The second woman

Your experience in this show will not only be theatrical but also cinematographic, and beyond anecdote and repetition, it reveals the mechanisms of gender power and male privileges. On-stage is an actress, Maria Hervás, who over the course of one complete day welcomes 100 on-stage companions, one after the other, from professional actors to many others who aren’t, all to repeat the same ritual: a conversation between a couple whose relationship has lost all creativity and romanticism. Perhaps it won't always be the same scene, because the dialogues are written to encourage variation and make different kinds of movement possible. You can see what happens (harsh but not violent, and including sexual verbal content) in its full format on-stage. But if you want to see the details of the gestures that reveal an emotion, you’ll have to glance over at the screen located next to the stage. Therefore, both artistic languages complement one another in a show designed for the audience to enter and leave the theatre at will. However, whoever stays seated for a while will find that beyond the differences, all the participants who identify with the male role may reproduce the same behaviour, share the same mood or react similarly when they feel threatened.

All of this was dreamt up by Anna Breckon, an independent artist, film-maker, film scholar and critic who holds a PhD in Queer and Feminist Film Theory from the University of Sydney, and Nat Randall, an artist who works at the intersection of performance, video and film. Seen at London's Young Vic in 2023 with the actress Ruth Wilson, the show caused a sensation.

A co-production by the Grec Festival de Barcelona 2024 and the Teatro Central of Seville.