Fed up with labels, the Brots theater company has been working to overcome them for 12 years. To do this, the members talk about the mental health issues they suffer and, based on sharing about their own experiences, their shows are born. Today they premiere Eucharistia, in the Sant Martí auditorium in Barcelona. There are eight performers and this is the fourth of his creation shows.
"The work arises from the need to talk about an unfair health system and the realities that the company's interpreters have experienced," explains Antonio Masegosa, director of Brots. “We work with a high level of quality and demand, always through theatre”.
The entity that created the project is Utopia Barcelona, "which works with the theater of the oppressed, in various fields such as intellectual disabilities, women, youth..., and Brots is the mental health".
“The dramaturgy is very collaborative, we do it with the whole group”, declares Mònica Civill, one of the actresses. “Each one talks about his experience, we send each other emails with what we want to say, and Antonio, from his experience, gives everything a very poetic and aesthetic tone. We seek that what is valued is the artistic quality”.
The interpreters cover a wide range of ages, from 35 to 65 years. Civill, who has been part of the company for more than eight years, explains what this job means for them: “It is a safe weekly space. With some people we have known each other for a long time and it is an important network, both in moments of happiness and when you have a crisis. That makes it a very nice space for us, because you can talk, take things out safely, open up about everything that crosses you, and you can't do that in other spaces”.
The actress qualifies that they are "very critical": "It is a way of growing personally and makes us realize that we live in a society where the problem is structural and social." Another aspect they address is guilt: “We grow up with the guilt of feeling that there are behaviors that are socially desirable or undesirable. That means they end up putting a label on you, but if the problem is social, the solution also has to be social”.
Civill also explains that his theater "is vindictive" and questions the psychiatric system: "We denounce it because we have experienced a lot of psychiatric violence." That is why they do not want to talk about diagnoses: "We are many more things than a label."
The director explains the reason for the title: “We have chosen Eucharist because it is planned as a ritual. It has nothing to do directly with the Catholic religion, although we rescue something from his religious imagination. We propose to the public that they enter into a kind of ritual. If we have taken it from the Catholic religion, it is because we have it more by hand”.
The Brots company received one of the SOS Cultura scholarships from the Carulla Foundation, which supports cultural creators as a result of the pandemic, "betting on culture as a tool and engine of social transformation," explains its director, Marta Esteve. In Eucharistia "they get rid of all labels and prejudices and speak to you without taboos about the stigma that hangs over mental health, asking you a number of questions that are difficult to digest about the society of which we are a part."
"The play is a blow to the public, which is removed," concludes Masegosa, who would like Eucaristia to enter the theatrical circuits.
Catalan version, here
