La luz de un lago

Based in Barcelona, Tanya Beyeler (Switzerland) and Pablo Gisbert (Spain) are the soul of El Conde de Torrefiel (“The Count of Torrefiel”). The formidable collective, first introduced to our Festival with the striking LA PLAZA in 2018, began its journey in 2010 and soon garnered worldwide recognition, presenting its works across some of the most significant stages and festivals, including Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), Wiener Festwochen (Vienna), Festival d'Automne à Paris (France), Festival Grec de Barcelona (Spain), Short Theatre (Rome), MMCA (Seoul), Museo del Chopo (Mexico City), Festival Transamérique (Montreal), and Festival d'Avignon, among others.

Their new foray, once again a co-production with leading European festivals and theatres, immerses the audience in the imaginary of a peculiar film—an intricate tapestry of human lives unfolding across disparate locations and temporalities. Their stories appear and recede into one another in a Matryoshka-like storytelling manner, a kaleidoscopic mise-en-abȋme that plunges into the deep waters of time: a couple meeting at a concert in Manchester, two secret lovers in Athens, a trance woman in Paris, and a premier at La Fenice Opera House in Venice. La luz de un lago is about love, work, and violence in a world that visually collapses between mirages, trompe-l'œil, and hallucinations.

Rooted in a groundbreaking stage language at the threshold of theatre, dance, and visual installation, the work invites us into an associative journey through an array of fleeting images that come alive with the aid of text projections, voice-over narration, and immersive sound. As such, it uniquely captures the constant struggle to attain clarity within a world largely undefined, rife with ambiguities and grey areas.

In the stage universe of El Conde de Torrefiel, theatricality is often evoked through soundscapes. In La luz de un lago, the team takes this approach one step further: sound becomes the backbone upon which the work is supported, holding together the narrative’s ruptures and threads. Therefore, a novel space of sight and sound, both fluid and vital, unfolds in the imagination of the viewers. In this fragmented narrative, dramatic tensions between the individual and society come to the fore and unexpectedly accentuate, revealing the rifts of our globalised 21st-century landscape.