12.17.2022 — The triptych of the talking houses

The talking houses (I). Listen

"Castilla-La Mancha. Visions for a new century"
Regional Government of Castilla-La Mancha. Ciudad Real. Spain (1999)

The challenge I faced in this project was the installation of a dramatic space in the middle of a conventional exhibition. The public entered a humble house in La Mancha to listen to the story of a woman born at the beginning of the twentieth century: the story of her first love and later husband - who died at the front during the Civil War, leaving her a widow - and the hope placed in her children who had to emigrate to have a better future, were the guiding thread of this story.

A project without actors but with a scenic space that, supported by technology, managed to make an impact on the visitors.

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The houses that speak (II). Accompanying

Bakearen Museoa Fundazioa (Guernica Peace Museum Foundation), Gernika-Lumo, Spain (2003)

The scenic project was formalised by inviting the audience to enter a dining room of a house in Gernika two minutes before the bombing, to meet Begoña, the inhabitant of that house, and to listen to her explaining her daily life: her hard day to day life, the rationing of food, the loneliness of not having her husband and children around because they were fighting at the front... until a roar collapsed the house and then, silence.

The aim was to place the visitor in a domestic space and to make them shudder at the story they were about to experience: The two minutes before the death of a woman in her house, caused by the bombing of the fascist air force during the Civil War in Guernica. 

Project web page

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The houses that speak (III). Remembering

"Despoiled! Economic «Aryanisation» in France, 1940-1944"
Musée de la Résistance et de La Déportation en Isère. (Museum of Resistance and Deportation in Isère), 2010

The inhabitants of the room no longer lived there. The audience entered and, when the door was violently closed, the whole room moved as the walls did not touch the floor. A naked light bulb danced, casting the shadows of the visitors on the walls, creating a ghostly effect. 

The most difficult objective in this exhibition was to awaken the collective unconscious of unprotection and helplessness of the visitors. No sound effects, no projections, just an empty stage space. 

The Jews who lived in Grenoble during the Second World War had been deprived of their material goods and their lives.

Project web page

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These and other projects - which I approached from dramaturgy and stage design - are the ones I am recovering from my archive and revising in order to publish my first book. In it I will unveil the path traced in each one of them; their peculiarities and singularities; my role in their development, the obstacles overcome and the way to reach a final resolution.