What are things? Silvina Mañueco asked herself and her hands extended a very old meter of textile. As old as it was from the late 19th century, one that belonged to her great-grandparents.
It was perhaps that family belonging that managed to survive more than a century that stimulated her to wonder about things and what happens to them over time. And the people, of course. The life of those objects in the lives of the people who had them in their hands.
Written and performed by Silvina Mañueco, who was also in charge of direction and set design, “The Things”, proposes looking at the objects that surround us, which configure the reality in which we immerse ourselves, observing our personal identity through what is remembered through things, things that evoke sensations and are part of stories.
Things, the synopsis continues, “can be a person. A chair is my grandfather sitting at the table on a Sunday; a thread, it’s my grandmother’s hands on the sewing machine; “A doll is the reflection of the living game in a person.”
The work can be seen this Saturday, at 9 p.m., in Teneas (Leguizamón 1701, Neuquén).
“’The Things’ is a work that arises from a process of searching for objects that had to do with my life, that belonged to my grandparents, and that, by working with them, I began to find a territorial identity for them,” he says. Silvina Mañueco, in a dialogue with RÍO NEGRO Diary.
This work of observing how these objects took her back to a personal identity and also to a territory, prompted her to the dramaturgical construction of a series of stories that have to do with her life and also with that of many people from the Alto Valle, “because They are objects that also resonate, that are familiar to our lives,” he points out.
My intention was precisely to work on those limits between body and object.”
Silvina Manueco
In the context of a specialization in object theater, interactivity and new media taught by the National University of Art, directed by Ana Alvarado, some objects that belonged to her grandparents came to her. Among them, the textile meter: “I began to investigate those relationships between the meter, between measuring the passage of time, the flow of river water and thus, through that connection of a specific object with a story, with marks, With footprints I related it to my history with the river, with the farm.”
The work is made up of visual micro-stories. It is an interactive work where the public has its part reserved: through www.quésonlascosas.com you can leave your audio answering the question “what are things for you” or “what things have memory for you.” Those voices, those of the audience through those audios, are the only spoken texts heard in the work. “These visual micro-stories are generated where although there is a narrative that has to do with family history, the invitation, each viewer can also reconstruct their own story. It is a dramaturgy open to the viewer to complete,” explains Mañueco.
Public participation is optional and there is time, for those who decide to do so, until minutes before the start of the performance. The audios sent are heard at a specific moment in the work.
“Initially, the production was born as a theater installation of objects that we premiered at the Municipal Museum of Fine Arts of Roca,” reveals the actress. “Then we adapted it into a play of objects that maintains much of the original installation. So, the staging has features of installation and I, as an actress, activate the objects and dolls that are on stage.”
“They are all visual stories, the only voices are those recorded by the spectators; There are also signs with written texts that appear in the middle of the show. But at no time is my voice heard,” she clarifies.
«The things»: technical sheet
General Directorate: Silvina Manueco
Steering assistance: Amanda Mujica
Direction of action: Paula Quintana
Script technical assistance: Fernando Avila
Script: Silvina Manueco
Nest Making: Sara Kadima
Web Realization and New Media: Juan Rolon
Graphic design: Juan Manuel Riva
Digital sound design: Marcelo Gomez
Actress: Silvina Manueco
Production and design of scenery: Silvina Manueco
Technical assistance in production and set design: Juan Rolón – Javier Tura – Pablo
Photography: Viviana Portnoy
Light design: Walter Marcello
Production: Florence Cadorini
