Until March 19, 2023, and within the framework of the commemoration of the month of women and the feminist struggle, “Las Convocadas: Manifesto of a young lesbian in search of justice” returns to Teatro del Puente. Evaluna Valdivieso, director of the proposal, it stands out that it is the first activist lesbian work in Chile and contributes to the lack of representation that dissidents live every day.
One of the most viewed theatrical productions in 2022, according to the El Mercurio Ranking, “Las Convocadas: Manifesto of a young lesbian in search of justice”, was re-released today on the stages of the Teatro del Puente de Santiago.
The work is born from the need to make social and cultural violence against lesbians in Chile visible and is freely inspired by the cases of lesbocide of Nicole Saavedra (2016, 1 formalized in 2020), María Pía Castro (2008, closed without guilty) and Susana Sanhueza (2017, 1 formalized in 2020).
The proposal is part of the feminist cycle of Teatro del Puente and will be presented with performances until Sunday the 19th of the same month.
Interdisciplinary creation and activism
The interdisciplinary creation project of the work, in charge of its director Evaluna Valdivieso, seeks to stress the limits between the disciplines of theater, music, visual art and cinema; in a question about the achievement of justice in cases of lesbodio and the forms that it takes when the lack is faced or when it is late.
“It has been a project that has marked our policy as a company, when facing the Lesbofeminist activism as a creative methodology and in its link with various organizations. Definitely, It has been special to be part of a movement where the public has appreciated the approach and the memory that the work raises by openly asking for justice. We are very proud to say that it is the first activist lesbian work in Chile. In that sense, it has come to contribute a bit in the lack of representation that dissidents and specifically, lesbians and bisexuals, live day by day”, commented Evaluna Valdivieso, director of the work.
Dissent and lack of representation
Since its inception, the Teatro La Crisis company has carried out research that reflects how lesbians have been excluded from the representation of dissidence on stage and historically made invisible in artistic expressions: in the cinema, in visual art and in the performing arts.
“Not only in creative teams that have historically been absent from lesbians, but also as an object of study or focus of interest of art itself. They have appeared exceptionally from a masculinizing and pornographic perspective, relieving lesbianism in its sexual dimension and leaving the fight for justice and the achievement of rights devoid of stage representation”, they point out from their production.
“Through the work we hope contribute to a historical debt that we lesbians have, doubly oppressed, doubly summoned to demonstrate, to the extent that first we are women and then as lesbians it goes against the cisheteropatriarchal order. In this sense, we still have a lot of work to do, but we trust that LGBT people can feel positively represented in the work, as political subjects who have something to say in the construction of a more just and feminist society that, in turn, we do this exercise from the memory of those who have been taken away by the silent and noisy struggle to present themselves as loving another woman ”said Tatiana Baeza, playwright of the play.
Review of the work
The story of the play recounts the day on which the law to criminalize lesbianism was voted on in the national congress. Three women are anonymously summoned to figure out how to stop the law from being passed. Who are these women? As the hours go by, clues appear that link them to different lesbians murdered in the Red Zone. A journalist on the outskirts of the national congress seeks to have the premise of the vote, but a mandate from the channel will make her rethink her position. A question about justice.
The work was the winner of the 2019 Volcán Dramaturgy Festival and also of the 2019 Lápiz de Mina International Festival. Then a dramatized reading was held at the Gabriela Mistral Cultural Center in November of the same year. In 2020 it was selected as the premiere work for a season at Teatro del Puente, which was held in November 2021 as an opening of the process, due to the Sanitary Emergency, and then two successful seasons with public success during May 2022 and January. 2023.
Coordinates
Las Convocadas: Manifesto of a young lesbian in search of justice
March 9 to 19
Bridge Theater. Forest Park, between the Pío Nono and Purísima bridges
From Thursday to Sunday, at 8:00 p.m.
Tickets available through www.ticketplus.cl.