Villa

One of Chile’s most internationally renowned playwrights was due to début at the Grec 2020 Festival de Barcelona with Dragón, the story of a group of artists dealing with opportunism and violence. But the pandemic made this impossible. His presence at the festival was limited to a few online talks or conversatorios. But this year, Guillermo Calderón is finally coming to the Grec with one of his most successful works: Villa. Three women debate a series of alternatives for the reuse of Villa Grimaldi, a famous detention and torture centre during the dictatorship. The discussion explores the conflict between groups defending the memory of the victims and the way the military regime dealt with the physical remains. The same play was performed less than a year ago, on 11 September, to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coup d’état in Chile, at the National Stadium in Santiago, one of the most famous detention centres of the Chilean dictatorship.

This is a great opportunity to get to know the work of Guillermo Calderón, a playwright, director, actor and scriptwriter born in 1971, trained in Chile, California and New York, who has written and directed shows such as Neva, Diciembre and Clase. Together with Pablo Larraín, he wrote the screenplay for El Conde (The Count), a vampire satire on the dictator Augusto Pinochet, which won the Golden Lion at the last Venice Film Festival.

Produced by the Teatro a Mil Foundation and International Festival.