My Great Work (an ambitious project)” (2012)
Created and directed by: David Espinosa
Performers: David Espinosa / Cia. Hekinah Degul
Assistant Director: Africa Navarro
Music and sound: Santos Martinez / David Espinosa
Stage space: David Espinosa / AIR models and architecture projects
Production: El Local EC. / CAET, in collaboration with the Department of Culture of the Generalitat de Catalunya
Distribution: MOM-El Vivero
Project grant from the artists in residence program of Bilbaoeszena.
My Great Work is what I would do if I had an unlimited budget, the largest theater in the world, 300 actors on stage, a military orchestra, a rock band, animals, cars and a helicopter. My Great Work is an utopia. The reality in which we have always moved as artists is characterized by precariousness and lack of means, and there has always been precisely the focus of our work: devise mechanisms to address the lack of resources, make a virtue of necessity, emphasizing gaps to enhance interest and failure as a creative engine. So now that we are in a difficult socio-economic situation, in which very few can afford this luxury, it seems the right time to tackle our first major project, and ambitious project. In «Mi Gran Obra» we plan to build a large-scale show, sparing no expense, developing all the ideas that come up however expensive they could be, material and unlimited artistic team. But, obviously, with a slight draw back: a scale. That is, thinking big and doing small, using this approach and techniques of an architect. Continuing our questioning of the limits of theater and deepening the interest of previous projects on the idea of performing, in this work we try to create a situation in which to question the meaning of major projects, artistic creations that handle high budgets and whose real cultural value is rarely demonstrable, colossal works very gimmicky and disingenuous, loaded with ornaments but their substance are questioned. While trying to carry out what we would do if we were really able to work under these conditions, which for us is a great format profitable.
“It tries nothing less than to figure out how much the moral and physical condition of the human species can improve, while opposing a dam to wars, revolutions and riots. It is the holiest enterprise you can possibly imagine, for its aim is to achive benefits, not only for one single town, state or nation but for the whole of humanity, without the cost a drop of blood, nor a single tear.» (Manuel Sagrario de Veloy, 1841)
