CAÍN loops i did it again

The Trashèdia AP-7 theatre collective won a DespertaLab grant in 2022. Thanks to this grant, it became the resident company at Nau Ivanow, where a show was born, then as a work-in-progress, entitled rentadora, gira mundial [washing machine, world tour], which turned a simple centrifuge into a Dionysian and dangerous celebration. Now, with a new look, a new name and a new aim, Nina Orsini offers a radical continuation of this piece in a show with a performer-dancer charged with actively taunting the audience through the purges that theatre offers, that is, laughter and tears. Concepts such as frustration, loneliness, creation and energy drinks are examined through body and movement. The company uses myth to explore the relationship between the ancestral, seen as tragedy, theatre and repetition, and the contemporary, expressed through performance. They attempt to break the fifth wall in a show that mocks autofiction, celebrates the role of theatre as a showcase for human misery, and uses violence to condemn the embourgeoisement of the stage in our culture. Evil is the element that structures the world, and pain is its crutch, and both are clearly visible on stage. How do you respond to violence, if not with more violence? This is the question posed by this show, and to answer it they use a range of Christian references: from the figure of Cain, who gives the show its title, to a washerwoman who seems to have stigmata. And what if we question the figure of a Yahweh who turns us all, as children of Cain, into murderers?

This is Nina Orsini’s latest creation. Accompanied by Rita Capella i Margarit, Quim Palmada Belda and Eduard Olesti, she defines herself as an ‘unexploded bomb on the motorway between Barcelona and Fortià, as a smoking corpse glimpsing the dawn’.

Co-produced by Nina Orsini with the Antic Teatre at the Grec 2024 Festival de Barcelona.

With the support of the Agita Figueres grant.

Nau Ivanow resident company.