Alba Sanmartí: "Didi & Gogo - Vaig fer-ho? Vés, vés"

Wednesday, 20 December at 19.00
Fabra i Coats - Contemporary Art Centre and Art Factory of Barcelona

DIDI & GOGO - Vaig fer-ho? Vés, vés 
Alba Sanmartí
2019
Choreographic interpretation of Waiting for Godot 
Playwriting and direction: Alba Sanmartí Masdeu
Dancing/Interpretation: Anna Fontanet and Manel Salas
Music: Ramon Sanmartí Masdeu
Acknowledgement: Sala Beckett

Vladimir and Estragon (Didi and Gogo) are waiting for Godot. What would happen if Pozzo and Lucky didn’t interrupt? If we left them alone, with nothing to say to each other (without a script), what would the characters of Samuel Beckett do? 

Didi & Gogo is a displacement exercise of the play Waiting for Godot. Based on the approach that Beckett proposes in Quad and other pieces for television, we focus not on the thing written to be spoken, but on what has been written to be seen. The didaskaliai become the work’s score, transforming it into a choreographic piece. Gilles Deleuze, in L'esgotat, talks of Quad as a ritornello force, a journey without object, something that does not advance but is repeated in a new way. The object of Didi & Gogo is always postponed and, therefore, they remain forever trapped on the same path. This piece is a test, a game based on premises that are closer to the visual arts than to the theatrical tradition in the process of creation based on the text.

What does the theatrical text that is not spoken on stage say? In spite of the parentheses, each didaskalia is a delimitation of meaning and Beckett used them a lot, often to contradict his own characters. Beckett refused to interpret his works and at the same time said that he would not accept any adaptations. Here, without his consent, we have tried to teach this ambivalence: the part we don’t see but which directs our gaze, the place where the director indicates the meaning of the reading but which on stage is exposed to interpretation. The end of Waiting for Godot is an example: 

VLADIMIR: Shall we go then?
ESTRAGON: Yes, let's go.
(They do not move.)

Alba Sanmartí Masdeu (Arenys de Mar, 1981) develops her artistic practice in the field of the performing arts. She has worked as an actress and dancer and has collaborated on different artistic projects in the field of visual arts. As a teacher at Varium Espai en Moviment, education becomes a space where the relationship between word and movement can be tested and investigated.

Thanks: Teresa Rossell, Anna Gas, Enric Farrés Duran, Justine Marouzé, Diego Sinniger, Sala Beckett, Jaume Pla 'Mazoni'.