In Spanish with Hungarian and English surtitles ¨ When I was 7 years old I used to wear my mother’s clothes and walk around the house stepping on my dress like a miniature queen. Twenty years later I find a pair of my mother’s jeans from the 70’s and they are just my size. I put them on and begin to walk toward the past. On an avenue, I meet my parents when they were young and we all go for a motorcycle ride around Buenos Aires. My father’s up front, then my mother and I ride behind, my arms wrapped around her waist, and the wind is hitting me so hard it’s like it wanted to erase my face¨
In My life after six Argentinian actors born in the 70’s and early 80’s reconstruct their parents youth from photos, letters, tapes, used clothes, stories, dim memories. Who were my parents when was I born? What was Argentina like before I learned to speak? How many versions are there about what happened before I existed or when I was so young that I can’t remember?
Each actor reconstructs scenes from the past in order to understand something from their future. As if they were their parents’ stunt doubles, they put on their clothes and try to represent their lives.
Carla reconstructs the conflicting versions about the death of her father, who was a sergeant in the People’s Revolutionary Army (ERP). Vanina looks at her childhood photos again trying to understand what her father did as an intelligence officer. Blas puts on his father’s cassock to represent his life at the seminary. Mariano listens again to the tapes left by his father, who wrote a column about cars and was a member of Juventud Peronista, the Peronist Youth. Pablo relives the days of his father as a clerk in a bank taken over by the military government. Liza revisits the circumstances when her parents left Argentina and went into exile.
My life after operates around the borders of reality and fiction, the encounter of two generations, the intersection of national history and private stories.
Actors: Blas Arrese Igor, Liza Casullo, Carla Crespo, Vanina Falco, Pablo Lugones, Mariano Speratti, Moreno Speratti da Cunha
Written and directed by : Lola Arias *
Dramaturgy: Sofía Medici
Music: Ulises Conti.**
Scenography: Ariel Vacaro
Choreography: Luciana Acuña.
Video: Marcos Medici
Light design: Gonzalo Córdova
Costume design: Jazmín Berakha
History Advisory: Gonzalo Aguilar
Photos: Lorena Fernández
Technical director and Production: Gustavo Kotik
* The play was written with the collaboration and original material supplied by the actors.
** The music was composed with the collaboration of Liza Casullo and Lola Arias.
Opened on March, 26, 2009 at CTBA.
Coproduced by:
Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires, steirischer herbst, Theater Spektakel Zurich, International Summer Festival Kampnagel Hamburg, Noorderzon Performing Arts Festival and Grand Theatre Groningen.
With the special support of: BIT Teatergarasjen, Spielart Festival and Goethe Institute.
About the director:
Lola Arias ( Buenos Aires, 1976)
Lola Arias is a writer, director, performer and songwriter. She collaborates with artists from different disciplines in theatre, literature, music and art projects. Her productions play with the overlap zones between reality and fiction. She works with actors, non-actors, musicians, dancers, children, babies, and animals.
Centre stage in Striptease (2007) is occupied by a baby, while its parents fight out a duel by telephone. In El amor es un francotirador (2007), the performers relate true and fictional love stories while a rock band plays live. In Mi vida después (2009), six actors reconstruct their parents’ youth in 1970’s Argentina by means of photos, letters, cassettes and old clothes.
She staged in Germany Familienbande (2009) at Kammerspiele, Munich, and That Enemy Within (2010) at HAU, Berlin. In Chile, she staged The year I was born (2011), based on biographies of people born during Pinochet’s dictatorship. Her last piece Melancolía y Manifestaciones ( 2012) opened in Vienner Festwochen.
Together with Ulises Conti, she composes and plays music, and released the albums El amor es un francotirador (2007) and Los que no duermen (2011).
Her projects with Stefan Kaegi are Chácara Paraíso (2007) involving Brazilian police officers, and Airport Kids (2008) featuring global nomads aged between 7 and 13 years old. In 2010-12, they curated a Festival of urban interventions Ciudades Paralelas in Berlin, Buenos Aires, Warsaw, Zurich, Singapore and other cities.
She published Las impúdicas en el paraíso (2000), La escuálida familia (2001), Mi nombre cuando yo ya no exista (2005), Poses para dormir (2005), Striptease/Sueño con revólver/ El amor es un francotirador (2007), Mein leben danach (2010), Liebe ist ein Heckenshütze (2010) and Los posnucleares (2011).
Her texts have been translated into more than seven languages, Lola Arias’ works for theatre have been performed at festivals including Steirischer Herbst, Graz; Festival d’Avignon; Theater Spektakel, Zurich; We are here, Dublin; Spielart Festival, Munich; Alkantara Festival, Lisbon; Radicals Festival, Barcelona.
Embajada de la República Argentina
Budapest
