Los días afuera

What’s it like to return home after being in prison? How have your neighbourhood, your family and your own body changed? Los días afuera [The Days Away] is the second part of a project that began with the film Reas, which premièred at the Berlinale in February 2024. The film reconstructs the experience of time spent in prison. And the play shows the same characters re-enacting scenes from their life in freedom. 

The real life of these people becomes a fiction in which they themselves act, sing and dance. Their biographies since their release are interwoven in the musical: Nacho became a taxi driver, Paula started working in an underground textile workshop, Noelia returned to being a sex worker and an activist for trans women’s rights... The characters themselves reconstruct the challenges of life after prison and share their innermost desires to the beat of cumbia and pop music. 

Lola Arias is a theatre and film director and writer who has worked with different groups (from ex-combatants to young refugees), crossing the boundaries between reality and fiction. At the 2019 Grec Festival de Barcelona, she presented Campo minado [Minefield], a story about the Falklands War featuring former soldiers who also appeared in a film directed by Arias: Teatro de guerra [Theatre of War]. This film will be screened at the Filmoteca de Catalunya on 9 July (6 pm) and 14 July (5 pm), along with a colloquium with the director.

A production by Lola Arias Company

Co-produced by Complejo Teatral Buenos Aires (Argentina), Festival d’Avignon (France), Festival d’Automne Paris (France), Théâtre de la Ville Paris (France), Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles (Belgium), Festival Tangente St Pölten, Festival für Gegenwartskultur (Austria), Theaterfestival Basel, Kaserne Basel (Switzerland), Comédie de Genève (Switzerland), Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin (Germany), National Theater Oslo (Norway), Scène nationale de Bayonne (France), Le Parvis-scène nationale de Tarbes (France), La Rose des Vents-Scène Nationale de Villeneuve d’Ascq (France), Théâtre National de Strasbourg (France), Kampnagel Internationales Sommerfestival-Hamburg (Germany), TnBA-CDN de Bordeaux (France), Theater Spektakel Zürich (Switzerland), Mousonturm Frankfurt (Germany), Brighton Festival (England)

Set built by the construction workshops of the Théâtre National Wallonie Bruxelles.

Premiere 16 May to 15 June 2024

in Teatro Presidente Alvear at Complejo Teatral de Buenos Aires