Auditorio de Tenerife presents in its La Salita hall Las niñas zombi. The work is the first solo effort of Celso Giménez, who is one of the three artists comprising the theatrical ensemble La tristura. The first performance will include a discussion after the show.

I’m going to ask you to imagine a night in spring; a night that might take place at the weekend in a small house in the countryside. Three young women, three cousins, have got together after not seeing each other for a very long time. They drink, dance, laugh and catch up.

Amid the excitement over being reunited, one of them wants to tell the other two a story. She says, ‘The other day I got a call. They’ve found a body at the riverside. Do you know what really happened to Grandfather? The night changes from this moment onwards. We have ignored the war and our grandparents’ history, but once you know a little, you need to know everything.

Underneath the whole work, the dances, the conversations and the laughter, a question lurks: What did our grandparents have to go through when they were our age? Are we alive because of all that? We are the granddaughters, the third generation of the war. We have first-hand experience with many of its consequences. Why do they seem to us to be adventures in a distant land, or from true-crime series or Hollywood films about vampires and zombies? Are we supposed to feel guilty for having this impression?

My name is Celso because it was my grandfather’s name. ‘It’s a lucky name,’ they always told me, but, until recently, I never understood why. In Las niñas zombi, we tell this story with tenderness and beautiful details, because I believe that (one way or another) it is the story of everyone in our generation.