Veza Fernández
Behind my four walls I call you my friend
Four women* alone in their rooms talk to themselves simultaneously on a stage in the attempt of finding connection despite an imminent disconnection. By speaking, each of them creates an intimate dialogic setting for themselves where they ask themselves: For whom do I speak when I speak to myself? With whom do I speak when I speak to myself? Their texts craft a social fabric from where we can gaze at our own reflection with desperate humour and sensuous passion in all poetic power.
A thick cloud of intimate, co-existing voices holding each other invites an audience to listen beyond their ears and to gaze beyond a fixed position, in the messiness of abundant feeling, feminine* stridency and disoriented thought. A never-ending flow of speech, voluminous enough to create a room to be inhabited and shared. Where ethics becomes a tactile matter and sociality a dramatic tool to feel together and restore some sense of connection. Where the personal, the public, the physical, the virtual, the abstract and the relational blur all their boundaries trashing this binary righteous understanding it is so hard for us to let go. In times like these, where communication and proximity collapse, where paranoia, fear, overstimulation, and impaired attention govern our collective psycho-sphere, theatre might provide a space to practice how to hold on to each other, finding refuge in the changes that are inevitable. The feminine* as the placeholder for uncontrolled relationality, excess, insanity, and feeling might guide us on this journey or at least touch us in one way or another.
Behind my four walls I call you my friend is part of Veza Fernandez’s ongoing creative research on the strident voice or feminine* voice(s). It is a complex of many voices that conventionally reach the undesirable or are undermined as too much or too little. They are bodily, queer, sentient, and uncontrollable. They trans-verberate, touch, and reorientate. The scream, the verbiage, the cacophonic, the confessional, the gossip, the call, the moan, the prayer and much more belong to these voice(s).
Veza Fernández is a dance, voice, and performance artist based in Vienna. Her work deals with the realms of the poetics and politics of expression as a place of relation, imagination, and transformation. She entangles singing, writing, dancing, and speaking practices as bodily forms of study, experimentation, and performance. Her pieces are sensitive and intense, casting polyphonically a convocation of voices and presences that yearn to move and to be moved. Her background involves philology, education, theatre, music, and contemporary dance – fields that in one way or another influence her artistic researches and modi operandi when making and presenting art. Her work is strongly rooted locally, infiltrating bigger dance and theatre institutions from the underground scene. Veza holds a master degree in choreography from DAS graduate school (Amsterdam Academy for Theatre and Dance). Her work has been shown among other venues at brut Wien, Tanzquartier Wien, Sophiensæle Berlin, Gessnerallee Zurich, de Singel Antwerp, La Casa Encendida Madrid.
The show on December 6 will be followed by an artist talk. (Moderated by Jules Gleeson)
As part of the performance, on Sunday, December 4, a workshop by Veza Fernández takes place.
Credits
Concept, choreography, performance Veza Fernández Choreography, performance Claire Lefevre, Imani Rameses, Venuri Perera, Barbara Kraus Music, performance Conny Frischauf Outside eyes, ears, writers Carolina Bianchi, Aubrey Birch, Denice Bourbon, mirabella paidamwoyo* dziruni, Nerea González Production mollusca productions Set design Lisa Braid Costume design Sarah Sternat Light design Christina Bergner Photo Lucia Ugena
A co-production of Verein für Expressive Angelegenheiten, THEATERland STEIERmark and brut Wien.
With the kind support of the Cultural Department of the City of Vienna, BMKOES – Federal Ministry of Arts, Culture, Public Service and Sport and Land Steiermark, Department 9 Culture, Europe, Sport.
Thanks to Bears in the Park.
Dates & Tickets
The show on December 6 will be followed by an artist talk. (Moderated by Jules Gleeson)
As part of the performance, on Sunday, December 4, a workshop by Veza Fernández takes place.
December 2022
Sold out! Remaining tickets are available at the box office
€ 18 / € 14 / € 9
€ 18 / € 14 / € 9 / *An artist talk will follow the performance on December 6th. (Moderated by Jules Gleeson)
€ 18 / € 14 / € 9
€ 18 / € 14 / € 9
brut nordwest
Nordwestbahnstraße 8-10, 1200 Vienna
Downloads
Evening programme Behind my four walls I call you my friend (PDF)
