Based on the biography of a visionary figure, this production, which won the Adrià Gual Prize, explores the concept of utopia as a driver of social change.
What will the future be like? Does it have in store for us a post-capitalist system based on collaboration, as some say? Will the ideas of Thomas More, the father of utopian literature, become a reality? Will we enter a happier, egalitarian society, in which private property is no longer the basis of everything? These questions are asked in a show that combines theatre and documentary contributions to speak about the concept of utopia. It is all based on the story of €lex Moreu, an actor born in 1973, who over 15 years ago left the city to go and live far from the madding crowd in the French Pyrenees with a community of nearly 40 people (the ‘utopians’) in search of a new form of social organization that guarantees them happiness. But time has passed and project has reached a dead end. What’s going on and how have they ended up like this? The actor himself tells us in a dramatic fictional story with biographical touches that takes place in a room full of books, a singular offering that works with several aesthetic layers and different levels of reality.
This production won the Institut de Teatre’s latest Adrià Gual Prize, aimed at providing support for and raising the profiles of up-and-coming new faces in the theatre. It was created by Companyia Ignífuga, whose members uphold that text-based theatre can no longer compete with other disciplines when it comes to constructing a transparent action. This is why they go beyond the purely narrative to present a critical and political view of the world around us. They have done this previously with shows like Kohlhaas, una discussió festiva sobre la idea de revolució, seen at the Grec Festival in Barcelona in 2016 and which, like all their shows, offers the audience an experience that is not just intellectual, but emotional too.
Direction: Pau Masaló; Dramaturgy: Pau Masaló, Ferran Dordal; Interpretation: Cristina Arenas, Eduard Autonell, Melcior Casals, Marina Congost, €lex Moreu, Júlia Rodón; Scenography: Joana Martí; Costume: Joana Martí; Production: Eduard Autonell;
