Montserrat

“You broke your promise. You betrayed me Gabino. Don’t ever call me again. I don’t ever want to see you again, you’re just like the rest. This is not one of your plays. Go fuck yourself. “

“MONTSERRAT is a project that arises from the concern of knowing who was the woman who gave me life. Today I have but a few flashes of her that are not enough to form a memory. I know her name was María Montserrat Gerardina Lines Molina.
I know that she was born in Costa Rica, of a Catalan father and a Costa Rican mother.
I know she had only one sister: Nuria.
I know she settled in Mexico.
I know she was an anthropologist.
I know she had only one son.
I know she disappeared more than 20 years ago.
I don’t know much else.”

Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, 2012

MONTSERRAT is a project that I [Gabino Rodríguez] began as an auto- biographical exploration on Montserrat Lines Molina, my mother, who died in 1989. I have almost no recollection of her: some sparse images and some “memories” gathered from pictures. The process consisted of a period of interviews, in which I gathered information and composed an image of Montserrat Lines Molina based on other people’s impressions of her. I am aware that it is very difficult to be critical of the dead and that, being interviewed by Montserrat’s son, it was even harder for people to build a complex portrait. By the end of this process, I realized that I had an idealized and very schematic image of my mother. Conscious of the fact that the artistic future of such a portrait was limited, we decided to build a fiction based on texts by Alberto Fuguet, Silvia Molina, Andrés Caicedo and Martín Caparrós, among many others.
We created a story in which Montserrat had not died but rather, as in “Wakefield” by Nathaniel Hawthorne, left one day without a trace, fled and abandoned me.
The fiction was presented as if it were a documentary: an archive, comprised of a mixture of legitimate and made–up materials, was shown during the play. Evidence that anchored the narrative in a supposed reality.
The work was quite close to a reenacted lecture, the narration made the story go forward and the video carried an important part of it by showing sequences of videos, photographs or texts that the viewer would read. There were some “theatrical” elements, such as the use of paper masks and a silent dance. During the play we heard songs by Neil Young, Ratatat, Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson.

Un espectáculo de A show by: Gabino Rodríguez • Dirección técnica Technical direction: Sergio López Vigueras • Asistente general General assistant: Mariana Villegas • Colaboración en video Video collaboration: Carlos Gamboa y Yulene Olaizola • Acompañamiento artístico Artistic companion: Luisa Pardo • Producción Production: Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol • Este proyecto se desarrolló bajo el auspicio de la beca Jóvenes Creadores del FONCA This project was developed with the support of the Jóvenes Creadores FONCA grant.

MONTSERRAT was presented at Teatro El Milagro, Foro el Bicho, Teatro El Granero del Centro Cultural del Bosque, Foro del Dinosaurio in El Chopo, Mexico City; Festival Caín, Guada- lajara; Santiago a Mil, Santiago; Centro Cultural de España, Guatemala City; Temporada Alta, Girona; Museum of Contemporary Art, Vigo; Bad, Bilbao; Festival Internazionale del Teatro, Lugano; among many others. It was part of the cycle “La invención de nuestros padres” along with El rumor del incendio and Se rompen las olas. Its intention was to present different ways of approaching, through the theater, the stories of those who gave us life.