Last summer, European theatre giant Angélica Liddell visited Tokyo for a special creative workshop.
In addition to presenting “All the Sky Above the Earth (Wendy’s Syndrome)” later in the autumn at F/T15, Liddell also developed a new piece during her one-week workshop in Tokyo, which culminated in a one-hour work-in-progress.
Along with four Japanese participants from the Tokyo workshop, Liddell now premieres her new play, “And what will I do with this sword? Approach of the Law and of the Issue of Beauty” (¿ Qué haré yo con esta espada ?), at the Festival d’Avignon in July.
Liddell uses all the tricks of a theatre in which beauty, eroticism, and death are inextricably intertwined to delve into the deepest recesses of human nature. A way to try to say what cannot be said. With total sincerity and explosive power, the director exposes herself to question herself. And through her heartrending cry of distress, and her deeply human cry of hope, she tries to bring about the triumph of the law of poetry over the law of the state. Terribly disturbed by the violence of Issei Sagawa, the Japanese student who killed and ate his classmate, and by that of the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks of November 2015 in Paris, Liddell proposes a journey from Tokyo to Paris and back, in order to free, inside this fictional world, the homicidal instincts often buried deep within us. With her companions Hölderlin, Cioran, Mishima, and Nietzsche, she goes back to the origins of tragedy and seeks to transform on the stage real violence into mythological violence. Using her power as an actress to express the fragility of desires and do away with bourgeois self-righteous morals, Angélica Liddell leads us to places where tranquillity does not exist.
“And what will I do with this sword? Approach of the Law and of the Issue of Beauty”
7 July to 13 July 2016 / 22:00 (No performance 9 July)
Venue: Cloître des Carmes
Duration: 4 hours (including interval)
Performed in Spanish, French and Japanese with French surtitles
Text, direction, stage design and costumes: Angélica Liddell
Performers: Victoria Aime, Louise Arcangioli, Paola Cabello Schoenmakers, Sarah Cabello Schoenmakers, Lola Cordón, Marie Delgado Trujillo, Greta García, Masanori Kikuzawa, Angélica Liddell, Gumersindo Puche, Estíbaliz Racionero Balsera, Ichiro Sugae, Kazan Tachimoto, Irie Taira, Lucía Yenes, and more
Lighting: Carlos Marquerie
Sound: Antonio Navarro
Spanish-Japanese Interpretation and Translation: Makiko Sese
Spanish-Japanese Translation Suport: Yoichi Tajiri
Production: Ianquinandi SL
Co-production Festival d’Avignon
With the support of Community of Madrid and the Japan Foundation, Festival/Tokyo
Festival d’Avignon (French):
http://www.festival-avignon.com/fr/spectacles/2016/que-hare-yo-con-esta-espada
Festival d’Avignon (English):
http://www.festival-avignon.com/en/shows/2016/que-hare-yo-con-esta-espada
Angélica Liddell
Writer, director, performer
Born in 1966, Angélica Liddell is a well-known name at many important European festivals. Her play “La casa de la fuerza” received the Premio Nacional de Literatura Dramática, Spain’s most prestigious playwriting award, in 2012. She won the Leone d’argento per il Teatro (Silver Lion for Theatre) at the Venice Biennale in 2013. In 1993, she founded Atra Bilis Teatro (“black bile theatre”) in Madrid, where she has staged 22 productions. As an avant-garde, radical and uncompromising artist, she was initially relegated to the fringe art scene, but soon won recognition after presenting her work outside Spain. Today, Liddell’s plays are staged all over Europe and beyond, and her work has been translated into many languages. In addition to theatre, Liddell also writes poetry and prose. “Angélica [una tragedia]”, a documentary about the production of “All the Sky Above the Earth (Wendy’s Syndrome)”, was released in April 2016.