2015 – Heroes (I)

Heroes (I)

Premiere: 2016, James Arnott Theatre, Glasgow, Scotland.

Written and Directed by A Dog’s Heart Theatre

Cast: Raquel Grela, Marie Yan

“I really need to help” is the cry of the hero. In a physical and textual research about the use of repetition and effort, on camera and on stage, we looked at the heroes and heroines we had in our skulls, what exactly they wanted and how they looked like. We created a machine to invoke them all, one after the other, with their dreams of grandeur, their extra-human devotion and delusion of generosity.

Opening:

Have I fought for my country?

Have I stood up for ideas I valued more than my own life?

Have I campained relentlessly for a good cause?

One that had at its core the urge to protect life?

Have I committed myself to a single task until I died?

Have I dramatically changed my way of life to fit my ideals?

Have I somehow been an inspiration for other people because of my choices?

Have I suffered? Could I have stopped the suffering, but decided to endure it because it made sense?

Have I decided to stand up for something not because I personally cared, but because it was right?

Have I been a leader?

Have I valued more the stakes of a fight than the publicity it gave me?

Have I been selfless?

Have I done something that changed the world?

Have I been physically diminished because of it?

Have I kept going nonetheless?

Have I sacrificed my own life for the benefit of others?

My own freedom for the benefit of others?

Have I fought hopelessly because it made sense?

Have I

We asked ourselves: who do we think of as heroes?

What exactly did they do?

If I say “hero”, who is the first person who jumps to your mind?

Joan of Arc

Marina Ginesta

Chavela Vargas

Jane Goodall

Nuria Espert

Marie Curie

Frida Kahlo

Dolores Ibarrui

My mum

Beckett

Edward Snowden

Tank man

Che Guevara

Martin Luther King

Nelson Mandela

The barefoot lawyers

Socrates

Freddie Mercury

Remi Ochlik

Antigone

Nora

Iphigenie

Fantine

Pénélope

The little mermaid (by Andersen)

Laura

Nina

Kill Bill

Oedipus

Arthur’s Knights

Robinhood

Thorgal

Galileo

The hunchback of Notre-Dame (by Disney)

Hercules

X-Men

Harry Potter

the Zapatists

the Mothers of the Mai square

Doctors

(pause, breathe, don’t be afraid of taking your time between two questions)

When do they appear? Who creates them? Can we believe them? As part of a research on performing bodies and voices on the contemporary stage, Hero ( I ) is the first part of an attempt to transform the stage into a laboratory where the hero/in emerges through a collision of texts, half-way through mythology and little acts of daily heroism.