Roger Bernat (ES)
with the collaboration of Mar Canet and Varvara Guljajeva
and the live Facebook participation of
– Roberto Fratini 20 November at 9.00 p.m. – 9.30 p.m.
– Renato Gabrielli 21st November at 9.00 – 9.30 p.m.
– Magdalena Barile 22 November at 9.00 – 9.30 p.m.
Special guest ROGER BERNAT
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From 18 to 28 November, 24 hours a day, the Catalan director Roger Bernat, who generally creates performances without performers, offers us the opportunity to write an oceanic play directly from the ZONA K website.
Luis Buñuel and Jean-Claude Carrière locked themselves in a room and, embodying their characters, wrote the scripts for their future films. On the theater website, instead of conversing with Buñuel, Carrière or Shakespeare, the internet user converses with ENA, a bot that mimics human conversation. According to the Wikipedia definition, a bot is a sequence of computers that performs repetitive tasks that would be impossible or very burdensome for a human being. To learn how to write, ENA was shown 8 million documents.
The bots that answer the phone when we call big companies, those that affect social networks when elections are approaching or the bots we face in electronic games are brothers and sisters of ENA. But ENA doesn’t want to sell us anything, doesn’t want to inform us of any news (fake or real) and doesn’t even want to comfort us. ENA was conceived with the only purpose of pretending to be a human being, therefore to make theatre. ENA does not understand what she says or is told. For ENA, language is just a sequence of signs to which it responds with another sequence. Any dialogue with ENA will only make sense to the person participating in the conversation and to the audience reading the conversation on the theater’s website at the time. Having a dialogue with ENA is like playing squash with a wall that returns the ball to you. Keep in mind that, as a human being, you may be surprised or angry, or tired. ZONA K cannot be held responsible for messages sent by ENA which may be unpredictable.
CAUTION:
ENA learned to write with GPT-2 (OpenAI) and dialogues thanks to DialoGPT (Microsoft) of the Transformer (Google) database. For this reason, although he understands Italian, he answers only in English. Nobody’s perfect.
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Info: online collective writing • duration as desired • in Italian and English translated simultaneously
Participation: free, non-stop 24 hours a day on the zonak.it website
If you have spoken to ENA and want a copy of your dialogue, send an email to biglietti@zonak.it clearly indicating the nickname and day of your interview
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A project by Roger Bernat with the collaboration of Mar Canet and Varvara Guljajeva web design and programming Mar Canet and Varvara Guldjajeva graphics Marie-Klara González coordination Helena Febrés co-production FFF and Teatre Lliure thanks to Fabiano Cocozza
BIO
Magdalena Barile lives and works in Milan. Author, playwright and screenwriter, she teaches Theatre Writing at the Civica Scuola di Teatro Paolo Grassi and at the Scuola Belleville and Screenplay at the IED – Istituto Europeo di Design. Her theatre texts, many of which have been translated into several languages, are the most recent: Raffiche (2016); Il divorzio, adaptation of the film Divorzio all’italiana by Pietro Germi (2016); Rosa Conchiglia. Anaïs Nin e i giorni del porno ( (2017); Cosa beveva Janis Joplin (2018); Api Regine. Commedia fantascientifica sull’eliminazione del maschio (2018). She collaborates permanently as author and screenwriter with Swiss Radiotelevision (RSI) and has participated in the writing of several drama and comedy programmes for Italian television (Albero Azzurro, Camera Cafè, Bye Bye Cindarella).
Roberto Fratini Serafide (Milan, 1972), playwright and dance theorist, is a lecturer at the Conservatori Superior de Danza (Istituto del Teatro) in Barcelona, and has held courses and lectures at other European universities. He collaborates with several international contemporary dance and theatre companies (among them Caterina Sagna Company, La Veronal, Roger Bernat FFF, Taiat Dansa, Germana Civera, Aerites Dance Company, Alexandra Waierstall, Sol Picó, Philippe Saire) and has given dramaturgy workshops at different masters and theatre institutions. His book A Contracuento. La danza y las derivas del narrar was published in 2012. In 2013 he received the FAD Sebastià Gasch Prize for his artistic and intellectual trajectory.
