Wiener Festwochen

How political is the disease, how private is the protest? Ten years after the national bankruptcy, Argentine author, director, actress and singer Lola Arias puts herself, her melancholy mother and post-dictatorship Argentine society on stage and in front of a mirror. When Lola was born in 1976, the Argentine military once more took power in a coup d’état, leading to an unprecedented reign of dictatorship and state terror. The era was riven by deep economic crisis and the “dirty war” waged by the junta against all opposing forces. Arias’ mother, a progressive university professor of literature, fell victim to postpartum depression from which she never fully recovered. “My fault?”, Lola asks. Or inward emigration, deference instead of revolt in the face of the desolate situation of the country and its inhabitants? How many other Argentine intellectuals slipped into manic-depressive disorders in 1976? “Melancholy is considered a malady of geniuses, a form of literary or contemplative suffering. I do not know why my mother is ill. I only know that a cloud is floating above her, constantly engulfing her in shadow. Which is sometimes frightening and sometimes magnificent.” Lola Arias contrasts this poetic “medical diary” documenting the condition of her 70-year-old mother with the weekly protests of elderly citizens at the heart of Buenos Aires.

Author and Director Lola Arias Dramaturg and Producer Sofia Medici Choreography Luciana Acuña Stage Design Mariana Tirantte Music Ulises Conti Video Nehle Wohlatz Video technics Marcos Medici Costumes Sofia Berakha Assistant Director Gabriel Zayat Technical Tour Manager Gustavo Kotik Associate Producer Luz Algranti Artistic Assistance Jimena Anganuzzi Cast Lola Arias, Elvira Onetto and others

Co-Production Wiener Festwochen, Lola Arias, HAU/Hebbel am Ufer, Berlin, Centro Cultural San Martín, Buenos Aires

19 €/discounts