The metamorphosis of a silenced woman

Struggles and metamorphoses of a womanthe new assembly of Tanttaka Theater based on the autobiographical text of Edward Louisconsidered one of the most incisive voices in contemporary European literature, arrives at La Fàbrica dels Teatres del Farró, where it can be seen until March 1.

Based on the fortuitous discovery of a self-portrait of her youth, the author reconstructs the story of a woman marked by submission, silence and patriarchal violence, humiliated by society, by the family environment and also by her own child. At the age of forty-five, however, this woman, based on the figure of her own mother, begins a decisive escape that becomes a slow but irreversible process towards freedom, culminating in a reunion that publicly restores her dignity.

on stage, Eva Trancon embodies this woman in full metamorphosis, while James Madaula assumes the role of Édouard Louis. The direction and stage design are in charge of Fernando Bernuéswhich proposes an austere staging with great emotional proximity.

A confessional and restorative dialogue between mother and son

The starting point of the story, as the director explains, is the memory of “a woman separated from everything, subjugated and even humiliated by male violence, who at the age of forty-five rebels, runs away and, little by little, builds her freedom”. The director emphasizes that it is “the metamorphosis of a woman destroyed by patriarchal society, the family and even by her child”, before arriving at a reunion that “publicly restores dignity to her mother”.

In the stage play, the character of the son constantly “invites” the mother to share the scene. His presence is almost silent, with brief verbal interventions, but he becomes emotionally central thanks to the projection, on two sides, of a close-up that accompanies his inner transit “through all the emotional corners of a text without any condescension and brave up to the most self-critical honesty”, as Bernués himself points out.

“An essential confessional and restorative dialogue between mother and son, with the public as a privileged witness”

The action takes place in a small and deeply intimate stage space: a narrow and elongated stage, with the audience situated very close to the performers, on both sides. This device turns the montage into a proposal that goes beyond a monologue and transforms it into “an essential confessional and restorative dialogue between mother and son, with the audience as a privileged witness”.

with Struggles and metamorphoses of a womanTanttaka Teatroa commits to a brave and honest show that challenges the viewer directly and reaffirms the theater as a space of memory, denunciation and reparation, and puts at the center the silent – and heroic – struggle of a woman to regain her freedom in a world with a man’s head and body.

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