Reminiscencia

Through a gentle use of digital technologies, Malicho digs deep into his biography and the recent history of his city, Santiago, Chile – as well as its painful scars. With a narrative built through Google Earth, photographs, and videos published on different sites, this experience focuses on magical and unique places that reveal an emotional topography; conveying a relationship with a city that is different for everyone, but one in which we inevitably find each other.

From the alleyway where his family home is nestled, he travels back in time to long gone eras and to love stories that never die. Reminiscencia is a personal story, as much as it is a reflection on Chile half a century after the coup détat. The city and the streets of Santiago become witnesses, providing evidence of a complex history, past and present.

To learn more download the Show Information Package here: Reminiscencia Info Package

October 3, 2024 at 7:00 PM
October 4, 2024 at 7:00 PM
October 5, 2024 at 7:00 PM

Friday Oct. 4 – stay after the show for a Talkback with the Artist!

“A multidisciplinary artist from the rising Chilean generation, Vaca Valenzuela succeeds in creating an accessible and transformative art practically from scratch. Savouring the simple poetry of daily life, he incorporates his grandparents’ poignant presence into Reminiscencia. The work brings us together beyond screens and enriches the performing arts with a compelling theatrical narrative.”

Festival TransAmériques

About the artist

Malicho Vaca Valenzuela 

Chilean artist Malicho Vaca Valenzuela has been working in the theatrical field for fifteen years as an author, director and actor. He has written six plays to date, and is currently in the creative process for a new project. His work tackles a variety of themes including sexual diversity, gender and human rights. His projects are also nourished by the study of Latin American narratives and memory, as well as a reflection on biographical writing. A delicate and sensitive approach to different technological formats enables Malicho to expose his creative process to the audience as well as to write, from a position of vulnerability, an autobiography that is interwoven with the history of a territory marked by multiple revolutionary failures.

What Reminiscencia brings to Toronto

 “When I wonder about the history of a given location, I connect with the past in an attempt to draw analogies and to better understand who we are. By carefully examining these details, we can find answers regarding ways to regain empowerment over our lives and truly become human beings.” – Malicho Vaca Valenzuela

With this Personal Cartography of emotions, Malicho experiments with a new digital narrative approach to theatre – where the personal and the biographical become part of the historical archive of a city, of the history, and of the land. 

Central to this kind of work is the role of archives in creating a cartography. In Reminiscencia, Malicho invites us to challenge the notion of the institutionalized archive and to work from the “anarchivo” (roughly translated as the “anarchic archive”)—from that which has been rejected, marginalized, and set to the periphery in the curational process. These pieces of the puzzle lead us to discoveries, to digging that which history has buried, creating a new cartography of ourselves and the land we stand on. 

This piece also inspires us to realize how much we can create with so little. Having only the internet to communicate with the outside world during the pandemic, Malicho generated this new digital narrative approach to theatre-making from his home. He uses simple digital archives and technologies to create a complexity of layers of meaning that makes us think about the world around us and our role in it.