“Próximo is absolutely current and contemporary, it's tender and routine. Santi Marín and Lautaro Perotti endow their characters with a moving honesty. In this piece, whatever may be the outcome of creating a relationship with another, it's all there, vibrating on screen. Moving. So far, yet so close. Excellent”.

Clarín

What happens when the body is far from where emotion is? Can we love with touching, without smelling, without knowing the touch of skin? These are some of the questions that renowned playwright and director Claudio Tolcachir (Buenos Aires, 1975) poses in Próximo, his latest and most favourably received creation, which delves into distances and the connections that are created across them.

Tolcachir is one of the most established theatre directors not only of Argentina, but also of Spain. He is the founder of Timbre 4, where he has headed since 2001, the cultural space of the same name located in Buenos Aires, one of the landmarks of independent Argentinian theatre.

Throughout his career he has been the recipient of numerous awards including ACE, Clarín, María Guerrero, Teatro del Mundo and Teatro XXI for his works, of which the massively successful The Omission of the Family Coleman has been staged in more than 20 countries. With Próximo, his latest creation, the playwright returns to the Autumn Festival to delve into questions of solitude and the search for love through a relationship marked by the physical distance between two men.

The two actors on stage, the Argentinian Lautaro Perotti and the Spanish Santi Marín, are half a metre apart, but they never touch. Nor do they exchange glances. They cannot, for their characters are thousands of kilometres apart, one in Madrid, the other in Australia. They've never met in person. They make each other's acquaintance through the Internet, and slowly, they fall in love on Skype without so much as inhaling each other's fragrance, feeling each other's touch, let alone exchanging a kiss. But the plot pushes them until this becomes the only thing they have in the world.

"I think there are no fixed methods, one can fall in love any way one wants", explains Tolcachir, who seeks to connect the audience with the real world in all his plays. "It's quite contemporary. I'm often living away from home, I've had to be away when my father had an operation, I met my nephew for the first time on Skype. One is transported when one logs in".

Próximo is a play on how love unfolds at a distance. "In times when everything is so broken and ruined, to speak of love is an act of resistance", affirms the director. The audience witnesses two bodies that are close, yet thousands of kilometres apart. They never look into each other's eyes on stage. It makes one desperate. "For a time, I refused to contact my loved ones by Skype, because when you disconnect, it creates a terrible emptiness in you. In the end, they're absurd loves and connections, but they are honest".

This moving text by the Argentinian master explores identity, solitude, our fear of revealing ourselves and the changing paradigm of relations. It also looks at how new technologies allow connected people to keep themselves at a distance, sheltered from commitment. Próximo relates the experience of being far from everything, of experiencing the most intense emotions without the presence of a body: births, deaths, love, sex. The poetry of theatre is the crudest of environments in which to display a distance that is as real as the closeness of a Skype call", states Tolcachir.

Practical information

• Teatro de La Abadía, Sala José Luis Alonso
• 28, 29 & 30 November, 20.30
• 1 December, 19.30
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• * The show will continue to be staged as part of the regular programme of Teatro de La Abadía until 15 December.

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