cultural
Keystone-SDA | Tuesday, August 20, 2024
The women and trans people of the documentary musical “Los Dìas Afuera”.
The Basel Theatre Festival kicked off this year’s edition on Tuesday evening with the gripping documentary theatre musical “Los Dias Afuera” by Argentinian Lola Arias. The festival, which is characterised by strong female positions, runs until September 1st.
For her stage project, Argentinian theater maker Lola Arias has brought together transgender people and women who have a history of being incarcerated in prison. These are people who now work as taxi drivers, perform in rock bands or earn their money as sex workers – and have children. The project is called “Los Dias Afuera,” or “The Days Outside.”
The evening, which entertains with plenty of live rock and clever live video crossfades, draws its strength from the touching, highly personal accounts of people who have to find their way again after prison – from people who don’t just act it out, but have really experienced it and are still experiencing it.
Dance and performance
What is striking about the program of the festival, which takes place every two years, is the strong presence of dance and performance projects by and with women. These include the feminist-explicit and black-postcolonialist “truth show” by the French Rébecca Chaillon entitled “Carte Noire Nommée Désir”. Or the original skateboard dance project by the Danish choreographer Mette Ingvartsen.
Tobias Brenk, who directs the festival, told the Keystone-SDA news agency that he had no particular quota of women in mind when putting together the program. The high proportion of women is simply the result of the search for exciting, spectacular and relevant stage projects.
The Basel Theater Festival will be showing eleven international productions and ten short pieces from Latin America, North Africa and various European countries over 13 days on many stages around the venues and the festival center on the central barracks area.
