Lola Blasco

Lola Blasco

 

I understand the theater as an assemblage in which the exchange of ideas should be the norm and not the exception. I believe firmly in the artist’s commitment to society and also in the possibility that a subject experience be understood by another: to start from identity itself with the desire to assume a collective identity. In my pieces, I work with many linguistic registers, among them spoken word or the mythic story. I understand the word as action directed at someone specific, the audience. I address them explicitly, from the declared pact of their co-presence.

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    She has a degree in Drama from the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramático, trained in acting with Jorge Eines, and has a Master in Humanities (Extraordinary Prize) from the Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. In 2009, she won the Buero Vallejo prize for her work Pieza paisaje en un prólogo y un acto. That same year she founded the theater company Abiosis, in which she has participated as an author, actress, and director.
    She has on various occasion won fellowships from the Sala Cuarta Pared, where she has investigated the relationships between documentary theater and fiction, as well as the relationship between political theater and musicals.
    Her texts have been performed in various theater festivals. Her most recent work, Proyecto Milgram, was debuted at the Valle Inclán theater of the Nationa Drama Center in July of 2012, directed by Julián Fuentes Reta.

    Theatre works

    2008 / Foto Finis; first staged: February 27, 2009, Sala García Lorca of RESAD; published: Fundamentos, Madrid (2009).
    2009 / Oración por un caballo; first staged: June 8, 2009, Sala Valle Inclán de la RESAD; published: Fundamentos, Madrid (2010) and El país, Bolivia (2011).
    2009 / Pieza paisaje en un prólogo y un acto; first staged: June 11, 2010, Auditorio Carlos III de Madrid; published: The Patronato de Cultura de Guadalajara as part of the collection “Premio Buero Vallejo” (2010).
    2011 / Los hijos de las nubes, first staged: February 29, 2012, Sala Cuarta Pared; published: Caos Editorial, Madrid (2013).
    2011 / Un concierto de despedida; published: Acotaciones, Madrid (2012).
    2011 / En defensa de un teatro político-revolucionario; first staged: November 8, 2011, Sala Cuarta Pared.
    2012 / Proyecto Milgram; first staged: July 6, 2012, Sala Valle Inclán of the National Drama Center; published: the National Drama Center, Madrid, in the collection “Autores en el centro” (2012).
    2013 / Ni mar, ni tierra firme. Awaiting publication by Cátedra.

    Los hijos de las nubes

    Synopsis: Los hijos de las nubes (The Children of the Clouds) is a text by Lola Blasco that narrates her experiences in the Saharan refugee camps in Algeria. With a blurred boundary between reality and fiction, the work is a staged documentary where the first person story of the narrator, editorial opinion, and the eloquent testimony (or silence) of the people she met there all overlap. Los hijos de las nubes recounts the journey from the dismantling of the camp in Gdeim Izik, on November 8, 2010, until the fall of Moubarak and the unfolding of what is called the “Arab Spring”. Los hijos de las nubes is also an exercise in remembering Spain’s colonial past in the Sahara, the Franco dictatorship, and the transition to democracy.

    Number of characters: Voice of the author/Saharan Voices/Other Voices

     – Extracts from Los hijos de las nubes –
    Photographs, subjective words about the image.

     

    Me: What do you think?
    My mother: What are they? Wait, let me put me glasses on. Some goats?
    Me: I took a picture of them because they’re going to die.
    My mother: Die?
    Me: Yes, they’re going to be eaten.
    My mother: Oh.
    (At this point she furrows her brow, my mother, surely thinking that her daughter thinks about ugly things)
    Me: You don’t have anything to say to me?
    My mother: What do you want me to say?
    Me: Nothing.
    Silence.
    My mother: I don’t know what to say to you. What do you want me to say?
    Me: Nothing.
    My mother: Honey, that thing that appears in the other photo, is it a mine?
    Me: Yes.
    My mother: Have you gone mad? What were you doing so close to a mine?
    Silence.
    My mother: Tell me you’re not going back. Not to this place nor any other like it. And if something happens to you? Do you know how dangerous it is?
    Me: Yes, Mama, I do.
    Silence.
    Me: I’m sorry.
    My mother: Tell me you’re not going to go back. Tell me.
    Me: I’m sorry, Mama, I’ve got a job.
    Me: Mama.
    My mother: What?
    Me: What did you do on the day that Franco died?
    My mother: I don’t remember.
    Me: What did you do?
    (And I don’t like to make my mother suffer)
    My mother: Joy. I felt joy. But we celebrated it at home.
    Me: Why?
    My mother: Anyone would dare to go say it out in the street.
    Silence.
    My mother: Many went to see the body. To make sure he was dead.
    (And my mother talks of joy but there is fury in her words. And there is fury in my words. I think of the Democracy and of the bodies. I think of the foundations of the Democracy.)
    My mother: And what do you do there… where the mines are?
    Me: I walk.
    My mother: Walk?
    Me: A pilgrimage.
    My mother: I didn’t teach you these things.
    Me: It’s a way of sharing.
    My mother: Sharing what?
    Me: The pain. Mama…
    My mother: What?
    Me: The young people in the Sahara died because the mines exploded at their feet when they ran toward the wall.
    Silence.
    My mother: I don’t want you to go back to that wall.
    (And I think of how to make a text for a landscape of bodies that have made me cry. And I think, that I don’t have a damned idea of what those anti-person mines are, that I’ve been there, I’ve seen them, but now that they ask me about the mines, I don’t have a damned idea of what a mine is. I only have photographs of the mines.)

    IV
    Me
    (Extract)

    When I return to the protocol of Smara, the girls and boys who work
    there invite me to spend some time with them,
    they invite me to drink a tea
    in their room.
    And Jeslie tells me that she is going to put henna on me
    she is going to draw on my hands
    and I need to wait for two hours with my hands raised until they
    dry.
    And to me that ritual of the body seems to me to be a
    torture
    but
    I accede.
    And when Jeslie finishes I see that she has written on the back of my right hand
    my name,
    and for me
    so concerned about identity
    I had to come here,
    to Tindouf,
    for someone to write my name on my skin.
    And on the palm of my left hand she has written her own
    Jeslie,
    which means eternity.
    And she told me:
    “As a souvenir.”
    Now
    the henna has washed off of my hands but I
    I do not forget
    I do not forget.
    I tell them
    then
    of my intention to go to the wall the next day.
    I’ve spent days trying to go to the wall, but it is not easy for a person alone to go to
    the wall because the terrain is full of
    mines.
    And they tell me,
    that a little while ago a young boy of fourteen was killed,
    and that another,
    he moved away from the human chain that every year challenges the wall to
    demonstrate and a mine
    blew him up.
    And I thought
    then
    of what the Saharans must think on seeing how the child
    from behind,
    exploded,
    and what the Moroccans must think who saw that boy approach,
    who saw his face clearly before the
    impact.
    And I was unable to imagine that.
    And I decided
    to represent it.
    I decided to walk until there to redeem his death through my
    representation.
    Seven steps,
    above the footprints of another.
    Larabás,
    who accompanies me,
    goes first.
    So they don’t explode at my feet.
    In the background,
    the wall,
    like a
    prophecy.
    He who was dead
    is now living,
    we, who walk,
    are now dying
    with a little patience.

    And we walk,
    and we walk,
    and nonetheless, we remain in the same place.

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