This Line Is The Present, 2019, processional performance, 1 hour 15 minutes
With: Carlos Novo, Diana Muñoz, Dolça Alcañiz, Elayne Grayling, Eugeni Marí, Javi Mal, Mar Torrelles, Marta Besa, Natàlia Llovet, & Yaiza Arroyo
Assistants: Inés García, Madelaine Lopez & Helena Pàmies
Sound: Laia Estruch
Costumes: Emily Mast
Lighting: Niko Flors
Production: Fondació Joan Brossa & Museu Picasso, Barcelona
This Line Is The Present assumes the form of a procession of free-standing theatrical vignettes (none of which took place in an actual theater) all of which were written by Joan Brossa, a Catalan poet, playwright, graphic designer and visual artist. Brossa made work about the limitations of language and its material nature. He treated language like props, embellishing it with gestures, and distilled texts to their very essence, at times boiling entire plays down to two or three sentences. By reducing verbal artifice to a minimum, Brossa framed fragments in the manner of an objet trouvé. His works, which he called “staged poetry”, embraced incoherence, the everyday and popular forms of entertainment such as magic, cabaret and comedy routines. This Line Is The Present unfolded in more than twenty different venues throughout the streets of Barcelona and within the Museu Picasso. They were staged in intermediate spaces that reflect Mast’s and Brossa’s interest in the undefined and were performed by Barcelona-based amateur performers who have an established relationship with Brossa’s oeuvre.