Holy Theatre in a Holy Space - Israel Galván’s production "La Fiesta"

Israel Galván’s production La Fiesta desires to express Spanish culture “through festivals and religious celebrations, carnivals, and pilgrimages” (“La Feista Program (English)”). Galván explores these experiences through his culture’s flamenco dancing, which in La Fiesta invigorates a corporal feeling through bodily movement and sound, and resonates across the ancient religiously-imbedded walls. La Fiesta invokes celebration (Brook 47) and invisible meaning (Brook 51) through the form of Spain’s traditional dance form, and “presents the invisible but also offers conditions that make its perception impossible” (Brook 56). Galván’s speaks of the “hidden aspect in the show” (“La Fiesta Program (English)”), how he has often felt like a voyeuristic outsider, and how that can bring about feelings of eroticism (“La Fiesta”). Ensemble members took turns dancing before one another, displaying the celebration of Galván’s youth and culture, its perversion, and set the audience and remaining ensemble members as the voyeurs. As this took place within the Cour d’honneur du Palais des papes, the element of ritual was heightened and immediately linked further to religion, specifically Catholicism. Following Noé’s definition of site-particular theatre, La Fiesta responded to its environment as its rhythms echoed on the walls, beats were made against the stones, and the spirituality of flamenco was amplified, but not determined, by the space (Noé 150). The two were complimentary and dynamic, but not deterministic of themselves. Just as Galván questioned his traditions of celebration and how there is always somebody on the outside (“La Feista”), his piece questioned the celebration and ritual of the space around him through his use of the space as site-particular, responding rather than simply reflecting the space (Noé 150). Implicitly, the audience wonders who is watching who, what is hidden in plain site, as a human is found beneath a table, and the meaning of a man, dead, going into a cave, in the symbol of a cross that evokes Jesus Christ’s crucifixion. We are recreating and watching celebration and ritual, just as Catholic worship is celebration and ritual, and it seemed as if this troubled the audience when they violently stomped and walked out. I argue that the parallel drawn from the site-particularity (Noé 150), mixed with the evocation of invisible meaning through sound (Brook 51), movement, and audience interaction upset the audience situated in the previous Catholic centre of the world, as it revealed the performativity in the Holy. Much like the case study discussed in McMahon, it seemed that the audience walking out was rejecting the staging of a religious practice (McMahon 10) that was indeed their own, but perverted in a way they did not like. This is a perfect example of penetrative theatre utilizing its surroundings to affect the audience greatly.

Works Cited

Brook, Peter. The Empty Space. London: Macgibbon & Kee Ltd, 1968. Print. La Fiesta. Dir. Galván, Israel. Cour d’honneur du Palais des Papes, Avignon. 17 July 2017. Performance. “La Fiesta Program (English)”. Festival d’Avignon. www.festival-avignon.com/en/shows/2017/ la-fiesta. Accessed 13 July 2016. McMahon, Christina S. “Introduction – Global Casting Calls: Performing (Trans)National Identity on Festival Circuits.” Recasting Transnationalism through Performance, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. Noé, Ilya. “Site-Particular.” Mapping Landscapes for Performance as Research. - Scholarly Acts and Creative Carthographies. Edited by Shannon Rose Riley and Lynette Hunter. Palgrave Macmillian, 2009.