Catalina
“This project is an attempt to re–signify an experience. To remember something in order to think about it differently, pull out the nails, paint it some other color. It is through memory that we build our expe- rience. Have we lived what we remember? I seek to reconfigure the memory I have of a certain experience. Emotions last longer in the body than I thought. I want to reflect on things, not feel them. To get away from the dictatorship of the sentimental.
As Julián Marina said: “we only really lose what we forget or reject, what we prefer to erase and no longer want to take it with, what is not incorporated into the life that we
tell ourself.
” Lagartijas Tiradas al Sol, 2009
This project begins with a commission by Luis Mario Moncada to create a play around the theme of apocalypse, a piece that talked about the end of the world shortly before 2012, the year in which the Mayans had supposedly predicted the end of the world. I [Gabino Rodríguez] took a romantic breakup as a pretext to talk about the end of the world. CATALINA was, above all, an exposure of intimacy on stage. A transformation of the private into public. The exercise had the character of a confession and it was the first project that we accompanied with a text in the form of an essay in which the artistic ideas that gave birth to it were exposed. Perhaps there was a feeling so overwhelming about doing a play around something as private as an exgirlfriend, that I felt the need to accompany it with a text that explained it. The staging was articulated between the relationship shown in the video, which showed substantial parts of the story, and the stage where objects of said relationship were shown. At distance we can say that the play shared a common spirit with Orham Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence.
The play narrated the beginning of the relationship up until the breakup and a trip to Argentina. On the trip I went to look for Catalina and asked her to read the love letters we had sent each other. The letters read by Catalina were used in the play. At some point I dressed up as Catalina and pretended to have sex with
my clothes spread out on the floor. During the play I drank six beers,
which resulted in a state of intoxication that gradually changed my tone and made me go from an Apollonian feeling, so to speak, to a much more Dionysian state.
This project was greatly influenced by the contact I had with Angélica Lidell, Roger Bernat and Txalo Toloza.
We used several songs: “Aunque no sea conmigo” by Celso Piña, “No me arrepiento de este amor” by Gilda and “Cómo que no” by Onda Vaga.
Un proyecto de A project by: Gabino Rodríguez • Colabora- ción Artística Artistic collaboration: Luisa Pardo • Asistencia Assistant: Mariana Villegas • Asesoría artística y pájaros Ar- tistic advice and birds: Francisco Barreiro • Video Video: Yule- ne Olaizola • Maquillaje Make–up: Iñaqui Legaspi • Diseño Design: Juan Leduc.
CATALINA premiered in Mexico City as part of the 2012 Satélite cycle organized by Luis Mario Moncada and UNAM. It was presented at the Antic Teatre in Barcelona and at the Festival TransAmériques in Montreal. We also made several tours through the country and in Mexico City had runs at Teatro El Milagro, Estudio Ladrón de Guevara and Teatro Santa Catarina.
