Teatro Línea de Sombra
October 6-11
Workshop and Performance
Performance: Baños Roma, October 10, 7 pm, followed by a post show discussion, Frederic March Play Circle
Workshop: Humans of Commerce and the Contemporary World
October 7 & 8, 1:00-5:00 p.m. each day. Festival Room, Memorial Union
APPLICATION for workshop
All events welcome both Spanish and English speakers
In collaboration with Chicago Shakespeare Theater and the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Center for Visual Cultures is pleased to welcome Teatro Línea de Sombra, October 6 – 11. A performance group consisting of Jorge Vargas, Alicia Laguna, Zuadd Atala, Eduardo Bernal, Raul Mendoza, Gilberto Barraza, Vianey Salinas, Jesus Cuevas, and Malcom Vargas, Teatro Línea de Sombra is revered for their transnational pieces that use documentary techniques, video editing, film embedding, site-specific performances, and anti-methodological acting to explore issues of immigration, violence, and human rights awareness.
Baños Roma considers the life of Cuban-Mexican boxer José “Mantequilla” Nápoles, one of the most important characters in Mexican popular culture at the end of the 20th century. His importance lies not only in the achievements he obtained in his sports career but because he is a representative figure of the time. “Mantequilla,” (his nickname meaning “butter” referring to his smooth boxing style), now with dementia, is still a legend that lives in the social imaginary. Today he lives in Ciudad Juárez, a city plagued by its own decay due to the narcos involvement. Teatro Línea de Sombra is interested in that hero of boxing but from the perspective of the ghostly figure that he is now. Thus, two contemporary instances are constructed, on the one hand, reality, based on the bleak look at his life in Ciudad Juárez, and on the other, memory and the fragility it exposes. This binomial could be called “The memorable reality.” Teatro Línea de Sombra is concerned not only with the impossible notion of true events but the group also implies that memory can help imagine the present.
Directors Eduardo Bernal and Jorge A. Vargas of Teatro Línea de Sombra will lead a two-day workshop where participants will explore Teatro Línea de Sombra’s unique methodology that stresses the key concepts of the referent, conviviality, experience, the argument, and the image. They will also compose either a short scene or write a reflexive artistic/academic argument that fuses Teatro Línea de Sombra’s approach to maps, biopolitics, the body, and the environment.
APPLICATION for workshop