The production runs from Friday to Sunday and is performed in Brazilian Portuguese with Spanish surtitles
La Salita, Auditorio de Tenerife’s theatre programme, presents Deserto this weekend. Staged by Brazilian theatre company Polifônica. The production pays tribute to writer Roberto Bolaño. Performances take place on Friday 30 and Saturday 31 October at 7.30 pm, and on Sunday 1 November at noon. A post-show discussion with the company will follow Friday’s performance. Tickets cost €8. The production is performed in Brazilian Portuguese with Spanish surtitles.
The work of Roberto Bolaño (1953–2003) comes to life on stage through extracts from the Chilean author’s books, interviews and memoirs. Regarded as one of the leading Latin American writers of the early twenty-first century, Bolaño is embodied on stage by actor Rodrigo Bolzan, who lends his voice and physical presence to passages from works including The Unknown University, 2666, The Insufferable Gaucho, Between Parentheses and Bolaño por sí mismo.
Intense, humorous and provocative, Deserto brings Bolaño’s preoccupations to the fore and invites the audience to reflect together: what role do artists and poetic creation play in a contemporary world marked by violence?
Drawing on poems, short stories, chronicles, lectures and interviews, the production explores Bolaño’s existential and artistic concerns, particularly during his final years, when he continued to write intensely despite his illness. At its heart is the poet’s journey: a man born in Chile who travels through Mexico before settling in Spain, his path shaped by displacement, exile, vulnerability and resistance to established norms.
Director and playwright Luiz Felipe Reis adopts an expansive approach to dramaturgy, weaving together theatre, literature, music, images and performance to create a distinctive theatrical narrative. Rather than adapting Bolaño’s work in a conventional way, the production deconstructs and reimagines it on stage through fragments of his novels, interviews and other writings.
Luiz Felipe Reis is a director, playwright, researcher and audiovisual artist who co-founded Polifônica with Julia Lund. His work brings together contemporary theatre, essayistic writing and interdisciplinary practice. With a background in cultural criticism and journalism, he has also pursued sustained research into theatrical forms and devices.
Since 2015, Polifônica has explored aesthetic and thematic approaches based on the concepts of scenic polyphony and counter-scenes to the Anthropocene. Together, these ideas encourage experimentation with different artistic approaches and responses to the Anthropocapitalocene: the ecological, social and political upheavals associated with anthropocentric, colonialist, capitalist and neoliberal structures.
Tickets cost €8 (€5 for under-30s) and are available at www.auditoriodetenerife.com, from the box office Monday to Friday, 10 am–5 pm, and Saturday, 10 am–2 pm, or by calling 902 317 327 during the same hours. La Salita’s next production, Cariño malo, by theatre company Ministerio de la Belleza, runs from 6 to 8 November.