De Nao Albet y Marcel Borràs

Let’s not lie, there’s something morbidly curious about break-ups. Whether it be a band, our parents, our friends who we thought were the perfect couple or those we never quite understood how they lasted so long, we always find something exciting in a break-up. Ulay and Abramović’s trek of the Great Wall of China not in order to marry but to spilt up was an event. But here is some unsettling news: Nao Albet and Marcel Borràs are separating. This would be the headline in this case. Although when it comes to them, we’re always a fly on the wall. If there’s one thing this artistic couple have shown over the past 15 years, it is that they're able to build expectations and they always end up surprising us. You can describe them in many ways but one word that doesn’t describe them is “conformists”. But are they splitting up for real? Well, it’s better to say they will split up. Truth and lies are a binomial that are very high up in their toolbox.

It’s been almost 10 years going round in circles about their break-up. Soon after they started working together, they were already fantasising about it, but like so many things in this relationship, the thing started as a joke and has ended in a play. But it was clear to them that they would break-up eventually. The question was: “But why?” Over time, the reason can be boiled down to one word: ego. Ego is the only separating artists because everyone has one. No matter how much therapy you put yourself through, there is always an eagerness to triumph over the other, to be one in order to stop being part of two. With this concept in mind, Nao and Marcel are created a performance set in the year 2040 where one of them is dying of ego cancer. It is a fictitious, but inevitable, future.

With this construction of the present on stage, they also invent a future for the creators based on memories from the characters' past. The game of time comes into the mix. An elderly couple who were artists that worked together, reaping the rewards of their hard work and being the envy of many, recall their journey whilst arriving to their reason for separating. They are Nao Albet and Marcel Borràs who hardly 15 years ago were performing for the first time at Barcelona’s Teatre Lliure. They have performed shows such as:Democracia, Hamle.t. 3, Mammón , Los Esqueiters, Atraco, paliza y muerte en AgbanäspachandFalsestuff (La muerte de las musas). After moments of creative reflection, they started to embrace spiritualism and dance with its ideas. After so many postmodern, excessive, nonsensical set designs, a sort of minimalist simplicity is welcomed.

This is where the tear in the foundations to reveal the abyss is produced. This performance is strip to its bare bones: two actors, two chairs and a script. No set design, no music, no costumes. Nao Albet and Marcel Borràs seek to work out the reasons for their future breakup as an artistic couple after a lifetime together. An introspective journey that seeks to unravel the essence of their egos and ironically reflect on their need to talk about themselves while exploring the limits of autofiction. They are pushing boundaries. There may be a disconnect between total truth, autofiction and autobiography discovered with the purest intentions because one can only reveal their point of view in the search for meaning. Nao and Marcel’s advantage is that they’re two people and each can count on each other, counteracting the fictional temptations in favour. They indulge in a ritual of absolute nudity, with the pleasant and the unpleasant, the virtuous and the toxic, in a philosophical performance stripped of all the trappings that have always wrapped them in a halo of mischievous and good vibes. The real Nao and Marcel will finally expose their real selves, or not....