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Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne (This Brief Tragedy of the Flesh)

Angélica Liddell | Atra Bilis Teatro

With Esta Breve Tragedia de la Carne (This Brief Tragedy of the Flesh), Peak Performances introduces audiences to the singular work of the confrontational Spanish writer, director and performance artist Angélica Liddell. All the major European festivals – d’Avignon and d’Automne in France, Vie in Italy, Théâtre Vidy-Lausanne in Switzerland – embrace Liddell with the adoration usually reserved for Romeo Castellucci and Robert Wilson. Esta Breve Tragedia epitomizes her willingness to put herself and her performers through intense physical challenges to explore politics and the human condition. Here she immerses herself in Emily Dickinson, who spent much of her life secluded in a room in her father’s house in Amherst, Massachusetts. Having studied psychology as well as theater, Liddell fearlessly addresses sensitive issues such as intimacy and pain. Don’t miss this extraordinary artist in a rare U.S. appearance.

 

Engage

The Cultural Engagement program in Montclair State University’s Office of Arts and Cultural Programming involves students, faculty, and community members in creative and intellectually stimulating education events that connect audiences with artists from around the globe. All engagement events are free and open to the public. Click here to see our full list of engagement events for this season.

 

Artists

angelica liddellAngélica Liddell was born in Figueres, Girona, in 1966. In 1993, she founded her theater company, Atra Bilis Teatro, with which she has staged twenty-two works. Her plays have been translated into French, English, Russian, German, Portuguese, Polish, and Greek, and she has won several awards, including 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; 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 2008 Valle Inclán Award for El año de Ricardo (The Year of Ricardo), and the 2011 Sebastiá Gasch Award. 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) have premiered at Festival d’Avignon, Wiener Festwochen, and Théâtre de l’Odéon in Paris. Recently, Liddell received the 2012 National Prize for Dramatic Literature from the Spanish Ministry of Culture for La casa de la fuerza and the 2013 Leone d’Argento (Silver Lion) of Theatre from La Biennale di Venezia. In 2015, Berliner Festspiele – Foreign Affairs Festival presented a recent series of her plays grouped under the title, Cycle of the Resurrections. Esta breve tragedia de la carne, the first part of the project Trilogía del infinito (Trilogy of the infinite), premiered at Festival d’Avignon in 2016.


 

Program

 

In The News

MARA VALDERRAMA, THE THEATRE TIMES: “Angélica Liddell Returns to Avignon for the 70th Edition of the Festival”
“Angelica Liddell (Figueres, Spain, 1966) is one of the most innovative and exciting figures in Spanish theatre.”


MARIE-JOSE SIRACH, L’HUMANITE (FRANCE): “Angélica Liddell, or The Stage as a Battlefield”
“Creation with me is always a long and slow process.”


RUTH WIKLER-LUKER, BOOM ARTS: “Six Questions for Angélica Liddell”
Ruth Wikler-Luker interviewed Angélica Liddell in advance of her performances about cellist Jacqueline DuPre at On the Boards in Seattle. According to Liddell, “The artistic, the psychological, and the physical go hand in hand. In the end, it is trying to transform pain into something beautiful.”

 

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.

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