring of limits between drunkenness and wisdom, reality and folly, identity and fragmentation. “Only insanity can save the world”. Premiere: Festival Grec Forum de les Cultures, Barcelona (Spain). 2004. Fermentation A journey from the past of the grape as a plant to its future as a refined and precious liquid: from the leave to the branch, down the stock going in towards the depths of the earth, in which, like a premonition, the transformation to become wine is eagerly awaited. Released in International Theatre Festival of Tarragona (Spain) in July 2011. Oráculos A voyage through a labyrinth designed to experience sensations that stem from archetypical memories. The trip takes place in a space where curiosity, amazement and chance meet in the midst of silence, smells, darkness, solitude, sounds and tactile sensations that help the wanderer along his/her path. Performed in over 20 festivals. Ariadna’s Thread An invitation to the audience, where the spectator becomes a mythological traveller who enters the routes, waits at the crossroads and walks down the passages of the labyrinth, following the steps of its old inhabitant, the Minotaur.
The Echo of the Shadow Using two materials as fleeting as echoes, “The Echo of the Shadow”, and shadows, “The echoes of the body”, we created a game based on Hans Christian Andersen´s fairy tale “The Shadow”. Released at Copenhagen Kobenhavns Internationale Teater (KIT) Dinamarca, 2005. Short Exercises in Dying Well We're made of that which triggers our curiosity, amazement, doubts or of that which confronts us with the unknown. An invitation that unknown side of us that lives under consciousness and that often struggles to break through. Released at Festival Grec, Barcelona (Spain). 2010. The Cellar of the Senses A unique experience where the actors set the time, the imagery, the ritual and the sensory sequences to discover taste within a context of music, theatre, smells, textures and sensory travel. The Upside-Down World How can we help create conditions for a child or an adult to express themselves? How can we turn an experience into an expression? How can we make that expression into a book? Released at Món Llibre. Barcelona (Spain), 2005. Cuando el río suena The past is never over. He lives hidden in a drawer or a pocket of a dress, or even in a cup of coffee. It inhabits the objects, things, places, and hopes, waiting for us to notice it. Premiered at the International Theatre Festival Santiago a Mil (Chile), 2011 Inhabitants Project What is a city made of beyond its architecture? Which are the threads that weave its inhabitants amongst each other, to their environment, to those who were and those still to come? We have faced them from different perspectives and geographies: Naples, Barcelona, Copenhage, Palermo and Singapur.
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Workshops with a final presentation of a sensorial experience Teatro de los Sentidos offers several workshops with final presentation; a series of proposals that arise from some of the productions of the Company but with a special emphasis on training. These proposals are always articulated in two phases: 1. Firstly, the socialization of the sensorial language: through several workshops, the participants acquire the basic tools to enable them to understand the meaning of working on the memory of the body. 2. Secondly, from the acquired tools and the work that has already been done, a final layout is created: an experience of sensorial immersion open to the public. Weaving A research that explores the concept of "inhabiting" a city and to discover what a city is made of, beyond its architecture. The first dance A project to introduce and train blind participants, or with visual difficulties, to sensorial theater Poetics of the land A workshop that explores the memory of wine and earth and the secret of the transformation.
EDUCATION The School of the Senses - Caixa d'Eines is the educational platform of Teatro de los Sentidos. Since 2004, Caixa d'Eines (literally “tool box�) adds up projects within the field of the poetics of the senses and the memory of the body but also researches on the application of those languages to artistic creation and other professional fields. Internationally acknowledged, Caixa d'Eines has hosted hundreds of professionals through workshops, creative projects and its Postgraduate Diploma. It offers to artists and researches of many different backgrounds the expertise of the members of Teatro de los Sentidos in relation to the poetic of the senses to explore the relationship between the sensorial languages and fields such as the theater arts, therapy or social integration. The School of the Senses offers several practical workshops as an introduction to the art of listening and understanding the Sensorial Language, while exploring the application of these languages to other professional fields. To join these workshops - which are given by Enrique Vargas together with artists and researchers from Teatro de los Sentidos - no previous knowledge is required: they are aimed at actors, musicians, dancers, and anyone who feels motivated by this search (teachers, social workers, psychologists, etc.).
EVENTS Teatro de los Sentidos designs and organizes special events for all sort of institutions that seek a unique and exclusive outcome. Over the last years, we have work on: Experiential Marketing - Publicity Conferences and presentations Coaching and training programs Dinner shows With the intention of generating a reflection upon the world of the senses, memory and space perception, Teatro de los Sentidos proposes an array of artistic experiences around imagination and taste as basic elements to work on the poetic of the senses. We have organized events for:
The Company Teatro de los Sentidos has its headquarters at the old PolvorĂ of MontjuĂŻc, a space provided by the City Council of Barcelona.
CONTACT Teatro de los Sentidos www.teatrodelossentidos.com Camí del Polvorí s/n. 08038 Barcelona / Spain Tel. +34 678 751 788 - 93 325 40 72
General Management: Toni Vidal gerencia@teatrodelossentidos.com
Production: Carlos Calvo
produccion@teatrodelossentidos.com
Distribution: Claudio Ponzana distribucion@teatrodelossentidos.com
Administration: Lídia Figueras info@teatrodelossentidos.com
Communication: Clara Gassiot comunicacion@teatrodelossentidos.com