CReA_ [Andrés Lima and Sergio Blanco] process of performing-arts research and creation directed by Andrés Lima about Sergio Blanco’s Confesiones
CReA_ [Andrés Lima and Sergio Blanco] constitutes the first encounter of several performing arts workshops. Directed by Andrés Lima, the workshops aim to provide research opportunities, thought, and shared creation. Andrés Lima stands out in Spain and abroad as a singular voice in the theatrical direction. He has brought about this encounter to explore Confesiones. Tres conferencias autoficcionales, written by French-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco, who is known internationally for theatrical productions based on his autobiographical novels.
Over three days, from July 7 to 9, 2025, actors, specialists, and spectators will collaborate with Lima and Blanco to explore the work’s thematic, ethical, and performance-related aspects in greater depth. The workshop aims to identify potential guidelines that can inform Andrés Lima’s future creative processes and lay the groundwork for the subsequent encounter in this specific series.
CReA_ [Andrés Lima and Sergio Blanco] is intended to be a vital space that is open to experimentation and teamwork, where the exchange of ideas and practices will allow its participants to consider unresolved questions and gain creative momentum regarding Confesiones.
CReA_ is an initiative that promotes collaboration and dialogue within the world of performing arts. Its goal is to establish spaces for encounters, reflection and teamwork among artists, groups, cultural administrators, institutions and spectators.
Projected activities
Over the three days, CReA_ [Andrés Lima and Sergio Blanco] will deal with one of the three main subjects of Confesiones: love, violence and death. The activities will be divided into two distinct parts.
During the first part, the workshop will engage in a dialogue session with collaborators: individuals who, in some ways, are associated with the issues contained within the work and whose collaboration is fueled by their desire to share and contribute their thoughts and experiences as a means of broadening the limits of theatre. The activities in this first part are designed to delve into the universe of ‘Confesiones’ and gather inspiration, providing the subsequent sessions with a grounding in truth. The collaborators include Vinita Mahtani, Ignacio Sicilia, Jose María Pellicer, Pepe Arteaga, Martín Luna and Eduardo Cobos, among others.
In the second part, Andrés Lima’s workshop will conduct theatrical research, in which actors will participate to flesh out the texts of Confesiones.
Spectators have been invited to attend both parts of the workshop so that they may contribute ideas about the workshop’s intended pursuit of the concept of community creation.
Artistic Team
Direction: Andrés Lima
Dramaturgy: Sergio Blanco
Performers: Ruth Sánchez, Mónica Dorta, Aranza Coello, Maday Méndez, Mingo Ruano, Cristóbal Pinto, Joche Rubio and Daniel Sanginés
Andrés Lima is an actor and theatre director who is considered one of the most critical stage directors in Spain. He has long been associated with the company Compañía de Teatro Animalario and contributed to the revitalisation of the approach to staging taken in Spanish theatre. As an actor, he has experience in theatre, cinema, and television and has worked with directors such as Vicente Aranda, David Serrano, Iciar Bollaín, and Fernando León de Aranoa.
As a theatre director and playwright, he is credited with staging around 20 works performed at the National Drama Centre (CDN), Teatro de la Abadía, and Teatro de la Zarzuela, among other venues.
A five-time winner of the MAX Award for best direction, he recently received the Talía Award for his stage direction of ‘1936’. Likewise, he was chosen for Spain’s National Theatre Award in 2019.
Andrés Lima is committed to representing our history as a willingness to understand ourselves: ‘Our society today is the result of what we built or destroyed yesterday.’
Sergio Blanco is a French-Uruguayan playwright born in Montevideo and currently residing in Paris. His works are written using the autobiographical novel format; they seek to blur the lines between author, actor, and character. They have been performed in numerous theatres around the globe and have been translated into over 15 languages.
He has received several prestigious international accolades, including two Off West End Awards in London for ‘Tebas Land‘ and ‘La ira de Narciso’. In addition, he won the Alas Award and the Silver Medal of the Morosoli Award in Uruguay, recognising his career achievements. His best-known texts include ‘Kassandra’, ‘Cuando pases sobre mi tumba’, ‘El bramido de Düsseldorf’ and ‘Tráfico’, which have been presented to the public at critical theatrical institutions throughout the world.
His recent achievements include the premiers of ‘COVID451’ (2020), ‘Divina invención‘ (Madrid, 2021), ‘Zoo’ (Piccolo Theatre, Milan, 2022), ‘Tierra’ (Montevideo, 2023), ‘Confesiones’ (Montevideo, 2024) and an opera based on ‘Kassandra’ that was presented at Teatro Colón in Buenos Aires in a coproduction with the Greek National Opera.
He is considered one of the world’s most widely interpreted Spanish-language playwrights of our time.
Love, violence and death in Sergio Blanco’s ‘Confesiones’
Confessions. Three lectures penned by French-Uruguayan playwright Sergio Blanco in the autobiographical-novel format bring together three texts that combine two opposing essay styles: the lecture, adhering to criteria of clarity and objectivity, and the autobiographical novel, characterised by subjectivity and narrative disorder.
These lectures (‘Divina invención o la celebración del amor’, ‘Las flores del mal o la celebración de la violencia’ and ‘Memento mori o la celebración de la muerte’) follow an overarching structure: an initial staging device, an introduction on writing conditions, and thirty brief stories with an epilogue. In each lecture, Blanco describes the moment in which the idea for the text came to him, each time while strolling through a different city: Barcelona, Buenos Aires and Bogotá.
The author has crafted a body of work in the autobiographical-novel format that may be observed in his earlier works, such as ‘La ira de Narciso’ and ‘El bramido de Düsseldorf’, and in his essay ‘Autoficción. Una ingeniería del yo’ (2018). Throughout ‘Confesiones’, he breaks down the boundaries between reality and fiction, leaving the truthfulness of the narrated facts in a state of suspension.
The three pieces deal with love, violence and death from a personal perspective in a testimony that sees the convergence of memories, readings, journeys, intimate experiences and reflections on time, body and memory.