La Zanja
Miquel, an engineer for a mining multinational, goes to one of the company’s mines in South America. Alfredo (the local mayor) and his community await this new “discoverer”. The establishment of the mine marks the future of the village and relationships between its people. The encounter between Pizarro and Atahualpa 500 years ago will determine the destiny of the characters.
- Written by Diego Lorca and Pako Merino
- Directed by Diego Lorca and Pako Merino
- Casting Diego Lorca and Pako Merino
- Sound design Jonatan Bernabeu
- Musical composition Jonatan Bernabeu
- Lighting design Albert Anglada and Diego Lorca
- Set design Titzina
- Set building Núria Espinach and Escenografíes Castells
- Costumes Núria Espinach
- Production Titzina
When you come into contact with another society thousands of miles away, differences emerge in ways of life and ways of interpreting the world. However, when contact is prolonged, you begin to recognise things in the other party – details you thought were exclusive to your culture or your “self”. Then come the questions: if we’re so similar, how far have we shared the same journey? How can we rebuke one another and at the same time attract one another so much? The answer is in the past, in our ancestors, and in a common memory that has remained hidden. Because, ultimately, we have inherited actions perpetrated by some men on others, and influences on the group. La Zanja reflects this never-ending cycle that will be repeated over and over again in encounters between two worlds. This is an exhaustive creative work resulting from research in the chronicles of the period and our journeys to modern Peru.
… 2 June 2000, Choropampa, a mining company truck carrying liquid mercury accidentally spilt part of its load on the main road through the village. According to witnesses, the company offered money to get the liquid metal back. Men, women and children rushed to pick it up without knowing the effects this would have on their health…
… 16 November 1532, Francisco Pizarro made contact with the advanced Inca civilisation. Its emperor, Atahualpa, was kept in confinement for several months, learning to read and write Spanish. Atahualpa suggested to Pizarro that he could fill the room he was imprisoned in with gold in exchange for his freedom. The Incas brought the precious metal from all parts of the empire to save his life, but finally Atahualpa was executed on the night of 26 July 1533…
… Mining is one of the oldest human activities and has been one of the indicators of world economic development. Almost all the materials around us come from mining: paint, detergents, drugs, cosmetics, toothpaste, walls, pencil cases, chalk, glass, salt, roads, cables, pipes, pans, toilets, cars, mobile phones, etc.
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A great lesson that makes you think. Thank you!!
Amanda -
Congratulations friends, a great play full of truth.
Donosti -
You've given us a wonderful, thought-provoking play. Thank you very much
Palma -
Awesome!! Absolute admiration for your work. Thank you.
Carballo
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U dialectic duel between ancestral philosophy and market logic. A Spanish manager – one of those negotiators without too many scruples – from a mining multinational battling for gold and... to win the argument with the leader of a humble community in northern Peru, for example. This is the starting point for a piece with the virtue of raising hundreds of questions and the small defect of perhaps offering too many answers.
#Diario de Mallorca / February 2018
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According to Titzina, “History is the inheritance of the action of one man against another and its consequences for the group.” This is the theme of La Zanja. History. How... we inherit the actions of the past and how they influence our present and future. The encounter between two worlds. Ancestors, conquerors and conquered. Pizarroa and Atahualpa. Mining conflicts between Western multinationals and indigenous communities in Peru. The exploitation of natural resources and cultural roots. A real exercise in anthropological theatre .
#Heraldo de Aragón / April 2018
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The relationship between Francisco Pizarro’s conquest and exploitation by multinationals in the lands of indigenous peoples in South America may seem a distant one, but it has a common... element that becomes clear in the first scene of this magnificent creative play by the Titzina company: gold and greed go together. Evoking the Spanish conquest as a backdrop and the paradox that societies have not changed very much, Titzina tell a contemporary story about a cultural confrontation between two worlds through the relationship between a big company and the mayor of an indigenous community.
#Ara.cat / April 2019
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La Zanja, Titzina Teatro’s fifth production, submerges us in the tragic magical realism of the conquest of the Americas, both 500 years ago and today.
#El Pais / April 2019 -
The Titzina company returns to the Villarroel with another example of its thought-provoking social theatre. La Zanja builds a bridge between the past and the present against a backdrop of... the exploitation of the Third World.
#El periódico / April 2019
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La Zanja is the latest play by Pako Merino and Diego Lorca with the Titzina company, who return to the Villarroel with another example of thought-provoking social theatre. La Zanja builds a bridge... between the past and the present against a backdrop of the exploitation of the Third World. 93 performances have been given in 70 theatres since it was premiered at the end of 2017.
#El Pais / April 2019
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Blown away once again by Titzina. Blown away by how they can say so much with so little. You need to see La Zanja to find out once again that... there’s room for everything in that box we call a stage. There’s room for ancient expeditions by conquistadors and great transnational exploitation; there’s room for hotels, villages, hen houses and a cow in a meadow. La Zanja tells of the clash between two worlds; it tells of conquests and imperialisms. It speaks of the old-style colonisation and plunder to which whole peoples were and are subjected, then and now, by a devastating civilisation in the name of the increasingly questionable idea of progress. The backdrop to this is a reflection of a process of acculturation that weakens and eventually takes away the identity of the weakest
#Recomana / April 2019
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Pako Merino and Diego Lorca are back in Barcelona again to present La Zanja, their long-awaited latest work. It is a tragicomedy paying tribute to our ancestors about the way... the cycle of life tends to repeat itself. Using the device of a multinational company wanting to mine gold in a small, rural village, it talks about ancestors, traditions, roots and the different ways of interpreting the world.
#NÚVOL / April 2019
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