Types of labels, the theater company Brots has been working to overcome them for 12 years. To do this, the members talk about the mental health issues they suffer from and, based on sharing their own experiences, the shows are born. Today they premiere Eucharist, at the Sant Martí auditorium in Barcelona. There are eight performers and it is the fourth of his creation shows.
"The work arises from the need to talk about an unjust healthcare system and the realities experienced by the company's performers", explains Antonio Masegosa, director of Brots. "We work with a high level of quality and demand, always through the theatre."
The entity that created the project is Utopia Barcelona, "which works with the theater of the oppressed and the oppressed, in various areas such as the intellectual disability, women, young people..., and Brots it's mental health".
"Dramaturgy is very collaborative, we do it with the whole group", declares Mònica Civill, one of the actresses. "Everyone talks about their 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 the artistic quality is what is valued".
The performers range in age from 35 to 65. Civill, who has been part of the company for more than eight years, explains what this job means for them: "It's 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. This makes it a very beautiful space for us, because you can talk there, take things out safely, open up in a channel about all the things that cross your mind, and you can't do that in other spaces."
The actress clarifies, however, that they are "very critical": "It is a way to grow personally and it 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. This means that they end up putting a label on you, but if the problem is social, the solution must also 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's why they don't want to talk about diagnoses: "We are much more than a label".
The director explains the reason for the title: "We chose Eucharist because it is conceived as a ritual. It has nothing to do directly with the Catholic religion, although we rescue a bit of its religious imagery. 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 the hand".
The Brots company received one of the SOS Cultura grants from the Carulla Foundation, which support cultural creators in the wake of the pandemic, "betting on culture as a tool and engine of social transformation", explains its director, Marta Esteve. In Eucharist "they strip away all etiquette and prejudice and talk to you without taboos about the stigma that hangs over mental health, conveying to you a number of difficult questions about the society of which we are a part".
"The work is a blow to the public, who leave it moved", concludes Masegosa, who would like Eucharistia to enter the theatrical circuit.
