Changing the dominant narrative is not a small thing, we need to be many. That’s why TOMA teatro offers up to 5 evening events throughout the Lavapiés district to promote debate and take to the streets. A wide variety of activities: forum-theatre, performances, book presentations, street actions and film screenings. Meetings that are also geographical, as their participants also come from other places such as Seville, Berlin, Milan and Barcelona.
Theatrical pieces such as Las fronteras matan or #ElNuevo to reflect on migrations on a macro and micro level, plays such as Sin nombre, which talk about stigma and exclusion for reasons of mental health. Also textbooks that combine the theory and praxis of the Theatre of the Oppressed or Systemic Theatre, with tools to understand how we influence discourse through art.
The structural gaze and reflection on care will also be very present in the screenings of Ash Wednesday and Spin Time, the meeting with the Red Solidaria de Acogida and the forum theatre pieces of Archipiélagos and Conflictos de un día cualquiera in which we wonder about what is caring and why violence is so present nowadays.
All this during the afternoons from 27 to 31 May, after the workshops, in an open and free format. Take a look at what we propose and join us on this path towards inclusion, rebellion and transformation.
27th May
Documentary - Spin Time, che fatica la democrazia!
- Presentation and debate
- CCIC La Tortuga. La Espada st. 6, Madrid. Metro: Tirso de Molina.
- 20:15 hrs
- Capacity: 30 people
The protagonist of the documentary is a 17,000 square metre building in Rome occupied by more than 400 families. It is famous for the intervention of the Pope’s almoner (the person in charge of practising charity for the poor on behalf of the Pope), who came in to reactivate the electricity cut off by the electricity company. The documentary is about a political and social experiment that takes place in this building. There are votes that are continually postponed and there is a show with very particular rules and purposes. These two plots interact with each other in an unexpected way, even for those who conceived the film, and allow us to understand a reality whose existence we would never have imagined, which seems at the same time distant and so familiar
Street Performance - Borders kill
- Street Performance
- Tirso de Molina Square
- 19:00 hrs
Spanish state, 21st century. A ‘strictly’ delimited world. We like Order. A social crisis is reaching our streets: the average temperature rises, so does patriotism and fascism. The feeling of threat is the law. The blame, always on the other, on the foreigner. Globalisation, our religion: God bless neo-liberalism.
What a pleasure to be able to travel and get to know other worlds! You see, trips to the global south are a bargain. You should see them: they have nothing and yet they are happy, the landscapes are so wild, the handicrafts so beautiful and their traditions so authentic… But here, we can’t all fit in.
29th May
Notes on Theatre and Social Transformation
- Book Presentation and short film projection
- La independiente Bookstore, C/ Primavera 14
- 18:45 hrs
- Capacity: 30 people
Theatre of the Oppressed – Feminist aesthetics for political poetics, Bárbara Santos
An in-depth exploration of the Theatre of the Oppressed, with an explicitly feminist, anti-racist and decolonial approach. Based on research processes initiated in 2010 and nourished by the experiences of theatre groups from different regions of the world, the text offers practical tools – exercises, games and techniques – that make visible and question structural oppressions linked to gender, race and class.
Acting on Vesta’s Temple, Patricia Trujillo
Awarded the ‘Women and Research’ prize within Seville Territory of Equality (2020). It is a manual on Socio-community Theatre. It aims to be useful for trainings, activism, social theatre creations, etc. It focuses on the Theatre of the Oppressed. This text brings together theory, methodology and experiences. Written from experiences on gender violence in Andalusia with the aim of being applicable to other contexts and social issues.
Journey towards the soul, Emma Luque
A journey inwards, to understand the edges of the soul caused by structural violence. A travelogue to the wounded corners of the soul, to understand and accompany human pain through my pain. A guide to inner resilience that helps us, from feeling ourselves on our inner axis, to go outside to accompany and sustain social pain, and to activate a world-transforming resistance and action.
Short film – Ash wednesday
Rio de Janeiro, last day of Carnival. A military police raid breaks out in Demétria’s community while she is waiting for her daughter to come home from school. Premiered at the 2023 Berlin Film Festival.
João Pedro Prado is a Brazilian filmmaker living in Berlin. His short film Patriots Don’t Die (2020) was exhibited in European festivals. Bárbara Santos is a writer, theatre director, actress and antiracist activist.
30th May
Forum Theatre - Sin nombre (Unnamed)
- Forum Theatre play
- Lavapiés Cultural Centre, C/ Olivar 46
- 19:00 hrs
- Capacity: 70 people
The play ‘Sin Nombre’ deals with various stages in the life of a person in a psychosocial rehabilitation centre in Madrid. From his youth, when he remembers his girlfriend, a boat trip that changed his life, through his experiences in a psychiatric centre, on the street and in prison, to end up in the rehabilitation centre.
‘Sin Nombre’ also deals with the desires and impediments of the people in the Carabanchel centre who are members of the theatre group and co-creators of this play. The play ends by including the audience in a conversation about social exclusion that mixes past, present and future, asking what we can do about the current context and what still needs to be improved.
31st May
Forum Theatre Marathon
- Esta es una plaza. C/ Dr Fourquet 24
- 17:00 hrs
- Capacity: 50 people
#ElNuevo (#TheNewBoy)
La Xixa Lab (Barcelona)
A young newcomer, living in a foster flat, signs up for a mixed basketball team. He is the new boy. There he meets Laura. Everything is going well and the relationship progresses but not everything is so easy. What will her mother say? And her friends? Will anyone help them?
Un día cualquiera (Any given day)
Grupo de Teatro Casa del Cura (Madrid)
The theme of the play is a reflection on why in today’s world human relations, on an international, local and personal level, are full of conflict and aggression, and little dialogue. We ask ourselves why we have lost the ability to discuss, to understand each other and to live together without fighting.
The play is preceded by 6 monologues, and tells the story of a woman on any given day, from the moment she wakes up until nightfall, and in particular the conflict situations she bumps into.
Archipiélagos (Archipelagoes)
Casa per la Pace (Milán)
Care is invisibilised, underpaid, feminised… We are sold the mirage of self-sufficiency and everything that sustains life is privatised. What does it mean to depend? Who cares for you? Who do you care for? Is caring a right, a commitment, an obligation? Is caring an oppression, a privilege?
The ‘TOMA 2025’ project is co-funded by the European Union. The opinions and views expressed on this website are solely those of the author(s) (Asociación Bajando al Sur) and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the Spanish Service for the Internationalisation of Education (SEPIE). Neither the European Union nor the SEPIE National Agency can be held responsible for them.
