The Unaccounted: a triptych

Paul Celan

 

 

Long before the “post-conflict” rhetoric took over the agenda of artistic creation, Mapa Teatro had already undertaken a rigorous reflection on the unfinished Anatomy of violence in Colombia. Outside the clichés that the policies of reconciliation in the art field carry with them, Mapa Teatro’s latest production (2010-2015) is, without a doubt, the most refined and powerful piece in their thirty years of artistic trajectory.

 

In three consecutive spaces, articulated to create a triptych, the piece draws a chilling allegory of the devices used by the perpetrators of violence in Colombia since the second half of the twentieth century. In each of these spaces, a singular party is staged, each one revealing the fragile threshold between celebration and violence that has spanned the history of our country.

 

The dramaturgy in The Unaccounted: a triptych is a true montage, in a cinematographic sense. It overlaps stories of powerful dramatic force with archives and audio-visual narratives of immense poetic power. Greatly experienced actors and musicians, live electronics and live music complete this theatrical experience that moved audiences during the XIV Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro. The uncounted: a triptych, was commissioned as an installation for the 31st Biennial of Sao Paulo, where it received the highest praise from the public and critics. "Without a doubt, the most impressive work at the Biennial of Sao Paulo," according to Portuguese curator Joao Fernandes, from the Museo Centro de Arte Reina Sofía in Madrid. 

 

Three celebrations. The first one, The Holy Innocent (2010), is celebrated on the streets of a small town in the Pacific coast of Colombia, where masked men dressed as women, go out to the streets to whip those who are not cross-dressed and masked. A celebration that transforms an afro-descendant ritual into a delirious dance. The second one, Discourse of a decent man (2012), takes place in the garden of a house amidst the Colombian tropics, perhaps in the middle of the jungle itself, where the ghost of the most infamous of drug dealers, accompanied by his diva, listens deliriously to the music interpreted by the man who in real life led one of his favourite bands.  The third one, The unaccounted (2014), in the privacy of a family’s living room, a group of children, a magician and a singer, gather around the radio waiting to hear the announcement of a revolution and a party that will never happen.