(MONTCLAIR, NJ) -- Peak Performances presents the U.S. premiere of Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne (This Brief Tragedy of the Flesh), Spanish writer, director, and performance artist Angélica Liddell’s encapsulation of Emily Dickenson’s morbidly beautiful understanding of the human condition. Performances will take place April 19-22 in The Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University. Admission is $20 for the general public and free for Montclair State undergraduates with ID.
Liddell’s confrontational work has been embraced with standing ovations at a number of festivals (d’Avignon and d’Automne in France, Vie in Italy, and Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in Switzerland), and met with the type of critical enthusiasm reserved for rising legends. Despite her widespread international impact, this production marks her and her company Atra Bilis Teatro’s first stop in the U.S. since they performed in Seattle in 2011—and it will be many audience members’ introduction to the “excessive, violent, and poetic” artistry of “one of the most innovative and exciting figures in Spanish theatre” (the Theatre Times). Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne is an immersion into an imagined headspace of Emily Dickinson, whose searing work, concerned with mortality, nature, and the body, was famously honed in self-isolation, in her father’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts—and almost wholly unacknowledged during her lifetime.
Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne’s expressionistic manifestation of Dickenson’s psyche epitomizes Liddell’s willingness to put herself and her performers through intense physical challenges to explore what it means to be human. Not only does her work create haunting worlds with movement, set, sound, costume, and lighting design elements—but there’s also a meticulous design to the physical sensations she endures. In Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne, Liddell uses as a point of departure a word often repeated in Dickinson’s poems—“bees”—in its evocation of the idea of Dickinson’s confinement. At one point during the performance, her hands dazzlingly smothered in golden glitter, she enters an enclosed glass box full of live bees that swarm around her, the potentiality of pain commingling with a beautified vision of the human form.
Liddell says, “When I work and think of Emily I really want to be close to knowing less… Emily Dickinson does not exist in this piece. I make her disappear. Only my search of what I believe is sacred exists, the search for the primitive state, the chaos of her visions, all that happens following the ecstasy of her poetry, the incandescent shadow that leaves us alone and overwhelmed when we listen inside us to the thunder of God.”
Liddell fearlessly achieves shocking intimacy onstage, describing her work as “pornography of the soul.” In 1993, having studied both theatre and psychology, Liddell established her company Atra Bilis Teatro—referring to the Hippocratic medicinal idea of black bile, a bodily fluid that directly causes melancholy. Often connecting personal pain with world politics, Atra Bilis Teatro performances have exposed the murders of women and children in the Mexican city of Juarez in La Casa de la Fuerza (2009); warned about the effects of killing free expression, castigating the Cultural Revolution in China under Mao and the lack of response from the Americans in Ping Pang Qiu (2012); and, in El Año de Ricardo, Liddell’s adaptation of Shakespeare’s Richard III, furiously rejected of all forms of political abuse of power.
Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne is performed by Angélica Liddell, Fabian Augusto, and Sindo Puche, with the participation of Javier Palacios Alonso, Sandra Garcia Coronas, Sylvestre Dechosal, Javier Carcedo Lobeto, Ruben Martin Rodriguez, Patrice Le Rouzic, and Llara Mendendez Valle. It is written, directed, costume- and set-designed by Angélica Liddell. The creative team also includes Carlos Marquerie (lighting) and Antonio Navarro (sound).
Performance Schedule and Ticketing
Performances of Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne will take place at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University (1 Normal Ave, Montclair, NJ), Thursday, April 19 and Friday, April 20 at 7:30pm; Saturday, April 21 at 8pm, and Sunday, April 22 at 3pm.
Critics are welcome as of the first performance, which also serves as the official opening.
Tickets, affordably priced at $20 (and free for Montclair undergraduates), be purchased at www.peakperfs.org or 973.655.5112.
Credits
Co-production: Festival d’Avignon. With the support of the Communauté de Madrid and the Japan Foundation, Festival/Tokyo. With the collaboration of Teatros del Canal de la Comunidad de Madrid. Special thanks to Inocencio F. Arias.
The programs in Peak Performances’ 2017–18 season are made possible in part by funds from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. The presentation of this production has been made possible in part by Spain’s Acción Cultural Espanola (AC/E), Programme for the Internationalisation of Spanish Culture (PICE), which facilitates the presence and collaboration of Spanish or Spanish-resident artists, professionals or creators in the international activities and programs of foreign cultural organizations and institutions, both public and private.
About Angélica Liddell
Angélica Liddell was born in Figueres, Girona in 1966. In 1993, she founded Atra Bilis Teatro, with which she has staged twenty-two works, including La falsa suicida (2000), El matrimonio Palavrakis (2001), Once upon a time in West Asphixia (2002), Hysteria Passio (2003), Y cómo no se pudrió Blancanieves (2005), El año de Ricardo (2005), Perro muerto en tintorería: los fuertes(2007), Anfaegtelse (2008), La casa de la fuerza (2009), Maldito sea el hombre que confía en el hombre: un projet d’alphabétisation (2011) and Ping Pang Qiu (2012). Her plays have been translated into different languages such as French, English, Russian, German, Portuguese, Polish and Greek.
Liddell has won several awards, amongst them the 2003 Casa de América Award for Innovative Drama for her play Nubila Wahlheim; the 2004 SGAE Theatre Award for Mi relación con la comida (My Relationship with Food); the 2005 Premio Ojo Crítico Segundo Milenio Award in recognition for her works; the 2007 Notodo del Público Award for best performance for her play Perro muerto en tintorería: los fuertes (Dead dog in the Dry cleaner’s: The strong ones). The play Belgrado (Belgrade) won second place in the Lope de Vega 2007 Award while El año de Ricardo (The Year of Ricardo) won the Valle Inclán Award in 2008. She also won the Sebastiá Gasch Award in 2011. Her latest works, El año de Ricardo, La casa de la fuerza, Maldito sea el hombre que confía en el hombre, and Todo el cielo sobre la tierra (El síndrome de Wendy) premiered at the Festival d’Avignon, Wiener Festwochen and Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris. She received the National Prize of Drama Literature 2012 for La casa de la fuerza, awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Culture, and the Leone d’Argento of Theatre in La Biennale di Venezia 2013.
Liddell is currently working on a new series of plays under the name “Cycle of the Resurrections,” which includes Tandy, You are my destiny (Lostupro di Lucrezia), and Carta de San Pablo a los Corintios, which were presented at Berliner Festspiele – Foreign Affairs Festival in July 2015. In 2017, Dead dog in the Dry Cleaner’s: The strong ones (Perro muerto en Tintorería: Los fuertes) was performed at the Schaubhüne theater of Berlin, and in June, Genesis VI, 6-7 premiered at the International Festival of Naples.
About Peak Performances
Peak Performances is a program of the Office of Arts and Cultural Programming at Montclair State University and has been honored by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts with an Arts Citation of Excellence and Designation of Major Impact. Programs in this season are made possible in part by the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
