When words are not understood

Romeo Castellucci has returned to Temporada Alta to bombard the public with an avalanche of words until they become incomprehensible.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
18 November 2022 Friday 22:46
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When words are not understood

Romeo Castellucci has returned to Temporada Alta to bombard the public with an avalanche of words until they become incomprehensible. It is his installation Il Terzo Reich, which premieres in Spain at the Girona autumn festival.

The Italian theater director never leaves anyone indifferent. If last year he hit the public in Girona with Bros, that theatrical piece where the police officers became an overwhelming uniformity, now it is the words that overwhelm the public.

But not because they are harsh, profane or insulting words. They are normal and current nouns, such as thing, bone, law (the first three), even victim, fruit, horizon (the last three). In the middle, a succession of thousands of words each time at a more frenetic pace, to the point that the viewer only catches one from time to time, but does not have time to understand it, to interpret it, to digest it. The thunderous sound, with a percussion that changes rhythm, underlining the words, becomes an almost unbearable torture for the spectator, hypnotized by the infinite projection.

Before the avalanche of words, the dancer and choreographer Gloria Dorliguzzo introduces the show by listening, with the attempt to understand this increasingly incomprehensible communication.

The sound that accompanies the words projected in a totally dark space reaches a point of hurt, like a jackhammer. It is not for nothing that the public receives silicone earplugs when they enter the nave of the old church that is today the La Mercè Cultural Center, as they were also distributed last year with the show Bros.

Castellucci's installation is one of the star dishes this week that Temporada Alta dedicates to contemporary creation and which serves as an invitation for programmers and performing arts professionals to visit Girona and discover what is going on in the world of entertainment.

Yesterday afternoon, it was also possible to enjoy the dance of Los perros at the Salt theater, the show by Led Silhouette and Marcos Morau in which the dancers Jon López and Martxel Rodríguez become dogs that love, argue, fight, in a colloquium typical of Cervantes himself.

And from the incomprehensible words to the stones that speak. At night it was Azkonatoloza who gave voice to geology in the piece Canto mineral, in the La Planeta room. These inert beings are also creatures created by God, according to the proposal of Laida Azkona Goñi and Txalo Toloza-Fernández.

After approaching Brossa and Verdaguer in their previous shows, now Cabosanroque has done it with Rodoreda. But with an updated Rodoreda, merged with Svetlana Alexiévich, in Flowers and Travels. But we'll have to wait for the next report to find out more details about everything that's brewing at Girona's autumn festival.

Tickets with a 20% discount at EntradasdeVanguardia.com

Catalan version, here