Reminiscencia looks more like a virtual investigation of everyday life than a theatrical form. Can you tell us more about the origins of this project?
This work began during the lockdown. It wasn’t originally intended for the stage. I just sat down in front of my computer: my goal was to do an investigation, to take the time to satisfy my curiosity, to dig into some recurring, even obsessive, ideas that I had. Above all, I wanted to start from where I was, stuck during the pandemic: my apartment, in a central neighbourhood of Santiago, Chile. I live in one of the liveliest places in the city, the nerve centre where all demonstrations and political gatherings start. I wanted to tell the evolution of this neighbourhood and explore what remains of our collective experiences. To that end, I designed a call for testimonies, which I posted online on social media. I quickly started receiving responses from internet users, followed by an invitation to present my project at the Puente Theatre in Santiago. But until then, I hadn’t had any potential audience in mind. I wasn’t in a theatrical mindset; I was dealing with a digital object I’d conceived of in the comfort of my apartment.
How would you describe this object, which has become a theatrical object despite yourself? Is it more about writing a story or creating images?
I wanted to tell the story of our families through the evolution of our cities. I’ve always been interested in maps, in the notion of territory. In Chile, nature is omnipresent, it is part of our everyday life, of our inner landscape. Wherever we look, there is a mountain range or an ocean, an arid or Antarctic _desert on the horizon. Nature here is extreme. It surrounds and accompanies us. I guess that is the reason why I am interested in geography. My desire to dig into the geographical strata of human history. We have immense blue skies in which we can read, but we don’t know what is hidden in the ground—where all those who have disappeared are concealed. In order to explore the meaning of stories and History, to question disappearances, secrets, and the dictatorships that are at the heart of our collective memory in Chile, I question our past in detail. During the lockdown, I felt the need to find a link to the outside world, which is why I started gathering images, assembling them as I went. I received many personal messages via Instagram or gmail from users who, like me, were stuck at home. We all needed to regain a sense of closeness, a form of humanity. We all thirsted for stories and warmth, like those gatherings around a campfire: in a way, Reminiscencia facilitated this intimate connection. The object became a new theatrical form, different in every way from what is usually expected on stage, but a form which—in spite of everything—has resonated with many people, regardless of their background. On stage, it’s a very simple setup: I sit behind a computer, facing the audience, and behind me is a giant screen showing the progression of the stories and images I collect and bring together. My voice remains calm and steady. There is nothing that could offend anyone, no violence. In the end, it’s a very simple play: a guy talking about the Chilean revolution and about his grandparents, but since history resonates in a cyclical and universal way, this setup allows the words and images to create emotion, which then palpably moves through the audience. Small questions often turn out to be bigger than we imagined: the memory of a grandparent, the quest for identity, the attachment to a place… It’s as if, with Reminiscencia, I was inviting the spectators to suspend the mad rush of time and to listen to their inner selves, even if for a brief moment.
Several times now, you’ve mentioned a curiosity you need to satisfy, or questions that obsess you…
You know, I come from a generation that struggles to understand its own history. The first time I took to the streets, I was 12 years old. Today, I am 36, and I continue to fight for our rights, so that we don’t lose our memory. I question the concept of “home.” What does this word mean? Why talk to your grandparents about their past? Why revisit a period of exploitation and trampling of human rights they already had to go through once? My grandparents worked their whole lives but own nothing. They barely have enough to live on. The fight for human rights is far from over in Chile. Life is very difficult here. Being curious about the past and integrating it into a project in the present is what drives me. It’s a process that is far from over.
As an author, director, and actor, your creative process is particularly original. What led you to become the artist you are today?
The world of theatre is tiny in Chile. There are very few universities or drama schools, nowhere to study playwriting or direction: only acting schools. It’s only through this theatrical training that we can develop other skills and pursue other professions. Today, I am both an actor and a director, when I’m not also a technician. If I tackle all aspects of the creation of a play, it’s probably because there is very little money for culture in Chile. Reminiscencia is my ninth artistic project, and I built it on my own, at home, in a situation of great precariousness. That’s why it’s hard for me to call it a play, even though this object did become a show in October 2020, thanks to the Puente Theatre.
Your project has had a significant impact. It has been invited to other countries, some of which have nothing in common with Chile. In every city where you perform, you build the experience around personal stories to strive towards the reconstruction of a collective memory.
If the starting point is a mix of stories that are close to me, my goal was never to rewrite History with a capital H. On the contrary, I wanted to tell small stories—some taken from my family’s history, others found online, via social media and the internet. I built the narrative journey via Google Earth, gathering photographs and videos published in different sites. In the solitude of my apartment started to appear a cartography of Chilean emotions and identities. It all came together like a collage of images. The images echo each other, the arrangements may seem haphazard and random at first, but by assembling those fragments, we’re rewriting a collective history of the places we occupy. I received a lot of material through posts I made on social media; internet users never let me down. When I presented Reminiscencia in Argentina, Brazil, or the Netherlands, I introduced elements about the cities where we performed, in order to question their own cartography and history. I gather information and create reminiscences in different ways: I track my location online to explore the neighbourhood virtually, then I check on site to see if the images I collected still correspond to reality. I take photographs myself if need be, and I post calls for testimonies or the sharing of photographs to learn more about the events that may have taken place in the neighbourhood and streets in question. Of course, this work is first and foremost a reminiscence about my own neighbourhood in Santiago, and thus of Chilean, or even Latin American, history and identity. But it’s more than just that.
Interview conducted by Moïra Dalant (January 2024) and translated to English by Gaël Schmidt-Cléach