El Candidato
Spain, Germany
The Candidate
A game for the audience and host
direction & text
Marc Villanueva Mir
Here the audience makes the move: it’s a game about power, with the director as host.
language
Performances in German or English, see language information in the description
duration
120 min
more about the artist
EL CANDIDATO is best introduced like this: you take a few characters from Shakespeare’s histories and turn them into figures on a game board. Then you make four teams and place them on the four corners of the board. Each team is moved by two players. Since we don’t live in Shakespeare’s time anymore, the teams represent one of the political parties that exist today: then it’s a struggle for power. Which must be seized, negotiated and maintained – with any means available.
With EL CANDIDATO, Marc Villanueva Mir invites the audience to dive into politics themselves as players and to explore its mechanisms and deadly dynamics. While you’re discussing, wavering and trying to understand the situation, light, video and sound effects reacting to the moves in the game constantly intensify the maelstrom of events. The aim is to stay on the ball at all times and defeat your opponents.
For his final master’s degree project at the Institute for Applied Theatre Studies at the University of Giessen, Villanueva Mir further developed a game that was released as “Djambi” or “Machiavelli's Chessboard” in France in 1968. Villanueva Mir (*1992) also studied directing and dramaturgy at the Theatre Institute in Barcelona and literary theory and comparative literature at the University of Barcelona. In his work, he deals with ethical problems in the representation of political processes, the practice of discourse and the relationships between knowledge and power.
With Marc Villaneuva Mir, Gerard Valverde Ros & the audience
Concept & Direction Marc Villanueva Mir
Sound design Gerard Valverde Ros
Electronics & Video Design Marc Villanueva Mir / Board Construction Marc Villanueva Mir & EGM / Artistic Advisory Mònica Almirall, Alán Carrasco / Production Viola Sprengel / Photography Sílvia Poch / With special thanks to Estanis Aboal, Dominique Doguet, Carlos Franke, Li Lorian, Thomas Meckel, Carme Mir, Hèctor Mora Campón, Verónica Navas, Xavier Le Roy, Xesca Salvà, Nora Schneider, Bernhard Siebert, Gerald Siegmund, Ricard Villanueva / Coproduced by Festival TNT - Terrassa Noves Tendències, Teatre Lliure, Theater neben dem Turm, Hessische Theaterakademie & Institut für Angewandte Theaterwissenschaft with the collaboration of der Giessener Hochschulgesellschaft