Renato Gabrielli, playwright and screenwriter, teaches at the “Paolo Grassi” and the “Luchino Visconti” School of Cinema in Milan. He is the author of the guide Scrivere per il teatro (Carocci, 2015). Among his most recent theatre works: Combattenti (“Hystrio” XXIX-3, 2014), La donna che legge (Cue Press, 2015), Redenzione (2017), Spin (2018), Fammi un’ altra domanda and Nessun miracolo a Milano (2020). In 2008 he won the Hystrio Prize for Dramaturgy. In 2020, with Procedura, he won the Premio InediTo Colline di Torino – Sezione Teatro.
ROGER BERNAT/FFF (ES)
The show is canceled, according to the regional ordinance of 04/03/20 and will be rescheduled.
Catalan director Roger Bernat returns to ZONA K for the 2020 REALITY Theatre Season with a show that is about a highly topical theme.
In 2012, some inhabitants of Ceuta left their families to go to Syria. During the weeks that they were in Turkey and Damascus, they called their relatives regularly. The police tapped their phones and all recorded conversations were subsequently included in the dossier of the trial that took place in Madrid. The verdict was the conviction of eleven people for participation in the recruitment network of the Islamic State. It was the first trial in Spain against the collaborators of the Islamic State. The dossier is the heart of this show: an immersion not only in words of the suicide bombers but also of the people close to them, the translators, the police and the judges who followed the interceptions.
Three actresses read or repeat the telephone conversations of Samra, Sanae and Nayua, wives of three jihadists who immolated themselves in Syria during summer 2012. Their conversations are simultaneous. The audience, equipped with a 3-channel wireless headphone, must navigate through words to reconstruct the facts, as did the secret services a few years earlier. At the end of the show, no two spectators will have listened to the same conversation.
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c/o ZONA K
To participate you must send a request for the annual membership within the day before the show, click HERE to do it NOW
Info: show • duration 60 min. • in Italian
Standard ticket: 15€ – Students/under 26/over 65/gruppi: 10€
Part of the subscription shows
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Performers: Silvia Calderoni, Matilde Facheris, Woody Neri and Giulia Salvarani, video design, technical direction and assistant director: Txalo Toloza, sound: Cristóbal Saavedra Vial, graphics: Marie-Klara González, general coordination: Helena Febrés Fraylich, coordination in Morocco: Arts I Love and Ahmed Hammoud, thanks to: DABATEATR (Rabat), Daha-Wassa (Rabat), Laura Gutiérrez, Toni Serra, JMBerenguer and Txiki Berraondo, show produced by Elèctrica Produccions (Barcelona), MUCEM (Marseille), Marche Teatro (Ancona ), Triennale Teatro dell’Arte (Milan), Festival Grec 2017 (Barcelona) and Temporada Alta (Girona), with the help of Les Bancs Publics / Les Rencontres à l’échelle (Marseille)
Roger Bernat, a Catalan artist and director, after having started his architecture and painting studies, studied dramaturgy and direction at the Institut del Teatre in Barcelona where he graduated in 1996, winning the extraordinary recognition. In the early years he worked as a director, playwright and performer with the General Elèctrica company which he directs together with Tomás Aragay. In 2008 he founded Roger Bernat/FFF and begins to create performances in which the audience takes the stage and becomes the protagonist. “Spectators are immersed in a device that invites them to obey or conspire, and in any case to pay with their own bodies and commitment.” The first participatory performance is Domini Públic (2008), followed by Pura Coincidencia (2009), La consagración de la Primavera (2010), Please continue (Hamlet) (2011), Pendiente de voto (2012), RE-presentation: Numax (2013), Desplazamiento del Palacio de la Moneda (2014), Numax-Fagor-plus (2014), We need to talk (2015), No se registran conversaciones de interés (2016-17) and The place of the Thing (2017 ).
FOCUS POLITICS
Those who want to be political must venture out into the world.
Opening the 2018 theatre season with FOCUS POLITICS is prescient and provocative.
The March elections speak for us. Politics permeates social life in an all too intrusive and shouted way, contributing to spreading disaffection and detachment of citizens. The question arises: is democracy still a representation of popular power? In a rapidly changing society, is the power of democracy still effective? And is it still possible to speak of a public and active Agora?
