This very personal work by Agostina Luz López returns with a second season after passing through FIBA ​​2023. Its creator tells how the writing and working process went (Photos: Ignacio Isparra)

The creative process of fantasy garden it was a gathering of collective energies. In 2020, the year of the pandemic, I did some workshops virtual than Murray Poppyproducer of the play, helped me organize it.

In those workshops Many girls who are now part of the play participated. I already wanted to do a job in ZelayaI was fascinated by the texts of Angela Carter and wanted to work with teenagers. Taking advantage of the resources offered by the pandemic, I organized these workshops where we work according to different triggers. On the one hand, with theater and writing, by also inviting certain people to take part in meetings, such as Adriana Koganwho told the girls Donna Harrawayoh Corina Mascottiwho shared with us an astrology session.

At the end of December, we had a face-to-face meeting at Zelaya where I was able to test some ideas in relation to space. Zelaya It is a platform for multidisciplinary experimentation, in which I have rehearsed several of my works, in addition to organizing literary meetings.

When we started working in 2021, we had already done this thinking of building the work. The team joined Ana Montes, who is a writer, and helped me think about and deepen this universe. The creative process was very collective. Antonia Brill Perrotta, Catalina Burak, Sofia Guerschuny Pesci, Giulia Heras, Jacinta Perez Berch, Caroline Paula Rojas, Noah Salamanca Tola, Maria Luz Silva, Lina Ziccarellwhere are they the occupants of Zelaya’s garden house and with whom, with Poppy there GOODI set up the dramaturgy of the play.

In March 2021 we rehearsed for a month on a trial basis because I was pregnant and then I had to stop because my baby was going to land in this world. I like to remember how these encounters already contained flashes of scenes that happened later. They made masks, showed photos of their loved ones and acted out their gestures, poses and texts, wrote on chairs, tables and furniture wrapped in paper, nibbled, wrote down dreams, etc.

Until September, when we finally resume rehearsals, we work with GOOD in setting up a dramaturgy that then had to be put to the test. GOOD She is very quick and sensitive in her thoughts and very associative, she was an ideal companion to reflect on the dramaturgy of the play.

We built a kind of dramaturgical narration based on the idea of ​​some girls who inhabit this space and carry out different practices or rituals in their coexistence. There was a scene that was already grounded: them in the tree commenting on an Angela Carter story.

We wanted them to be able to reflect on their growth, on the transition stage they were going through. I recently read a novel by the Mexican writer Jasmine Barrera, a part that was about this author and said, “It was the exact mix of fairy tales and gothic literature, horror and eroticism, a perfect transition from childhood to adolescence.” This seemed like an accurate description that reinforced my choice of this author for the ceibo scene, to be able to see what thoughts each brought to these fantastic and terrifying worlds.

There is a scene that takes place in the swimming pool, in which one of them tells the myth of Narciso, and everyone observes themselves in this swimming pool which functions as a mirror, until Noah He says he can’t see and has never seen his own reflection. It’s a moving moment, for me, because it reflects this crisis with its own image, very typical of this time.

There is also the cabin of stuffed animals, which is the theater and cinema room, which was occupied by many stuffed animals, constituting a kind of mattress where the public lay down to rest and watch a film starring these stuffed animals.

when with GOOD we finished designing this kind of flexible structure, we started rehearsals. It was in September 2021. We worked with more concrete and precise slogans from the schematic scenes, but the most interesting thing was to see how this score was filled with bodies. Each of the girls brought their unique energy to the weave we were weaving.

For example, Sofia she became the guide to the work, and that was a natural result of her personality. The public follows her around the work and the house-garden. jazz she climbed trees and her game and physical energy transformed her into the tree girl. elongate It is he who speaks very sincere talks in the tree and who loses his temper by throwing himself into the swimming pool. Carol he composes a hilarious grandfather in the play they do by imitating his relatives and makes incredible noises of tigers, wolves and motorcycles. Lina she was encouraged to imitate her great-grandfather and, with her beauty and gentleness, led the baptism that converted their identities. They all get new names. Noahwith his precise and sharp texts, always very thoughtful, also challenges himself to be the one who is not in the reflection and feels a crisis with his own image; Anthony She represents her architect father who does not have time to see his family with a fury and an intensity that completely transforms her. Catawith her being so natural, she is the guide of the stuffed animal hut and takes us into this world of dreams and nightmares, and Luz she tells us the myth of Narciso and in the play she is a mother who has just had a baby and wants to abandon it. Peter Cata He imitates a cousin of Mardel and he’s great.

In this work there are no characters, everyone has their own name, although this does not mean that they are themselves. His imprint defines the journey of each. There is the fictional plane, in which they inhabit this place and do these practices as initiation rites that allow them to move on to another stage of their life, and the real plane, in which they have lived together for a long time in rehearsals, becoming friends, have sleepovers, watch each other dance, play the piano, play, laugh. There is a group energy, as if it were a flock of birds that go together, which is transmitted in the work because it acquired its deep layer during the rehearsals.

The final stage came in which other collaborators of the work joined. Marianne Tiranttein collaboration with Imanol Lopeztook on the task of thinking about the layout of the garden, coming up with great ideas, such as the cabin with soft toys or wrapping the furniture in the living room with wood paper to make it a playground.

Maximilian Passarelli there Vladimir Duran Together, they imagine a delirious and sinister film featuring stuffed animals. mario fermani he created the wardrobe in which it was important that there was a sign that would make them a group and homogenize them, but at the same time everyone could have their own wardrobe. In this part of the process, everything began to take shape, the rehearsals in which they improvised based on slogans were long gone. The work was based on the material that they had proposed to us to then assemble the final scenes and start rehearsing them, refining the choreography of the actors and the movements.

Here the contributions of the whole team were essential to finish understanding the dramaturgy of the tour and to give color and entity to each island that was part of it. Poppy He was also part of the rehearsals, helping me in the direction of the scenes to see the treasure that was hidden in each situation.

At the start of the work, Sofia He shows the viewers the map of space, and then we see scenes that take place in those places. Each place has its form, offers a conflict, a way of being, an opportunity for certain situations to unfold.

The soundtrack of the work is very important: not only the piano or the guitar that the girls play, but also the silences, the birds, the cats, the noises that are part of the garden.

The garden is another of the protagonists of the work, offering its flowers, its trees, its plants and allowing itself to be transformed, just like the girls do.

* fantasy garden It is presented on Sundays at 6:30 p.m. at Zelaya, Zelaya 3134, CABA until May 14, 2023.

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