Fernando Rubio
| Director, writer and stage design: | Fernando Rubio |
| Actors: | Conchi Espejo, Elena Seguí, María Morales, Mónica Bardem, Nerea Barros, Rosalía Castro, Susi Sánchez and Verónica Forqué |
| Assistant director, delegated production and distribution: | Carlota Guivernau |
| Production: | Autumn Festival de la Comunidad de Madrid |
| With the support of: | ||||||||||
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“Fernando is a great cultural militant who takes a stance as an artist. He places the body as the critic in his work. He isn't indifferent to anything. He isn't post-modern. Nor does he think that the only thing that can change is the text itself. He's ideologically, aesthetically, politically and culturally involved. That's what makes him so invaluable as an innovator and experimenter. He isn't neutral. He doesn't pretend to be oblivious. One can discern in his work a permanent criticism of the world he inhabits. And this discomfort is what drives his creative experiment”.Eduardo Pavlovsky, actor, playwright, doctor and therapist
To converse with Fernando Rubio is always an intellectually stimulating experience. As was the case with Meyerhold, his head's always full of ideas that he tries to introduce in new spaces.
To discover - experiment - displace - create roots - to let oneself be affected by things and the world. When he speaks, he doesn't centre on one topic - because he's permanently creating new worlds. At the same time.
His ideas are always innovative, in a desperate attempt to break "theatre stenography". He keeps searching, even within these new intimate spaces -breaking the stereotype of the play. He has to create events - encounters - that can produce new inventions - new interconnecting machineries. It's a routine of pure connection. Of pure involvement. From there, everything surges out.
"Fernando is a great cultural militant who takes a stance as an artist in the world he inhabits. He places the body as the critic in his work. He isn't indifferent to anything. He isn't post-modern. Nor does he think that the only thing that can change is the text itself.
He's ideologically, aesthetically, politically and culturally involved. That's what makes him so valuable as an innovator and experimenter. He isn't neutral. He doesn't pretend to be oblivious.
One can discern in his work a permanent criticism of the world he inhabits. And this discomfort is what drives his creative experiment".
A bed. An actress. A single spectator. Body to body. In an encounter that lasts only 10 minutes. Todo lo que está a mi lado is a unique aesthetic experience that is created in real time and makes the audience a participant, thus becoming a memory that stays forever in their minds.
"My work is a contemporary look at the world", says Fernando Rubio. Considered one of the most relevant creators in the world of urban intervention theatre, this lauded playwright, visual artist and performer from Argentina has been researching the reformulation of the theatre space, intimacy and relationship with the audience, for the past two decades. This 37th Autumn Festival witnesses Rubio's arrival in Madrid with one of his most reputed creations Todo lo que está a mi lado, which won six awards at the prestigious London Lift Festival (2016), and was also awarded for its originality and innovation at the TAC Festival in Valladolid (2017). Rubio's performative work is not unknown to Madrid audiences, who had the chance to enjoy his performance that lasted 110 hours, The Time Between Us, at the Matadero Madrid creative centre in 2018.
With Todo lo que está a mi lado, a work born of a childhood memory, Rubio charts a journey through memory, attachment and the bond with the other, through encounters that take place in a space as intimate and open to building relations between strangers as a bed. The playwright makes this element the basis for re-endowing with meaning familiar objects and spaces that mutate through bodies.
Different Spanish actresses will participate in this urban intervention where the audience shares beds and reflections with them for 10 minutes. In Todo lo que está a mi lado, the artists explore the possibilities and the limits of experience that emerge from an encounter between two strangers. An unforgettable moment born of a dream and formed as a new aesthetic thought on intimacy, subtle movement and the bond with the other.
Rubio has toured the world with Todo lo que está a mi lado, with exhibitions in major cities -from the Netherlands to the United States, by way of Cuba, Brazil, Uruguay, Russia, Athens, and many other countries- with his series of beds. A beach, a forest, a city centre, or as is the case here, the entrance of the Teatros Canal, have all been witnesses to his singular experiment.
