Mariano Pensotti La Obra

Whether it be unique lives, crossed destinies, or deeply-embedded stories, Mariano Pensotti has a gift for storytelling. Here, we are confronted with that of Simon Frank, a Polish Jew who escaped from the Nazi camps before settling in a remote village in Argentina in the early 1960s.

It was there, in the middle of his fields, that he built a theatre, but not just any old one: at first, it was home to a very special decor, the reproduction of the house in which he lived in Poland. A house not to live in, but in which to play out things, to re-enact his previous life. Little by little, the project gained momentum. The scenography extended all around the house, to become the streets of Warsaw, and the villagers, initially spectators, began to take part in the shows as performers or technicians. The village then became famous, the play was a great success, and people flocked from afar to see it. Until, one fine day, all is revealed: Simon Frank is not who he pretends to be. Worse still, the executioner has taken the place of his victim. The creator is an imposter. What can be done with this story? Make a play out of it, of course. And even the play La Obra (or “The Work”). Once it has embarked upon this mise en abyme, the audience is transported by a spe(cta)cular, vertiginous staging, to the extent that it has great difficulty in unravelling the true from the false. What La Obra brings to the stage is the great theatre of the world.