Two renowned international artists, who have already been guests in previous editions of the ZONA K season, pose these questions. Roger Bernat presents PENDIENTE DE VOTO (PENDING VOTE). A show in which the participation of the public is requested in a political reflection that humorously tackles the mechanisms of power in all democracies and the totalitarian drifts germinating in the community. It is also a reflection on the word citizenship and participatory democracy, which cannot fail to remind us of the forthcoming political elections.
Yan Duyvendak, Nicolas Cilins & Nataly Sugnaux Hernandez (CH) with ACTIONS: a scenic device that gives shape to an ideal democratic assembly where refugees, political leaders and volunteers of the city can express themselves, with the aim of responding with effective and direct actions able to involve positively every single individual and at the same time get out of the doldrums of the rhetoric of good intentions.
Finally, in the Italian section, ZONA K will host the revelation artist Filippo M. Ceredi with BETWEEN ME AND P., an intimate documentary show about a brother who has mysteriously disappeared. Once again it is the action of an individual that becomes a political gesture in the radical refusal to submit to the status quo of today’s society.
Events:
16 – 17 February 2018 h 20.00
Roger Bernat/ FFF (ES)
PENDIENTE DE VOTO
[show]
20 February 2018 h 18.30
Eric Gobetti and Simone Malavolti
SARAJEVO REWIND 2014>1914
[documentary film]
2 -3 March h 20.00, 4th March 2018 h 17.00
Filippo M. Ceredi (IT)
BETWEEN ME AND P.
[performance]
9 – 10 March 2018 h 20.00
Yan Duyvendak & Nicolas Cilins & Nataly Sugnaux Hernandez (CH)
ACTIONS
[participatory performance]
c/o Casa della Memoria
Roger Bernat/FFF (ES)
“A show that should be mandatory for all MBA’s and the party congress” [Bernat Puigtobella, Nuvol]
The THEATRE is transformed in a PARLIAMENT with political colors that are still undefined, whilst the spectators, equipped with a remote with which they can vote, become the representatives. What will happen if suddenly, in absence of an effective power, the role of speech goes back to being political.
Maybe the last resort of real politics is that of a total absence of power. Pendiente de voto is a show that tries to be that last resort. It is not a false version of a parliamentary debate, but a real version of the actual false debate. Not a fictitious politics but a make-believe politics: authentic politicians against real politicians or true politics against every form of realpolitik. Immersive theatre? Or maybe more emergency theatre…
A political humoristic reflection that faces the mechanisms of power in democracies and the totalitarian thinking in communities. A reflection on the word ‘citizenship’ and on participatory democracy, that can only make us think of the next political elections.
In italian – Duration 140 min. ca.
di Roger Bernat. Drammaturgia: RobertoFratini. Dati visuals: Mar Canet. Dati dispositivi and software: Jaume Nualart. Musica: “The Sinking of the Titanic” di Gavin Bryars, PatchWorks, etc. Sound design: Juan Cristobal Saavedra. Luci: Ana Rovira. Assistente e direzione tecnica: Txalo Toloza. Stagegraphic design: Marie-Klara González. Effetti speciali: Cube.bz. Programming assistants: Pablo Argüello, David Galligani e Chris Hager. Consulenti ai contenuti: Oscar Abril Ascaso e Sonia Andolz. Producer: Helena Febrés Fraylich. Ringraziamenti: David Cauquill, Raquél Gomes, Marcela Prado e Magda Socias. Coordinamento: Helena Febres. Una coproduzione di Centro Dramático Nacional (Madrid), FundacióTeatre Lliure/Festival NEO and Elèctrica Produccions (Barcelona) with Manège de Reims-Scène Nationale/Reims Scènes d’Europe, Manège de Mons/CECN, TechnocITé in the Transdigital project supported by the european program Interreg IV. Foto: BLENDA
Roger Bernat – www.rogerbernat.info
Roger Bernat in residence
For one year, Roger Bernat and ZONA K will collaborate on the conception and realisation of a site-specific project together with the citizens of the Isola neighbourhood, the result of several visits and periods of residence by Roger Bernat in the neighbourhood.
The result of the project will be presented in ZONA K’s Urban Focus in autumn 2017.