“Nadia was born in Kabul 27 years ago. When she was eight, during the civil war that broke out after the Soviet withdrawal, she suffered serious injuries during a bombardment. It is thanks her mother’s persevering care that she did not lose her life. Under Taliban rule, suffering from severe physical sequelae, she passed herself off as a boy in order to maintain her family. She kept up this incredible act for ten years. Finally, in 2006, an NGO helped Nadia, by now a woman, to come to Barcelona. Today, she studies social cooperation, she has her life back, and she is involved in all kinds of activities aimed at making Afghan culture and the situation of women in her country more widely known. Nadia talks about Nadia, but also about us, our beliefs, our education… ‘Nadia’ is a dialogue between cultures.

Claudia is the second show of the trilogy about History and Identity, made by La Conquesta del Pol Sud.
Claudia Victoria Poblete Hlaczik lives in Buenos Aires, she works as an IT technician and is passionate about science fiction. Claudia lives a ‘normal’ life but this apparence hides a very particular background. This young woman was educated in the values of the military environment until, when she was 21, she discovered that her real parents were ‘desaparecidos’ and that she lived an invented life. Her case led to an important turning point in Argentina because it meant the beginning of the end of the military leadership’s impunity. Claudia’s life experience, which is communicated by herself on stage, is the primary material this theatrical documentary is based on. What do some individuals’ experiences have to do with us? What is the meaning of words like revolution, memory, and education today?

Is the division between genders a cultural construction? What does it mean to be a woman? What does it mean to be a man? In this piece we have focused on the vital journey of a young transsexual woman: Raphaëlle Pérez. The play is based on her experience of gender transition; a path marked by her struggle, her search for identity and her dreams. Despite being born in one of the leading countries in Europe (France), Raphaëlle’s life has not been, is still not, and perhaps will never be easy at all. Her courage challenges us directly. ‘Raphaëlle’ shares with us a view between rationality and emotion, about a world in full transformation regarding social struggles and conquests, minorities’ rights, the education that we receive and, in short, the roles we assume.

“Suburbana" is an audio-visual installation based on the experiences of Najim, a young immigrant who collects cardboard and metal in order to survive.
His daily reality is the raw material for our work. For some weeks, cameras in hand, we followed him on his night-time excursions through the city of Granollers. Then, we discovered first-hand a very different perspective on the city and our way of life within it. "Suburbana" allows us to enter into the life of one of those "invisible" people —souls with whom we share the city, but have no idea that it is so.
Through “Suburbana”, we aim to place the experiences of Najim alongside the concept of a global consumer market. For us, the question remains the same: how does the individual perspective relate to the collective one? How do the laws of the market modify us personally? Indeed, what is the market today?

Carmen Francesca Banciu (Lipova, Romania, 1955) is a writer. She writes in Romanian and German and lives in Berlin. Her life experience was forged in the Ceaucescu's Romania. She was born in the bosom of a party-loyal family. It is in literature where Banciu found a way to process and denounce the situation that surrounded her. So, fiction was the tool that Carmen Francesca used to approach reality and avoid censorship. Her characters were drawn from her immediate surroundings, we might say that they wore the mask of fiction.
The experiences of Carmen Francesca speak of transformation and are marked by the changes that followed the end of Soviet domination. Her identity is constructed across the gap between two worlds and on the collapse of the iron curtain.

“Mivion” (Radio Sarajevo) leads us through the experience of Slobodan Minic, renowned cultural journalist (Radio Sarajevo), during the siege of the city of Sarajevo. Minic decided to resist the oppression by doing what he knew best: radio broadcasting. Today, he lives in La Escala (Catalunya) and wrote as a columnist in the newspaper “El Periódico”, among other media. He is the author of ‘Welcome to Sarajevo, Brother' and participated in the documentary 'Good night Sarajevo'. His experiences force us to question directly the gradual increase of intolerance, nationalism and authoritarianism that we see in the world today.
In “Mivion” (Radio Sarajevo) the medium of radio and theatre merge seamlessly. The voice of our protagonist is set against a background of newly sourced documentary video. Accompanied by two interpreters on stage, we are directed between events past and present, the individual and the collective story.

Empire invites the audience to follow in parallel the company’s documentary journey through mainland China and Tibet, alongside the life journey of Yan Huang, a young woman born in China who, having settled in Europe, seeks her cultural roots and, paradoxically, learns more about her native China from Madrid than from Shanghai, Hong Kong, or Shenzhen. Empire is a composition that brings to the stage the human aspiration toward a state of happiness. Can a word, a gesture, a question, change the course of a life? Can art change our life?

In Guardianes, the members of the company share with the audience a journey to the Brazilian Amazon, guided by their connection with Txana Bane Huni Kuin, a young shaman and music master from the Huni Kuin community in the state of Acre. Txana, which means “music master,” lives between Germany and the Amazon and is a true living bridge between two complementary ways of seeing the world. Guardianes is a scenic poem about a journey upstream, toward something original and ancestral that perhaps we have forgotten.

Guardianes del Corazón de la Tierra and Imperio. La nueva ruta de la seda begins with the following question: where can we find a different way of thinking than that of the market? Is it possible, in today’s world, to step outside this sort of ‘mental box’? To delve into these questions, members of the company have traveled to the Brazilian Amazon, China, and Tibet—places that are ‘sistered’ by being the cradle of ideas that, today, could inspire a new vision of humanity’s relationship with the Earth, based on respect for the environment, balance, renunciation of competitiveness, empathy as a way of understanding others, and meditation and introspection as a way of understanding oneself.

Empire and Guardians start from the same theatrical device: the maritime cargo container. The TEU (twenty-foot equivalent unit) becomes, for the company, a metaphor for the laws of the market. A true ‘mental box’ within which we are born, grow, die, and, above all, consume.