Heidi & Rolf Abderhalden / Mapa Teatro
The dual Swiss and Colombian origin of Heidi and Rolf Abderhalden is undoubtedly not foreign to the fact that they consider the theatre as a living territory, with porous borders, in which cultures and communities as well as artistic disciplines cross each other. During their years of training in Europe, each of them developed his or her personal approach, through corporeal techniques (Rolf was notably a student of Jacques Lecoq), as well as through dramaturgy and the plastic arts. Two views that combine today in the Mapa Teatro, a company that they founded in 1984 in Paris. Since Casa Tomada, their first show imagined after Cortázar's short story, the brother and sister have been working in symbiosis. Using their ongoing dialogue and the influence they have on each other, they have created a common language, open to otherness. After having staged many classic and contemporary texts, in 2002, they opened, with Testigo de las Ruinas, a project conducted over several years with the residents of a Bogotá neighbourhood doomed to destruction, a new work cycle that explores the complex weavings between reality and fiction, between the intimate and the political. Decidedly transdisciplinary, their creations take various forms – urban interventions, visual installations – whose echo we perceive in their shows. The first part of their trilogy Anatomia de la violencia en Colombia, Los Santos Inocentes fits in with what they call their “laboratory of the social imagination”. They are presenting their work at the Festival d'Avignon for the first time.
SC, April, 2012