This Saturday at 7.30 pm, Delio Island takes the stage in a performance with all tickets sold out.
The Auditorio de Tenerife presents in its La Salita hall the show Equilibrium by Delio Island, a collective led by the Valencian artist Mireia Vila Soriano and the German performer Julian Hackemberg. Placing the central theme of death at its core, Equilibrium offers a stage reflection connecting the biological reality of bodies with the narrative of a person who died by suicide in 2021. The single performance on Saturday (April 11) at 7.30 pm has sold out.
This production, starring Hackemberg, blends dramatic narration, sound, scientific study, and stage aesthetics to interrogate the meaning of life and death. It poses questions such as: What is life in chemical terms? What is death? What happens on a physical level when we die? What happens when a body decomposes? Above all, the play asks where Tom is—bringing the experience of dying to the forefront of the performance. This show is a co‑production of Ca’Revolta, El Consulado and Fonds Darstellende Künste (Germany), with support from Vía Escénica and the municipality of Rafelbunyol.
Both artists have experienced the loss of individuals very close to them. In addition to the impact of unexpected death and the pain felt by family members, they address a culture of mourning that, in their view, does not reflect the realities of death. They state that technocracy cannot grasp the sense of loss, and metaphysical explanations obscure reality; as a result, such approaches offer little comfort to those unaffiliated with faith.
Equilibrium explores what actually happens to the bodies after death, questioning the existence or non‑existence of an immortal soul and asserting that the deceased remain alive in our thoughts and memories. In this regard, the work portrays certain moments in Tom’s life, the late friend of the founders of Delio Island, and speculates on the nature of his last moments. With this work, the artists wish to contribute to the development of a lay culture of mourning, thereby constructing a performative monument to Tom.
The project is the echo of an experiment with sound conducted in the Articulations syllabus of IVAM Valencia. The live piece premiered at the Russafa Escènica festival, earning special mention of the Premi de Dramatúrgia SGAE- Russafa Escènica 2024.
After the performance, students from the Canary Islands Acting School will moderate a public talk as part of the collaboration agreement with the Auditorio de Tenerife.
Independent of this staging, Delio Island has been running an artistic residency at La Salita since 30 March for its new project I am body, in which the collective charts the genealogy of contemporary authoritarianism and sets it against the history of the body, focusing on the human ability to walk.
Delio Island is a live-arts project founded and jointly directed by Valencia-born visual artist, set designer, and costume designer Mireia Vila Soriano and performer, author, and sound artist Julian Hackenberg, who hails from Isny, Germany. Both artists have contributed to a wide variety of projects across Europe, performing in multiple venues and theatres. They work at the intersection of visual art, sound, language, and the body. In their process, each stage element holds equal compositional value. They embrace expanded theatrical drama, where performance arises from dialogue among disciplines rather than a single language. Each work becomes research in itself. Together, they focus on unseen perspectives of current events and untold stories, seeking ways to reveal them through live art.
There are tickets available for the following La Salita show, Las pequeñas mudanzas, a contemporary re‑reading of Tirso de Molina’s Don Gil de las calzas verdes, directed by Vanessa Espín, running on 1, 2 and 3 May. The tickets can be purchased at a single price of €8 on the website www.auditoriodetenerife.com, at the auditorium’s box office, or by dialling the phone number 902 317 327 from Monday to Friday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Saturdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.