Reminiscência (Reminiscence)

The advent of the new coronavirus pandemic led the performing arts, linked to presence, to unveil other forms of presence. In the first year of the health recommendations for social distancing, in 2020, Chilean actor and director Malicho Vaca Valenzuela searched for possible strategies on digital platforms – like his peers around the world.

“Chile, Santiago, after the Cordillera, on the other side, at the end of the world, there is my home” – this was how the artist introduced the audience who accompanied him in videoconference through the Zoom application. At Mirada, the presentation will be in person, in a solo performance that increases the performative voltage of the work.

Using geolocation tools, the artist manages to delve into his biography and, at the same time, into the biography of the city of Santiago. He makes an effort to map recent memory and, at the same time, the deepest scars.

His understanding is that the research resulted in a biographical documentary essay with sensitive, political, and intimate gradations.

As the narrator of “Reminiscencia,” Valenzuela claims that all the content displayed does not really belong to him. After all, they are images, ideas, photographs, and videos of family members, sometimes friends, and above all, anonymous people, in a symbolic representation of the internet connectivity potential. “It’s what I like to call a collage of collective memories,” says the artist about this public and personal symbiosis. In addition to the “emotional topography” with the Chilean capital, the family universe is highlighted by the daily life with his grandparents, a musician, and a singer with whom he spends the quarantine.

The script is about the love story of the grandparents, the grandma diagnosed with Alzheimer’s for years but whose memories of tangos and boleros do not fade, as well as the process of erasing the urban physiognomy with the demolitions in the central region or the cleaning up the Italy Square, the historical stage of popular demonstrations that transformed the course of the country, yesterday and today.

Who are they
Compañía Le Insolente Teatre appeared in 2013 with the premiere of the play “Bolero de Almas Perdidas” and is composed of actors Malicho Vaca Valenzuela and Ébana Garín. This was followed by the staging of “Los Hombres Tristes”, “Monica: El Truncado Vuelo de la Paloma”, “Las Cosas que Nunca Dije”, “PARANOIA” and “Reminiscencia”, awarded by the Chilean Art Critics Circle as the best online creation of 2020. Along this path, there is a constant and varied intersection of artistic disciplines with notions of memory, body, territory and dissidence.

Datasheet
Playwright, director and performer Malicho Vaca Valenzuela
Representative and assistant manager / Representante y asistente de dirección  Ébana Garín Coronel